The Hidden Empress Stripping Her Secrets After Divorce novel Chapter 492

Paris, the Charles estate, the second-floor study.

Sebastian sat at his desk, his phone screen still illuminated with Julian's last message. He stared at it for a few seconds before typing out a brief reply: Understood. He sent the message, set the phone down, and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. He hadn't expected Christian to move so quickly. Opening his eyes, he glanced at the wall clock. Exactly eleven PM.

He sat up straight and opened his laptop. Several video conferencing windows were already queuing on the screen. He clicked them open, and faces appeared one by one—New York, London, the Bay Area, Singapore, Tokyo. The regional directors of his global branches were all present.

"Boss," they greeted him. Some spoke English, some Mandarin, some French. Sebastian nodded, his gaze sweeping across the monitors. Jack, the head of the New York branch, was a blonde, blue-eyed man in his forties, dressed in a sharp navy suit with an impeccably tied tie. When he saw the bruises on Sebastian's face, his mouth twitched slightly, but he kept quiet. Richard, the London director, an older man with silver hair and wire-rimmed glasses, took one look at Sebastian and immediately looked down at his files, pretending he hadn't noticed. The Bay Area director, an old-timer who had been with Sebastian the longest, opened his mouth to ask about the fresh and fading injuries, but swallowed the words back down.

Sebastian didn't give them time to react. "Let's begin."

Jack started the briefing in rapid-fire English, detailing the quarterly performance of the North American market. Sebastian listened, occasionally asking a pointed question. Jack answered flawlessly, knowing the data by heart without needing to check his notes. Richard went next, covering the European market, legal progress, and the approval status of a few mergers. The Bay Area director followed, listing domestic projects—real estate, investments, green energy—going through them one by one.

The Singapore director was a man in his early thirties named Desmond, an old college friend of Sebastian's. He had joined Thorne Enterprises right after graduation, climbing the ranks from the bottom up to become a regional director. Seeing the bruises on Sebastian's face, he frowned.