My Milf Conqueror System novel Chapter 133

Chapter 133: The Market Maker

[Ethan’s POV]

The sirens sounded like a choir of screaming metal.

Every police car, fire engine, and ambulance in Vienna was converging on the Hofburg Palace. The flashing red and blue lights painted the snow-covered statues of the imperial gardens in frantic, strobing colors.

I leaned heavily against the cold stone of a garden wall, gasping for air. Every breath felt like inhaling hot ash. The chemical dust had seared the lining of my throat, and my left arm hung uselessly at my side, hot blood soaking through the torn sleeve of Julian Croft’s ruined tuxedo.

"Keep moving, Ethan," Claire urged, her voice tight with panic. She had her arm wrapped around my waist, taking most of my weight. The emerald silk gown was torn at the hem and stained with soot, but she didn’t care. "We can’t stay in the perimeter. The police are locking down the district."

"Varga," I coughed, spitting a wad of bloody saliva into the snow. "He’s still alive."

"He has a shattered arm and chemical burns," Claire said, pulling me forward into the shadows of a line of manicured hedges. "He’s not chasing us tonight. Come on."

We slipped through the outer gates of the palace gardens just as a convoy of armored police vans roared past. We melted into the panicked crowds of tourists and locals who had spilled out of the nearby cafes to watch the smoke billowing from the palace roof.

We walked for two miles, sticking to the darkest, narrowest alleys Claire could find on her offline map, until we finally reached our dingy hostel in Leopoldstadt.

I collapsed onto the small, lumpy bed the moment the deadbolt clicked shut.

"Don’t pass out on me," Claire ordered, dropping her briefcase and rushing to the tiny bathroom. She came back with a wet towel and the trauma kit. "Sit up. I have to clean the wound before I restitch it, or it’s going to get infected."

I gritted my teeth and forced myself into a sitting position. Claire peeled the ruined tuxedo shirt off my shoulders. She didn’t flinch at the sight of the deep, jagged laceration Varga’s knife had left, or the torn stitches from the blunt-force trauma. She just went to work.

Her hands were gentle but firm, washing away the blood and the lingering traces of the chemical dust.

"You saved my life back there," I rasped, looking at her face as she concentrated on the needle.

"You threw your gun away to stop Varga from shooting me," Claire countered softly, her eyes focused on my shoulder. "We’re even."

She tied off the final stitch, taped a heavy gauze pad over the wound, and sat back in the wooden chair, wiping her forehead with the back of her hand. She looked exhausted, her blonde hair falling out of its elegant twist, her face smudged with soot.

I reached over with my good arm and grabbed the TV remote from the nightstand, flicking on the small, boxy television mounted in the corner.

Every local news channel was broadcasting live footage of the Hofburg Palace.

The anchors were speaking in rapid, panicked German. The chyron at the bottom of the screen read: TRAGIC GAS LEAK AT EXCLUSIVE GALA. DOZENS FEARED DEAD.

"A gas leak," I muttered, shaking my head. "Isabella’s PR machine is already spinning it. They’re covering up the attack."

"They have to," Claire said, pulling her knees up to her chest. "If the financial world finds out that the top investors of Isabella’s syndicate were intentionally targeted and burned alive, the markets will panic. Her shell companies will plummet and that will be bad for image and if her image is compromised then that means she will lose partners."

Claire stopped talking. Her eyes widened, reflecting the flickering light of the television screen.

"Claire?" I asked. "What is it?"

She didn’t answer. She scrambled out of the chair, grabbed her briefcase, and pulled out Jake’s notebooks. She flipped frantically through the pages, bypassing the chemical equations and the HVAC schematics, until she found a page filled entirely with complex financial algorithms.

"Ethan," she breathed, her fingers tracing the numbers. "I told you Jake was bankrupting her. I told you he was burning her liquidity."

"He did," I said. "He burned the bearer bonds in the vault."

"That was just the physical collateral," Claire said, looking up at me, her eyes wide with a mixture of absolute terror and profound awe. "Ethan, Jake has the Oracle in his head. He won’t just destroy wealth. He will be forced to move it."

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