My Milf Conqueror System novel Chapter 50

Chapter 50: Corporate raider

Wednesday, 9:45 PM. The Bunker.

The air in the basement lab was heavy, recycling the smell of ozone, stale coffee, and anxiety. We had been at it for twelve hours straight.

"Nothing," Nia muttered, tossing a stylus onto her desk. She rubbed her eyes, smearing her eyeliner. "Thorne is paranoid. His personal accounts are air-gapped. The company servers are clean. If he’s cooking the books, he’s doing it on paper."

"He’s not clean," I said, leaning against the concrete wall. "He’s broke. We know he’s broke. That’s why he’s trying to secure the bridge loan."

"Desperate men make mistakes," Ethan said, scrolling through a tablet. "But they also cover them up. I’ve checked the accounts. I’ve checked the shell companies. It’s all... legal. Barely. But legal. There’s no smoking gun here, Jake."

"We’re missing something," I said, pacing the small room. "We’re looking at the money. We need to look at what the money buys."

I stopped in front of the main screen, where the blueprints for the Sterling Science Center were displayed in wireframe. It was Thorne’s flagship project. The symbol of his ’new’ Vanguard.

"He’s building a fifty-million-dollar facility," I said. "But he doesn’t have fifty million dollars. So how is he paying for it?"

"He’s not," Darius grunted from the corner. He was sharpening his combat knife, the rhythmic shhhk-shhhk sound filling the silence. "My dad once worked construction. He use to mfntion that when a developer runs out of cash, they don’t stop building. They just stop buying the good stuff."

I looked at Darius, then back at the screen.

"Nia," I said. "Stop looking at the bank accounts. Look at the supply chain."

"The supply chain?"

"The materials," I said. "Concrete. Glass. Steel. If he’s bleeding cash, he has to be cutting costs somewhere. Check the procurement logs against the original architectural specs."

Nia sighed, cracking her knuckles. "That’s a lot of data, Jake. The supply chain is a mess of subcontractors."

"Just check the steel," I ordered. "It’s the most expensive part of the frame. If he swapped it out... that’s millions in savings."

Nia began to type. The screens flickered. Code cascaded like rain as she bypassed the contractor’s firewall.

"Accessing the procurement database..." she muttered. "Okay. I’m comparing the invoices to the blueprints."

She paused. Her typing stopped abruptly.

"Holy sh*t," she whispered.

"What is it?" I asked, stepping closer.

"He swapped it," Nia said, her voice trembling. "The original specs called for Grade-A structural steel from a supplier in Pennsylvania. But three months ago—right when his stock took that dive—Thorne signed a change order."

"To what?" Ethan asked.

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