Chapter 185: The Old Switcheroo
Chapter 185: The Old Switcheroo
Down in the reception room.
A soft beep suddenly sounded in the micro-earpiece nestled in Caesar's ear.
He immediately raised his hand and tapped the voice-modulator button hidden on the inside of his collar.
The call had connected.
Correa's suspicious voice came through: "Cousin, how'd your guys get here so fast? I only hung up with you a little while ago."
When Caesar spoke, his voice had already morphed perfectly into Thompson's gravelly, oily Nevada drawl.
"Don't sweat it. That Elizabeth bitch caught a whiff of what we're running, sure, but I fed her the fake books and she bought it. Crisis handled, for now."
Caesar kept spinning it in Thompson's tone. "Those two downstairs—they're a big fish I worked my ass off to land. They've got mountains of cash that needs cleaning."
"So you take good care of them, understand? Whatever they ask for, you make it happen. You close this deal."
On the other end, Correa let out a small breath of relief.
"Got it. So on this batch of industrial raw materials—what number do I quote them?"
Caesar leaned back into the sofa, letting a touch of Thompson's signature impatience creep in.
"Did your brain leak out your ears? To reel in a whale like this, you shave five points off the top!"
Correa's voice jumped an octave. "Cousin! Five points?! Then what the hell are we even making off it?"
Caesar let out a cold laugh. "What are you panicking about? We're moving the factory's own stolen inventory—zero cost. It's all house money, understand? Do what I tell you."
Faced with Thompson's absolute authority, Correa could only fall in line.
"Yes, cousin. Understood."
The call clicked off.
Caesar pulled off his sunglasses and cocked an eyebrow at Elizabeth beside him. "Nailed it."
A dazzled little smile curled at the corner of Elizabeth's mouth, and she couldn't help but praise him. "Perfect. You really are a genius."
Caesar took the opportunity to catch Elizabeth's lace-gloved hand and gave it a light squeeze. "Naturally, boss."
His hand hadn't even let go yet.
When a rush of footsteps came from beyond the door.
Caesar and Elizabeth's eyes met, and in perfect sync they released each other's hands, snapping straight back into their disguises.
Caesar recrossed his legs, irritation stamped across his face. Elizabeth sat upright on the sofa, restoring that haughty, ice-cold trophy-wife air.
Knock, knock, knock.
Caesar didn't so much as lift an eyelid. "Get in here!" he barked, arrogance dripping off every word.
The door swung open.
Correa walked in first, Butcher trailing behind him.
As he pushed the door open, Correa's face was fixed with a textbook fawning smile.
"Sir, ma'am, my sincerest apologies for the wait. I've spoken with my cousin Thompson on the phone."
"Now—to what do we owe the honor of your visit today? What can I do for you?"
Caesar spit out an apple core, flicking it with breathtaking arrogance so it landed right beside Correa's expensive leather shoes.
He raised his eyelids just enough to glance at the man, his tone laced with open contempt. "Coming to a dump like this, what else would I be here for besides buying some cheap industrial metal? You think I came for the scenery?"
The corner of Correa's eye twitched hard.
He'd been running the Nevada black market for years. In these circles, who didn't greet him with a respectful Boss Correa?
But now this clown in the loud floral shirt hadn't even given him a straight look—and had just dismissed the high-margin operation he took such pride in as "cheap raw material."
Correa's teeth itched with rage. But remembering his cousin's warning—this is a big fish—he choked the anger back down.
"Of course, of course." Correa forced a grin. "So, might I ask what kind of volume you're looking at, sir?"
Caesar dropped the leg he'd propped on the coffee table and leaned forward, his stare turning downright predatory.
"How much we want depends on how much dirty money this place of yours can actually swallow."
Correa puffed out his chest, more than a little smug. "Sir, whatever you want, we've got it."
Elizabeth chose that moment to let out a cold scoff, her voice dripping disdain. "Anybody can talk big. Seeing is believing."
Caesar burst out laughing and slung an arm around Elizabeth's shoulders.
"My wife's got a point! Anybody can run their mouth. How am I supposed to believe you've got the muscle to handle a real order?"
Then Caesar dropped the grin and turned serious. "I want to inspect the goods myself. Take me to your warehouse."
Correa planted his hands on his hips and, brimming with confidence, gestured toward the door. "No problem, sir. Right this way."
By the rules of the black market, Correa would never take a first-time stranger anywhere near the core warehouse.
But after Caesar's flawless voice-cloned phone call, Correa's guard had dropped to rock bottom.
Following his lead, the three of them passed through two heavy bulletproof security doors, each requiring both a keycard and a fingerprint scan.
With a low mechanical rumble, the massive steel gate began sliding slowly apart.
The instant it opened.
Row after row of high-intensity industrial floodlights snapped on inside, bathing the entire space in daylight.
