Chapter 2

"Boss, do you need the cleaners to go and deal with them ?" Luke asked in a low voice from the driver's seat.

Luke was once an underling of a Mafia godfather .

Three months ago, I met a family's second-in-command in prison who had taken the blame for his godfather. At the time , their family's 3 billion yuan overseas assets were at risk of being seized and frozen at any moment.

Using a beat-up cell phone he smuggled in, and relying on my Wall Street-level intellect, I helped that second-in-command launder three billion dollars clean.

In return, he helped me; he set the prison fire, helped me escape, and gave me Luke and a huge sum of money that could be left untouched.

It was through the efforts of this dark force that I found my daughter. Although they cut off her medical care, the director of the shelter where she was staying couldn't bear to see her die, so he lent her money for treatment, keeping her alive until I arrived. After I found her, I immediately expressed my gratitude to her, gave her some money, and told her not to tell anyone that I had been there. Afterward, I took my daughter away and provided her with the best medical resources.

I sat quietly in the car, watching her taillights disappear.

I don't blame myself for being weak back then, because that was my bottom line as a father and a husband , but I hate my own stupidity.

...

With a dull thud, the door to the St. Mary's Children's Home was violently kicked open by the bodyguard.

This is where my daughter lived while I was in prison.

Victoria stepped across the threshold , covering her mouth and nose in disgust.

Julian followed closely behind her, and two rows of bodyguards instantly blocked the exit of the shelter.

"Where's Arthur? Tell him to come out here!"

Victoria's shrill voice shattered the tranquility of the shelter.

Several disabled orphans, hiding in the corner of the stairs, huddled together in fear.

The elderly dean, his hair gray and his eyes red, rushed out from the inner room.

When she saw who it was, an uncontrollable rage erupted in her cloudy eyes.

"Get out! You bunch of devils!"

The old headmaster trembled, pointing at Victoria's nose, "How dare you come here looking for Arthur?!"

“Old woman, stop with your cheap moralizing,” Victoria interrupted her impatiently. “Arthur must be hiding here watching his bastard daughter. Go and call him out, I don’t have time to waste here .”

"Arthur?! To see his daughter?!"

The old dean gave a shrill laugh, and tears welled up instantly.

"You're too late! You bunch of demons!"

The scattered papers brushed against Victoria's expensive coat and fell onto the snow-covered floor.

“Three months ago, Lily was involved in a hit-and-run accident on her way home from school! She was brought to the emergency room covered in blood!” the old director roared hoarsely. “If you hadn’t frozen her medical trust at this critical juncture, she could have been on the operating table!”

"You've driven her to her death in the corridor outside the ICU!"

The hall was deathly silent.

Hearing about the tragic death of a six-year-old girl, anyone, even if pretending, would show a hint of panic or guilt.

But Victoria didn't.

She was stunned for a moment, then slowly a cold smile appeared on her face.

"Dead?" Her tone was light and airy: " Dead is cleaner . The illegitimate child born from the affair should have died long ago . Death is the end of it all, and it also saves us from tarnishing the reputation of our upcoming IPO."

Julian, standing to the side, sighed, feigning pity, but his eyes betrayed his calculation: "Vicki, forget it. After all, Arthur's weakness is gone. What if he refuses to take the blame for me ?"

"He wouldn't dare?! He's just trying to threaten me with that bastard's death! He wants me to feel guilty! "

Victoria erupted in anger, as if a slave had offended her authority.

She turned coldly and gave orders to the bodyguards behind her :

" Keep investigating! Let 's see how long he can keep up this self-inflicted injury act!"

After saying that, she didn't look at the old dean again and turned away.

...

I reached out my finger and tapped lightly on the touchscreen to turn off the surveillance from the shelter .

I'm sitting in my private medical suite in the clouds of Manhattan.

The temperature control system operates silently, completely isolating the window from the bitter cold.

I was holding a glass of whiskey with ice in my hand, my knuckles white from gripping the glass so tightly that the glass made a cracking sound .

Just three meters away from me, on a sterile hospital bed, Lily, the girl whom Victoria kept cursing as a "bastard," was sleeping soundly under the care of top-notch medical intervention, covered with an expensive velvet blanket.

She was a premature baby and suffered from congenital heart disease due to oxygen deprivation at birth . If Victoria hadn't listened to Julian , she would have noticed that Lily's features were exactly like hers.

“Boss.” Luke stood beside me, staring at the frozen image of Victoria on the screen. Even this battle-hardened man couldn’t hide his anger . “Too arrogant , absolutely too arrogant… Should I send someone to take her car…”

"Need not."

I finished the whiskey in my glass , closed my eyes , and thought, "Letting her live is too good for her ;,death is too easy for her ."

I stood up, walked to the floor-to-ceiling window, and looked down at my feet.

On the big screen at the New York Stock Exchange, a grand announcement of Victoria's Opus Technologies' upcoming IPO is being played on a scrolling screen.

Three years ago, in that damp and oppressive basement in Brooklyn, I stayed up countless nights and wore out four keyboards before finally typing out that core financial algorithm.

That was the sword I was prepared to use to prove myself to the capital market.

But when Victoria, in order to protect her lover Julian, used my daughter Lily's life to force me to take the blame and go to jail , she didn't hesitate to bring people to break into my safe , steal all my source code, and use it as the underlying architecture to frantically attract venture capital, creating the multi-billion dollar AOP Technology today.

She stepped on me and brazenly welcomed the grand opening night at the New York Stock Exchange.

"Her bell-ringing banquet is in a few days. When that time comes, anonymously send her the prepared top-secret files and the recording of Julian personally confessing to the hit-and-run in the visiting room."