From Bullets To Billions novel Chapter 599

Chapter 599: The Devil’s Wager

The high-grade security cameras wired throughout the sprawling Fortis building were strategically set up to be simultaneously viewed from two separate, secure areas.

One was the reinforced training room on the lower levels, where Max and his elite Rangers had set up their tactical command center. The other was the luxurious, executive corner office situated on a much higher floor, which was exactly where Vivian was currently seated.

She had been the one aggressively running the tactical board, tracking movements on the monitors and giving precise, life-saving orders directly to the squad captains on the microphones so far.

However, down in the training room, the Rangers also had encrypted walkie-talkies clipped to their vests. They were silently listening in on the secure channel, closely monitoring every single word Vivian relayed to the troops, just in case the former Black Hound strategist suddenly decided to maliciously change sides in the middle of the siege.

It wasn’t as if they could fully trust her like they could with the rest of their sworn brothers and sisters. Trust was earned in blood, and she had only recently been their enemy.

As Vivian sat in the air-conditioned office, her fingers froze over the keyboard. She stared at the glowing monitor, her breath hitching in her throat as she watched the chilling figure in the leather jacket stare directly back at the camera lens, holding the stolen radio.

"I’m coming for you."

The words echoed through the earpiece. A profound, paralyzing chill ran down Vivian’s spine.

’Skull...’ Vivian thought, her hands beginning to tremble slightly as the masked man vanished from the camera feed, stepping into the blind spots of the building. ’Out of everyone standing in that army outside... he might truly be the absolute worst of them all.’

Staring at the empty monitor, she couldn’t help but start to think back to the golden days of the Black Hounds.

Before this war, the Black Hounds were already incredibly strong and had been rapidly making a terrifying name for themselves as a highly successful, brutal organization in the underworld.

Their primary source of income was running a highly lucrative, completely illegal underground fighting and betting ring. The way their brutal promotion mainly worked, and the reason they drew such crowds of high-rolling gamblers, was having the giant, Jett, act as their undisputed, undefeated champion.

Jett’s terrifying name was getting around the district. The Black Hounds openly welcomed absolutely anyone, from street thugs to trained martial artists, to step into the blood-soaked cage and challenge him to a fight.

Rival gangs that considered themselves to be on the exact same level of power as the Black Hounds thought this open challenge was a perfect, public way to show everyone who was truly the boss of the underground. But every single time, they ended up failing miserably.

Even when rival factions didn’t want to fight through regular, sanctioned means and cowardly tried to jump Jett or assassinate him in the dark corridors of the underground fighting arena, Jett had brutally beaten them all down, leaving piles of broken bones in his wake.

The three leaders at the helm of the Black Hounds, Darius, Vivian, and Jett, were doing incredibly well. They were young, rich, and ruthless. They were absolutely sure they could continue growing their empire, and they were arrogantly confident they could physically take on anyone in the city, including the major Syndicates.

Which was exactly why, when the representatives of the Gilt Rats had come to them with a highly lucrative corporate offer, an offer to heavily fund and franchise the underground fighting arenas so they could be placed everywhere across the city, as long as the Syndicate got a major percentage cut, what did the Black Hounds proudly decide to do?

They spat in their faces and said no.

They had physically beaten every single person that had ever come to challenge them. And the Gilt Rats? Well, to the hardened street fighters of the Black Hounds, they just didn’t seem dangerous at all.

The Syndicate representatives had a particular, almost sterile air around them. Even when visiting the gritty underground cage fights in their pristine white lab coats, it was glaringly obvious that they were a corporate gang that probably wasn’t too strong in the actual, physical fighting department.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify