My Milf Conqueror System novel Chapter 89

Chapter 89: The Dupont Circle Game

Friday, 11:00 PM. Dupont Circle.

The brownstone was located on a quiet, tree-lined street in one of the most expensive, exclusive neighborhoods in Washington D.C. From the outside, it looked like the residence of a wealthy diplomat or a retired supreme court justice. There were no signs, no bouncers, and no visible security cameras.

But Darius, sitting in the driver’s seat of our rented, blacked-out SUV parked half a block away, saw right through the facade.

"Thermal imaging shows four heat signatures on the roof," Darius grunted, looking at a specialized tablet mounted on the dashboard. "Snipers. Or at least, heavily armed overwatch. The front door has a biometric scanner hidden in the brass knocker, and the windows are reinforced ballistic glass. It’s a fortress."

"It’s where they keep the keys," I said, sitting in the back seat, staring at the brownstone.

Ethan had done his job perfectly. After spending three nights buying drinks for Sarah Jenkins and the rest of the junior legislative staff, he had extracted the exact location of Harrison Croft’s weekly poker game.

It wasn’t just a card game. It was a shadow-cabinet meeting.

"Nia," I said, tapping my earpiece. "Talk to me. Who is inside?"

"I’ve been monitoring the cell tower pings and cross-referencing them with the license plates of the cars parked in the private alley behind the brownstone," Nia’s voice crackled over the secure comms. "Harrison Croft arrived twenty minutes ago. The other two players are heavy hitters, Jake. Real heavy."

"Names," I demanded.

"Player two is General Thomas Vance," Nia said, the rapid clicking of her keyboard echoing in my ear. "Four-star general, currently serving on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He oversees the Pentagon’s black-budget acquisitions."

I frowned. "A four-star general is holding a biometric key to a Senate slush fund?"

"It makes sense," Nia explained. "The asset forfeiture fund is massive. Two billion dollars. Hale can’t just keep it in a standard offshore account. She needs military-grade encryption and physical security to hide it from the DOJ. General Vance provides the infrastructure."

"And player three?" I asked.

"Player three is Marcus Thorne," Nia said.

The name hit me like a physical blow. I sat forward, my heart rate spiking. "Thorne? Marcus Thorne? The former CEO of Vanguard? He’s supposed to be in federal prison awaiting trial for the steel fraud!"

"He’s not," Nia said, her voice tight with disbelief. "I just hacked the Bureau of Prisons database. Thorne was quietly transferred to a ’medical facility’ in Virginia three days ago due to an undisclosed heart condition. But his cell phone just pinged off the Dupont Circle tower. He’s in that brownstone, Jake."

I leaned back against the leather seats, my mind racing as the pieces of the puzzle violently snapped together.

Senator Hale wasn’t just a corrupt politician. She was the apex predator of the entire system.

"She bailed him out," I whispered, the realization dawning on me. "Thorne was the architect of the Vanguard Innovation Center. He was the one who built the sub-basement vault where Project Oracle is housed. Hale must have known about the AI. She bailed Thorne out of prison so he could help her steal it."

"And the slush fund?" Darius asked, looking back at me in the rearview mirror.

"The slush fund is the capital," I said, the terrifying scope of Hale’s plan finally becoming clear. "Cassandra Locke told me it would take two billion dollars to build the infrastructure to run the Oracle-Artemis Singularity globally. Hale has the two billion. She has Thorne to build the vault. She’s trying to build her own Oracle."

If Senator Margaret Hale got her hands on a predictive AI, she wouldn’t just be the Kingmaker of D.C. She would be the undisputed ruler of the free world. She would be able to predict elections, manipulate global markets, and blackmail every world leader on the planet.

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