Chapter 176: A Cheap Little Trick

Chapter 176: A Cheap Little Trick

Hilde slid both hands into the pockets of his slacks and put on his most heartfelt, lovesick expression.

"Natasha, after all this time, don't you get how I feel about you?"

"Dump that loser and be my girlfriend. A gala like this? I could book out every hotel in Las Vegas and throw you a hundred of them, whenever you want."

"Pfft—"

A spectacularly ill-timed snort of laughter shattered the tender little moment.

Caesar was leaning against the doorframe of the dressing room, and this time he genuinely couldn't hold it in.

"Kid, I stopped running lame plays like this back when I was ten."

Caesar raised a single finger and waggled it in the air.

"Let me guess. One of your frat-boy buddies fed you this genius idea—hire somebody to trash Natasha's dress on purpose. Then you swoop in at the last second like some kind of savior and fix everything."

"That way the girl's so grateful she practically melts into your arms, and boom, you win."

Caesar looked Hilde up and down with the exact expression you'd give a certified idiot.

"Did your mom drop you on your head as a baby? Or did you eat too many lead paint chips off the crib? Your brain never finished cooking, and here you are trying to copy grown men and pick up girls?"

The color visibly drained from Hilde's face. Because Caesar had just laid his entire scheme bare, top to bottom.

Caesar straightened up and kept firing, merciless.

"You even know what a 'white knight' actually is, genius? Stepping up with nothing expected in return—that's a hero. What you're doing—sabotaging her, then leaning on her, forcing her to come crawling to you for help—that's just cheap extortion."

"And you thought that made you a hero? You? Please."

A few of the students in the crowd couldn't hold back a scatter of mocking laughs.

Hilde's face cycled through green and purple. He ground his back molars and forced the words out one syllable at a time. "I. Have. No. Idea. What. Bullshit. You're. Spouting."

Caesar shrugged. He was done wasting breath on him.

"So you want to take this all the way, huh?"

Caesar reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulled out a small, button-sized piece of black metal, pinching it between his fingers and holding it up for everyone to see.

"This is a micro pinhole camera. I planted it earlier in the dressing room where Natasha stored her gown. Just a precaution—too many people running around backstage, you never know."

"Turns out I caught more than I bargained for."

Natasha stared at Caesar, lost. He'd bugged the room? When? How did she not know a thing about it?

The blood drained out of Hilde's face in an instant.

The crowd erupted.

"Play the footage!"

"Yeah, post it to the campus network—let's all see who did it!"

Caesar lifted a hand to quiet them, sweeping his gaze across the room. His expression turned ice-cold and dead serious.

"That couture gown, rental plus replacement value, runs at least fifteen grand."

"Under Nevada law, deliberate destruction of property over five thousand dollars is a felony. Felony vandalism. Hand this footage over to Vegas PD, and a judge is looking at a minimum of five years in state prison."

In the crowd, the woman in the red dress heard the words "five years" and felt her knees nearly buckle.

Caesar's eyes swept the room like a hawk's. "I know the person who did it is standing right here in this room. And I'm willing to believe you just wanted some quick cash and made one stupid mistake."

Caesar tucked the "camera" back into his pocket.

"Here's the deal. Step forward right now, on your own, and I promise I won't call the cops."

Dead silence.

Caesar glanced at his watch and started applying the pressure. "You've got ten seconds to decide."

"Ten."

Nervous whispers rippled through the crowd. "Who was it, seriously?"

"Nine—"

"A few thousand bucks in hush money in exchange for throwing away the rest of your life in a max-security prison. That worth it to you?" Caesar's voice dropped to something like a devil's murmur.

"Seven."

"Just call the cops and haul her off already!" someone shouted from the crowd.

"Six."

"It was me!!"

The woman finally cracked under the suffocating pressure and lurched forward, screaming.

The second Luna and Natasha saw her face, they both sucked in a sharp breath.

"Lisa?! It was you?!"

Lisa lifted her head, her carefully done makeup smeared with tears. She was one of Natasha's classmates—the three of them ate lunch together in the student cafeteria all the time, hit the mall together on weekends.

Natasha's voice cracked from shock into a trembling sob. "You're one of my best friends... why would you do this?!"

Lisa's legs gave out and she sank to the floor, burying her face in her hands, wracked with sobs.

"Natasha, I'm so sorry, I was losing my mind... I'm twenty grand deep in credit card debt, collectors are calling me every single day, I can't even cover next month's rent!"

"It was Hilde! He knew I was broke. He said all I had to do was slip in when nobody was around and cut up the dress, and he'd hand me two thousand in cash!"

Lisa was crying so hard she could barely breathe. She grabbed at Natasha's ankle and clung to it. "Please don't call the police, please? I don't want to go to prison, I'm begging you!"

