CHAPTER 215: THE HUNT

"Bingo!" The thought exploded through my mind like a fucking lightning bolt.

"ARIA, it’s time."

"Yes Master!" ARIA’s voice practically vibrated with digital bloodlust, her voice humming with the kind of excitement that made her shimmer with anticipation. "Now that we have the link, it’s time to start uprooting these vultures!"

For fucking days we’d been waiting for this moment. Both me and my impossibly sarcastic AI companion had been practically vibrating with anticipation, and now we finally had our shot.

You see, I’d been craving to finish this mission that promised me a super mystery box—the kind of reward that made my mouth water just thinking about it. And ARIA? She was just as hungry for that digital prize as I was, maybe more. But all we’d managed so far was saving Charlotte Thompson from what would’ve been inevitable suicide, and even then, the system barely fucking recognized it as an achievement.

Hell, even I barely recognized that save because the Charlotte I’d met and the broken heiress I’d expected to find contemplating ending it all were completely different people. Since I’d shown up in her life like some kind of supernatural savior, she’d developed this invincible glow—like someone had handed her hope wrapped in titanium armor.

For a hot minute, she’d even thought all her problems had magically disappeared.

But I’d had to burst that beautiful bubble and remind her that she still had three corporate vultures disguised as "family friends" circling her company, ready to devour everything her father had bled to build.

The problem was, we couldn’t find a goddamn link. A fresh, traceable connection between their pawns and the systematic destruction happening inside Quantum Tech.

We were dealing with motherfuckers who’d spent half their lives perfecting the art of corporate murder. You didn’t expect professionals like that to leave amateur-hour digital breadcrumbs lying around, did you?

Apart from knowing who the three main vultures were—Vincent Castellano, Dmitri Volkov, and Antonio Rivera—catching them red-handed was proving to be nearly impossible.

The only visible leaks were between their pawns inside Quantum Tech and their handlers outside the company. Pawns like Jessica, Charlotte’s backstabbing secretary who’d been playing best friend while selling her out. And David, the Chief of Technology who roasted Charlotte the hardest during board meetings while she fumbled through presentations like a deer in headlights.

But here’s where it got really fucking complicated: these handlers had their own handlers, who reported to even more handlers, creating this invisible chain of command that eventually reached the big bosses. Those guys were so deep in the shadows that I couldn’t trace them without fresh digital connections.

Meticulous motherfuckers, every single one of them.

So I’d designed custom trace software specifically for Quantum Tech—my digital bloodhound. The moment even a fraction of a share got bought through suspicious channels, it would ping both Charlotte and me with alerts. But she’d been obsessing over it way more than I had, checking those notifications like her life depended on it.

Which, honestly, it fucking did.

She’d actually alerted me about today’s suspicious activity before ARIA had even finished processing the data stream.

"You lazy AI," I said out loud, pushing back from the kitchen table with enough force to make Madison look up with interest.

"Peter, what’s going on?" Mom called from where she was stress-organizing the refrigerator, her voice carrying that maternal radar that detected trouble from three rooms away.

"Charlotte’s got a problem that needs immediate fixing," I called back, already heading for the basement stairs. "Business emergency."

"Be careful, mijo," she replied, and I could hear the worry threading through her voice like she knew I was about to step into something dangerous.

I took the basement stairs two at a time, adrenaline already flooding my system. This was it—the moment we’d been building toward for weeks. The hunt I’d been craving, the challenge that would either cement my digital empire or get me killed by professionals who made murder look like quarterly reports.

My tech war room was a monument to controlled paranoia and unlimited resources.

What had started as a simple basement had been transformed into something that would make Tony Stark weep with envy—forty-seven high-resolution monitors creating a curved wall of pure information dominance, custom server racks humming with enough processing power to crack government encryption, and cable management so perfect it looked like digital art.

This was the breathing technological heart of my empire—the place where I’d orchestrated Tommy’s software development, and every digital aspect of my supernatural activities. All of it courtesy of Charlotte Thompson’s gratitude and her apparently unlimited budget for keeping her digital savior properly equipped.

The moment I settled into my command chair—a custom piece that interfaced directly with every system in the room—the massive center screen exploded with ARIA’s holographic face. She was practically glowing with excitement, her features sharp with the kind of anticipation that meant someone was about to get digitally eviscerated.

"I wasn’t lazy, Master," she said with a laugh that rippled through the room’s acoustics like silk over steel. "While Charlotte was panicking and spam-calling you with updates, I was already following the breadcrumbs these amateurs left scattered across their digital playground."

"Show me what you found," I commanded, cracking my knuckles like a pianist preparing for a concert of destruction.

"The share purchase that traced through our Chief of Technology David was the golden fucking thread we needed," ARIA explained, her voice taking on that predatory purr she used when delivering devastating intelligence. "The puppet master behind it is Marcus Webb—the same handler who’s been jerking Jessica’s strings and managing several other compromised assets."

The second screen erupted with financial data showing the acquisition of exactly 1% of Quantum Tech shares—the final piece that brought total vulture ownership to a dangerous 20%. Charlotte still controlled 75% of her father’s empire, with her mother Margaret holding the remaining 5%. For now.

"They’ve been systematically hunting down every major shareholder like a pack of wolves," ARIA continued, data streams painting a picture of calculated destruction. "When money couldn’t convince someone to sell, they switched to threats that would make the fucking mafia proud."

The methodology was breathtaking in its ruthlessness. Each acquisition had been choreographed to appear organic—minority shareholders suddenly discovering "urgent liquidity needs," institutional investors mysteriously "rebalancing portfolios," pension funds abruptly "adjusting risk profiles."

But the pattern was clear once you knew what to look for: coordinated financial warfare designed to strip Charlotte of allies while maintaining her majority position just long enough to destroy her completely.

"And Marcus Webb is the operational commander of this clusterfuck?"

"One of the key players," ARIA corrected, her holographic form leaning forward with excitement. "Marcus Webb runs Nexus Corporation for the three vultures. On paper, it looks like a legitimate tech consultancy specializing in ’operational efficiency.’ In reality, it’s a fucking machine designed specifically for corporate genocide."