Chapter 242:
“You said you had captured the capital but feared the siege,” Leo said. “And you threatened to buy a bank.”
Elias stood up. He walked to the window. The city lights were reflecting off the wet pavement below. He looked at his reflection in the glass. He looked tired. But he looked victorious.
He hated the doubt that alcohol brought out.
The vulnerability that had crippled him an hour ago evaporated, replaced by the icy resolve that made him the most feared man on Wall Street.
“Forget what I said,” Elias commanded.
“Already forgotten, sir.”
Elias buttoned his collar. He adjusted his cuffs.
“I’m not waiting anymore,” Elias whispered to the window. “If Halloway wants a war, I’ll give him an apocalypse.”
The dining room of the Halloway estate was a mausoleum of old banking money. The walls were covered in silk wallpaper that cost more than a mid-sized sedan, and the chandelier overhead was a cascade of crystal tears.
Dinner was a silent affair. The only sounds were the clinking of silver forks against bone china and the soft footsteps of servants pouring vintage wine.
Sawyer sat opposite his grandmother, Madam Halloway. She was a woman made of iron and pearls. She didn’t eat; she dined. She cut her steak with surgical precision, her eyes fixed on her grandson.
She wiped her mouth with a linen napkin. The signal. Business was commencing.
“I had lunch with the Kensington branch family today,” Madam Halloway said. Her voice was light, conversational, but everyone at the table froze. “They have a delightful daughter. Second cousin to the main line. Educated in Switzerland. Very suitable.”
R3ad the r3zt at g𝒶lnoνels.𝓬𝓸𝓶
Sawyer paused. His knife screeched slightly against the porcelain.
“I’m not looking for a wife, Grandmother,” Sawyer said, taking a sip of his wine.
“You are twenty-six,” she countered. “It is time to secure alliances. The Kensington connection, even a branch one, would stabilize our European holdings.”
“I have no interest in a merger disguised as a marriage,” Sawyer said flatly.
“It is not a merger. It is duty,” she snapped. “You have been running wild, Sawyer. Playing with tech startups. Being photographed in tabloids with questionable women.”
Sawyer set his glass down. The liquid rippled. “She has a name.”
“Does she?” Madam Halloway raised an eyebrow. “I read the reports. Aurora Vance. A nobody from the Bronx. A divorcée. The woman who was briefly married to that disgrace, Sterling Thorne.”
“She survived Sterling Thorne,” Sawyer corrected, his voice hardening. “There is a difference.”
“She is a gold digger,” Madam Halloway declared. “And I will not have a gold digger soiling the Halloway name.”
The table went deathly silent. Sawyer’s cousins stared at their plates, terrified to breathe.
Sawyer laughed. It was a dry, humorless sound.
“A gold digger,” he repeated. “She has more liquid cash than half the people at this table. She built Pulse Interactive from the ground up.”
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