Behind her sunglasses, Elizabeth's pupils contracted sharply.
Before them stretched a climate-controlled storage space of well over twenty thousand square feet.
From floor to the fifty-foot ceiling, it was packed wall to wall with goods.
Those priceless, high-purity industrial alloy raw materials—stolen straight out of the Williams Group factory—had been repackaged into uniform gray moisture-proof sacks, stacked layer upon layer atop heavy wooden pallets.
Elizabeth did the math fast in her head.
The sheer volume of stock here was obscene—enough to keep the entire Nevada factory running at full capacity for at least six months. This was easily a jaw-dropping sum in the tens of millions.
Caesar let out a loud, dramatic whistle of amazement.
"Damn. Looks like I underestimated you people."
Correa could no longer hide the pride on his face.
"Seems you really don't know much about our operation."
"Since you came recommended by my cousin Thompson, I won't hold anything back." Correa lowered his voice, playing it up like he was sharing a secret. "The source of this batch is a Wall Street mega-conglomerate—the Williams Group."
"How many tons of top-grade material do their factories chew through every year? I don't think I need to spell it out. This is grade-A stock—the kind you cannot get on the open market."
Elizabeth had been standing quietly behind Caesar the whole time, silently rotating her wrist, capturing every piece of evidence with the micro-camera concealed in the hidden clasp of her Hermès bag.
Hearing Correa so brazenly drop the Williams Group's name, Elizabeth forced her fury down and asked coldly:
"How exactly does the Williams Group's top-grade material end up in a shady black-market warehouse like this?"
Correa caught a flicker of something off and frowned.
Before he could get a word out, Caesar cut Elizabeth off with a booming laugh. "My dumb wife—you already know the answer to that."
"Thompson's obviously abusing his position. He swaps in cheap junk for the books, then quietly ships the top-grade material out here to cash it out on the cheap. Right, Correa?"
Caesar arched an eyebrow, wearing an expression that said we're all in the same racket.
Hearing Caesar lay out the whole scheme in one breath, the last shred of Correa's caution evaporated.
"Exactly right!"
Correa got carried away, showing off. "My cousin? He's the top man at the Williams Group's Nevada factory. The raw material passing through his hands every year is measured in the tens of thousands of tons!"
"As long as you grease the right palms up and down the line, mix the junk scrap back into the production line and swap the grade-A stock out—who's ever gonna catch it?"
"The Williams Group's a giant. Billions in cash flow every year. A little shrinkage like this doesn't even register as a rounding error to them. And even if the product quality goes bad down the line, that's on the Williams Group—those Wall Street fat cats take the hit to their brand. What's it got to do with us?"
Behind her sunglasses, Elizabeth's gaze had gone cold as ice, her expression darkening by the second.
"You're running an operation this big and you're not afraid someone at the factory rats you out to the FBI?"
Correa flat-out laughed, not a care in the world.
"Rat us out? Who's gonna do that?"
He threw his hands out, arrogance practically radiating off him. "The whole factory, from the floor supervisors down to the front gate security—who hasn't taken hush money from my cousin?"
"One bonus payout from him is worth months of the dead-end wages they slave for! In this world, who the hell picks a fight with cold hard cash?"
Finished, Correa leaned in close to Caesar, dropping his voice to pass along the wisdom of the trade.
"Sir, in this line of work, the trick is to let everybody get paid—tie every last one of them to the same ship, so nobody can jump. That's the safest way to run a business."
Caesar had been listening the whole time with a genial little smile.
He reached out and clapped a friendly hand on Correa's shoulder, asking it like it was nothing. "So what's your floor price on this batch?"
Correa held up a single finger and waved it in Caesar's face.
"Half off compared to legit product at the same grade! Fifty percent."
"And if you can swallow a big order all at once, I'll shave another five points off."
"Since you came with cash, you already know the raw material itself isn't what matters—it's the pipeline. And I guarantee you, a channel that can move grade-A stock like this, steady? You won't find a second one in all of Nevada."
Maybe sensing he'd found a kindred spirit who spoke his language, Correa launched into a full-blown brag.
"Though, judging by the look of you two, I'm guessing you've never touched the industrial metals game before?"
Caesar nodded with a smile, spinning the lie without so much as a blush. "Sharp eye. Truth is, the old man handed us some spare cash, and we got bored—figured we'd come out and find a little excitement."
"A friend told us the high-end medical devices industry burns through massive amounts of top-grade metal, and the margins are downright terrifying. So we got the introduction and hooked up with your cousin."
Correa clapped Caesar on the shoulder in return, wearing the look of a man who'd found a long-lost brother.
"Sir, from the look of you, I can't be more than a few years older than you."
"So today, let me take the liberty of teaching you a thing or two—how to really work this game in a high-profit racket like ours."
Caesar kept the charming smile fixed on his face, his eyes deep and dangerous.
"I'm all ears."