Chapter 145

"If you think it's not enough, I can add more—as long as you agree to get the hell out of Imperial City forever and never see my daughter again!"

Jack finally lifted his head and met her eyes directly.

"Madam."

"If you weren't Sherry's mother..."

"The way you're humiliating me right now..."

"Do you have any idea what kind of price you'd pay?"

With Jack's current status, even those guys at the Pentagon had to treat him with respect.

Jack's voice wasn't loud, but every word landed like a hammer striking solid rock. Those deep, usually calm eyes now churned with barely restrained fury.

Helen, seated on the sofa, froze for a moment.

At this instant, Jack's gaze actually frightened her.

But then...

She let out a cold laugh.

Helen tilted her chin up slightly, her eyes looking at him as if he were a cheap, dust-covered piece of merchandise. Her tone dripped with undisguised contempt and mockery.

"Mr. Carter, please be clear about who you are."

She extended one finger—its nail painted blood-red—and pointed at the check on the table, an amount that ordinary people couldn't earn in several lifetimes.

"This isn't humiliation. This is 'compensation'—the most merciful charity someone from the bottom like you could ever receive." Her voice turned shrill and cutting. "Sherry is the most dazzling jewel of Imperial City's high society. Her future husband should be, at minimum, an heir to a financial empire or an Ivy League PhD, an elite in the finance industry. And you?"

Helen's gaze swept mercilessly over Jack's somewhat cheap-looking clothes, a cruel smile curling at the corners of her mouth.

"A poor man—what makes you think you could ever be worthy of my daughter's future?"

She paused, her eyes suddenly turning sharp as a viper's.

"Don't think I don't know what you're really after. Men like you just want to latch onto our family tree so you can skip decades of struggle, right? Let me tell you—give up that fantasy right now!"

"Take this money and disappear from Sherry's world immediately. Otherwise, I have plenty of ways to make sure you can't even find a dishwashing job in Imperial City!"

Facing Helen's storm of insults and threats, Jack didn't retreat an inch.

"Madam."

His voice was low and deliberate. "Do you think everything in this world can be bought with money?"

Helen paused, slightly stunned.

Jack stood up, walked to the table, and picked up the check.

A flash of triumph crossed Helen's eyes—she thought he'd finally given in.

But the next second, right in front of her, Jack tore the check in half.

Then into quarters. Then eighths...

He casually tossed the shredded pieces into a nearby trash can.

"You—!"

Helen's face instantly turned ashen. She shot to her feet, pointing at Jack with a trembling finger. "Do you know what you just tore up? That's more money than you'll make in your entire lifetime!"

Jack looked at her, the faintest hint of a smile touching his lips.

"Is that so?"

Jack's voice was as calm as still water. "What I just tore up was the scrap paper you tried to use to buy someone's dignity."

He walked up to Helen and looked down at her from his full height.

"Madam, out of respect for the fact that you're Sherry's mother, I'll say this one last time."

Jack's voice was low and powerful, each word grinding out from deep in his chest. "Sherry is not merchandise. Neither am I."

"Even if you're her mother, you don't get to make decisions for her."

"What happened today—I can forgive."

"If there's a next time, I'll show you that my anger isn't something just anyone can withstand."

"Now—leave."

Helen stood frozen in place, her face shifting from ashen to deathly pale.

She opened her mouth as if to say something, but Jack's unfathomably deep eyes made her swallow every harsh word.

She'd lived half a century, met countless people, yet never had she felt such pure, overwhelming pressure from someone so young.

This wasn't bluster—it was an absolute confidence that radiated from his very bones, the kind that belonged to someone who stood at the top.

Helen couldn't understand why Jack, clearly a poor man, would possess such terrifying presence.

Helen took a deep breath, clinging to the last shred of her dignity. She grabbed her handbag from the table, turned on her high heels, and left the apartment without looking back.

The door slammed shut.

The apartment fell silent once more.

Jack stood where he was, staring at the closed door. The sharpness in his eyes slowly faded, replaced by a trace of barely perceptible exhaustion.

He walked to the window and pushed it open. Imperial City's cold wind rushed in, dispersing the lingering aura of menace around him.

Below, a black sedan was already pulling away, gradually disappearing into the distance.

Jack pulled out his phone and dialed a number.

The call was answered after just one ring.

"Sir." A low, respectful male voice came through.

The man on the other end of the line...

His name was Sidney.

He had once been a legendary investor who dominated Financial Street!

In that financial empire wrapped in money and desire, Sidney's name itself was an awe-inspiring totem.

Financial Street—this narrow stretch of road barely a third of a mile long was like a bottomless vortex, swallowing and spitting out the world's most massive fortunes, controlling the fates of countless people. Here, there was no gunfire, yet every second saw hundreds of billions of dollars locked in silent warfare.

And Sidney had once been one of this battlefield's apex predators.

Born into poverty, at sixteen he'd gone door-to-door begging for work, barely managing to land a coffee-delivery job on this street.

But through patience, insight, and a calculation that bordered on terrifying, he'd clawed his way up from the very bottom, crushing barriers of class and prejudice step by step, eventually claiming the highest seat at Financial Street's most elite investment bank.

In his era, Sidney's terror didn't come from the staggering wealth he controlled—it came from how thoroughly he'd mastered Financial Street's rules.

He'd once made ten billion dollars in a single month.

During that black storm when countless financial titans lost everything to greed—some even jumping to their deaths—Sidney had operated like an emotionless money-printing machine, precisely carving up every inch of the market's flesh.

But because of that, he'd made too many enemies.

A massive bounty was placed on him on the dark web. The world's top assassins were hired to erase him from existence completely.

That assassination attempt happened ten years ago on a rain-drenched night. Twelve fully armed elite mercenaries cornered him in a dead-end alley with no escape route.

Everyone thought this financial tyrant would fall there.

Including himself.