Chapter 307
The news hit, and the market exploded.
If the earlier stock crash had merely sparked panic among investors, this suspension of core operations was like dumping gasoline on a raging fire.
The Sharp Group's stock price plummeted.
At eleven that night, the conference room on the top floor of the Sharp Group building blazed with light. Seven or eight veteran shareholders gathered, every face grim.
"Lucas! You owe us an explanation! Semiconductors and renewable energy—those are the lifeblood of this company! You shut them down just like that? What the hell do you think we are?"
"Exactly, Lucas. Everyone's saying the Sharp family is finished. Keep this up and the banks will call in their loans, partners will default—you'll drag the entire company down with you!"
"What are you thinking? Even if you're fighting with Mrs. Sharp, you can't gamble with the company!"
Lucas sat at the head of the table, listening quietly, his face unreadable.
When they'd exhausted themselves, he finally spoke.
"Finished?"
Lucas had his assistant distribute a document he'd prepared in advance to everyone present.
The shareholders opened it skeptically. When they saw what was inside, they froze.
It wasn't an explanation. It wasn't a new strategic plan.
It was an equity compensation agreement.
"Gentlemen, I know you've all had a rough time lately. Consider this agreement my personal compensation. Sign it, and for the next three months, no matter how the stock price fluctuates, I'll personally cover any losses on your shares in full. Additionally, each of you will receive a 'distress payment,' transferable to your accounts immediately."
Lucas paused, his gaze sweeping across their stunned faces.
"Of course, if any of you don't trust me, you can say so now. I'm willing to buy out all your shares at twenty percent above last month's peak price."
Take the money, shut up, sign the NDA, and keep fighting alongside him.
Or take the money and walk away now.
After a long moment, Mr. Jackson sighed deeply, picked up his pen, and signed his name on the agreement.
"You know," Mr. Jackson said, shaking his head as he tossed the pen onto the table, "you're even more ruthless than your father ever was."
Once the first signed, the others followed.
Soon, everyone had signed. They left holding their agreements, hearts heavy with conflicting emotions.
---
Top floor of the Sharp Group headquarters.
David had an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips.
Just as he was resigning himself to another boring all-nighter, one of the data monitoring screens flashed a brief red alert.
The warning disappeared almost instantly, so fast it could've been a trick of the eye.
But David had seen it.
There was a mole.
And a skilled one—someone intimately familiar with the company's system architecture.
David perked up. Instead of severing the connection, he quietly opened a reverse-trace program and followed the invisible thread back to its source.
A few seconds later, a name and photo appeared.
Kate.
David blinked, thought for a moment, then dialed Lucas's internal line.
"Asleep yet?"
"Talk."
"The fish didn't bite, but it looks like a rat crawled into the net. One you might actually know pretty well."
"Kate."
---
David felt like he was becoming one with the server room.
On his screen, Kate's personnel file looked too clean.
Frustrated, David ran his hands through his hair and shifted his search from her professional history to her earlier personal background.
Police internal files required high clearance, but through some old contacts, he managed to get a copy of an operational brief from her undercover days.
David skimmed quickly, then his hand froze on the mouse.
The record showed Kate had gone through a three-month "blackout period" during one mission.
The official explanation: "Cut all contact with the organization to evade detection." Three months later, Kate re-established contact on her own and delivered critical intelligence, successfully completing the undercover operation.
Too brief.
David narrowed his eyes and cross-referenced those three months with Owen's activities from that same period.
Massive amounts of data scrolled rapidly across his screen.
Finally, two seemingly unrelated timelines converged at an unexpected point.
---
Lucas didn't act immediately.
Kate was a nail driven too deep. Yank it out too quickly, and you'd tear up everything around it. Besides, she was Professor Morgan's daughter—that connection complicated things with Juliana.
He called Clarence.
He relayed everything David had found, along with his own suspicions, in concise terms.
On the other end, Clarence was silent for a long time.
"I understand," Clarence said, his voice unreadable. "We can't touch Kate yet."
Clarence sighed. "What's your plan?"
"Fight fire with fire." Lucas stared out the window. "He wants a show, I'll give him one. He wants Kate to feed him information, I'll let her feed him exactly what I want him to know."
"You mean turn her into a mouthpiece?"
"A mouthpiece we're listening to."
Clarence understood.
"Fine. I'll arrange for top-level surveillance on Kate. You watch your back."
---
The next day, financial and entertainment outlets were flooded with a leaked high-resolution photo.
Lucas stepping out of his car alone, walking into an elevator, his silhouette radiating loneliness.
Elite marriage on the rocks—new evidence surfaces.
Shortly after, sharp-eyed netizens noticed that Juliana had scrubbed every photo with Lucas from her social media overnight.
---
Night fell.
Kate picked up her phone.
It was that innocuous weather app, sending out tiny, nearly imperceptible data packets every day.
She'd noticed.
For a top-tier former undercover agent, that kind of anomaly was enough to raise alarm bells.
---
"One iced lemon tea, light ice."
The young man called Ace nodded and quickly brought over the drink, setting it in front of her.
"Kate," he said quietly.
Kate pulled a USB drive from her pocket and slid it across the table.
"This contains a list of all Owen's business partners in the country, plus dark ledgers of every financial transaction he's handled over the years. Find somewhere absolutely safe to back it up. If something happens to me, find a way to leak everything inside."
Ace's face changed.
"You're—"
Kate cut him off. "Lucas planted something on my phone."
Ace's pupils contracted. "Then we leave now! With our skills, Owen won't find us!"
"Leave? Where to? You know how wide Owen's net spreads. As long as we're on his boat, we'll never reach shore."
"We can betray him! I'll come with you! If we hand everything over to the police—"
"And then what?" Kate looked at him. "Spend the rest of our lives in witness protection? Or wait for Owen's revenge? Ace, you're too naive. To deal with someone like Owen, you either don't act at all, or you make sure he can never get back up."
Ace fell silent. "But the consequences of doing this... can you handle them?"
Kate picked up her iced lemon tea. "I've come this far. There's nothing left for me to lose. Remember what I said."
---
Milo had prepared a small birthday surprise for Kate.
The sound of running water echoed from the bathroom.
In the living room, Kate's phone sat on the nightstand, screen dark.
Milo dried his hands and walked out, his gaze landing on the phone.
He knew he shouldn't look.
It was disrespectful to her. It betrayed their relationship.
But he walked over anyway and picked it up. Fingerprint unlock—he tried Kate's birthday.
The screen lit up.
That easy?
Kate's phone was clean, like a freshly tidied room. Anything potentially suspicious had been hidden away.
Just as Milo was about to give up, his finger accidentally opened a system folder.
Inside were fragments—deleted cache data not fully erased. Garbled text and a few broken, unrecoverable images.
But one partially restored email subject line made his blood run cold.
It was from an overseas server. The subject read: ["Cargo" has arrived at port. Proceed with Plan B.]
Milo gripped the phone. One thought consumed him: Who is Kate, really?
He carefully restored the phone to its original state and placed it back on the nightstand. The entire process was soundless.
He retreated to the living room couch and sat down, waiting for Kate to emerge.
A few minutes later, Kate walked out wrapped in a bathrobe. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Just thinking about a case."
After Kate left, Milo sat in his car for a long time.
Finally, he dialed Clarence's number.
"Dad."
"Talk."
"I think... I found something." Milo recounted everything he'd seen on Kate's phone, word for word.
Silence on the other end.
"Dad?"
"Hold your position. Act like nothing happened. Keep seeing her."
"Why? She could be—"
"That's an order."