With the truth out, Hilde's face went completely white with rage.

He lunged forward, humiliation boiling over, and swung his hand back to slap Lisa across the face. "You lying little bitch! You've got the nerve to spew this bullshit here?!"

But his palm never made it. A hand like an iron vise clamped down on his wrist midair.

Caesar held his wrist steady, a mocking smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "What's the matter? Cat's out of the bag and now you're throwing a tantrum?"

Hilde's face flushed the color of raw liver. He thrashed to break free, cocking his other fist to throw a punch at Caesar.

"Let go! You old bastard, I'll wreck you right alongside her!"

Caesar smiled easily at Hilde, but the pressure in his grip ratcheted up bit by bit—until the bones in Hilde's wrist let out an ominous grinding sound.

"Right about now, I'd advise you to hold on to whatever scraps of dignity you've got left."

Caesar's voice was light, almost breezy, but it carried a bone-deep chill. "Otherwise I'm about to beat you so bad you're picking your teeth up off the floor and crawling out of here like a dog. That's a whole lot more embarrassing."

Veins bulged on Hilde's forehead from the pain. He wrenched his hand free, tore the custom bow tie off his neck, and hurled it to the floor.

"You all better watch your backs!" He spat the threat through clenched teeth, then shoved his way through the crowd and slunk off with his little pack of hangers-on trailing behind.

Crisis over, Luna was so pumped she started jumping in place.

"Pops! That was insane! When did you plant a camera? You are so cool!"

Caesar dug the little black metal piece out of his pocket and tossed it to Luna.

"There's no camera. That's just a spare button that fell off my jacket."

It was the most basic psychological tactic straight out of the interrogation room—anyone who'd spent a few years out in the real world would've seen right through it. But for a bunch of college kids who'd never set foot off campus, with nerves made of glass? More than enough.

Luna caught the button, listened to the explanation, and looked at Caesar with stars practically shooting out of her eyes.

"Oh my god, old man, you're literally 007!"

Caesar ignored the worship entirely and turned to Natasha, who was still wiping her eyes. He softened his voice a little. "Stop crying. It's just a dress. The sky isn't falling. It's fixable."

Luna's eyes went wide as saucers. She latched both hands onto Caesar's arm and shook him nonstop. "Old man, you serious? You can actually get a stage-ready couture gown here in under thirty minutes?!"

Caesar pressed a hand to his forehead and let out a helpless sigh. "I'm going to say this one last time. Call me Caesar."

Luna obediently let go and snapped off a little salute. "Got it, old man!"

Caesar completely lost the will to argue. He pulled out his phone and dialed Elizabeth's number.

Meanwhile, in an office at a factory belonging to the Williams Group in New York.

Elizabeth sat behind a massive mahogany desk, brow furrowed, buried under a mountain of financial statements, ledgers, and offshore account records.

The finance director set the last folder down on the desk and said respectfully, "Ma'am, these are all of the factory's incoming and outgoing accounts and receipts for the past six months."

Elizabeth gave a cold nod. "Understood. You can go now."

Once the director had shut the door behind him, Elizabeth irritably tossed a report onto the desk.

She knew full well this factory was rotten to the core. From Thompson's suspiciously spotless, obviously pre-staged office, to the poor manager who'd been hastily shoved out and fired to play scapegoat—every detail was screaming red alert.

But she'd been combing through the books with her audit team for the better part of a day, and every receipt matched perfectly, every dollar of cash flow was, on paper, entirely aboveboard.

The books had been cooked to flawless perfection. That helpless feeling—knowing exactly where the enemy was hiding but unable to get a single piece of hard evidence—was driving her to the brink.

Just then, her personal cell buzzed on the desk.

"Still working?" Caesar's low, faintly lazy voice came through the receiver.

Strangely enough, the moment Elizabeth heard that voice, the tension bled out of her shoulders and her rigid posture eased.

She dropped the expensive Montblanc pen and slumped back against the leather chair, exhausted, reaching up to rub the bridge of her nose.

"Mm. Get to the point."

Caesar chuckled on the other end. "Need to borrow something. You able to pull together a few sets of women's couture gowns on short notice?"

Elizabeth's fingers paused mid-rub, and her tone snapped right back into female-CEO wariness. "For what?"

"Returning a favor." Caesar sounded resigned. "A friend's little sister is hosting a college gala tonight, and somebody trashed her dress on purpose. Clock's ticking, I don't know a soul in the fashion scene out here, so you're my only shot at saving the day."

Elizabeth tapped her pale fingertips against the mahogany twice, then delivered a single cold, merciless word.

"No."

An exaggerated wail came through the phone instantly.

"Come on, boss? You didn't even think about it before shooting me down? I'm out here on a college campus playing superhero in front of a bunch of young women—can you cut me a little slack here?"