Chapter 3

"The dead loop won't resolve! The counterparty's capital pool is completely frozen!"

On the third afternoon after leaving the Corvin estate, my encrypted backup phone buzzed with an SOS distress code from my loyal guy on the old finance team.

A second later, the connection was forcibly cut.

A system broadcast popped up on the screen showing Sienna took over root control, with an all-hands alert: "Anyone caught contacting removed personnel will be dealt with by the rules. The new algorithm is live. No outside interference is required."

I took one cold glance, popped the SIM card out, snapped it in half, and dropped it into a trash can inside the private Manhattan club.

Over the past three days, sitting in a private suite behind bulletproof glass, I locked in my onboarding package with two trust fixers sent from Zurich. What they wanted was my laundering and settlement network that ran clean across Europe. What I wanted was Switzerland's highest-tier armed protection and identity cleansing.

Everything went smooth.

Tonight, the Met held a closed-door charity auction.

Entrusted by an old Swiss client to win a seventeenth-century gold-inlaid antique dagger, I wore a sharp black evening gown and entered the hall right on schedule.

Deep inside, heavy red velvet drapes hung over the walls. Armed private guards lined both sides.

I signed the auction settlement sheet in the second-floor side room and carried the shockproof leather box holding the dagger down the stairs. The roar in the center of the hall hit me head-on.

Champagne flutes stacked high into a tower. Underbosses and moneymen crowded the floor.

A huge banner glowed on the screen: *Appreciation Gala for the Corvin Family's New Head of Finance*.

Sienna wore a backless gown, hanging off Dominic's arm, glowing with pride in front of several old bosses.

"Well, isn't this Camilla?" Sienna spotted me right away. Her voice wasn't too loud or too soft, just enough to cut over the jazz music.

She walked over with a champagne flute, showing off the black diamond signet ring on her middle finger.

"Haven't you spent the last three days hunting for a broker to rent a cheap place? How do you have pocket change for this kind of auction?" A cruel smirk touched her lips. She looked around the circle and let out a fake sigh. "Then again, if you didn't bow out so gracefully, Dominic wouldn't have trusted me with the vault. Right, boys?"

Several young crew leaders who made their names with Dominic chuckled low.

Dominic stood two steps back, swirling half a glass of whiskey.

His eyes dropped to the sealed black lockbox in my hand, stamped with the auction house's highest confidentiality mark.

His gaze shifted in a flash.

In the past, to keep him happy, I often hunted down rare treasures at auctions. He took it for granted that this was another peace offering I bought to get his attention and win him back.

Smug satisfaction flashed in his eyes. He stepped forward in front of the entire room, pressing his brow bone. His voice softened with sweet poison.

"Camilla... when the lights shifted just now, the blood clot in my brain cleared up."

He took another step, reaching out to take the box from my hands. His gaze burned with arrogance. "I remember now. I remember everything. You don't need to blow a fortune out of spite to give me an out. Come home with me. I will find a way to give your signet ring and your seat back."

The chatter in the ballroom died instantly.

The smug look on Sienna's face froze solid. She grabbed his sleeve in panic. "Dominic! What nonsense are you talking about?!"

I didn't budge half an inch. I pulled the box back, dodging his fingers.

"Done playing your act, Dominic?" My words were fast, crisp, and clear. "Three days ago, you pinned her down in the master bedroom. You said out of your own mouth that you faked amnesia to strip my keys and hand them to her. What, you couldn't keep the amnesia going tonight, so you switched to an act of finding your conscience?"

Dead, tomb-like silence dropped over the hall.

The old-school elders standing in the back row turned pale, trading dark, uneasy looks.

Dominic's hand froze empty in mid-air.

With his mask torn off in public, the skin on his face twitched, and the sweet warmth in his eyes shattered into dust.

"If you want to drag your own dignity through the mud, I don't need to save your face," Dominic sneered, straightening his back. "You ruled the books for six years, treating the family accounts like your personal backyard! You choked our cuts and kept everyone on a leash! You think this family can't breathe without you? Look at Sienna! Three days in, and our net cash volume doubled! All of New York is scrambling to run shipments through us!"

Sienna shoved her chest out, chin lifted high with pure arrogance. "Camilla, your dusty hedging-wash tactics belong in a museum! I reworked the cash routing. Not only did I cut transit fees, but I squeezed an extra four points on the bridge fee!"

I looked at the foolish pair and pulled a cold smirk. "Reworked the routing? Then do you know midnight tonight is the hard deadline for the St. Petersburg Bratva's sixty-million-dollar uncut diamond wash?"

Sienna laughed in my face. "Stop trying to scare me with Russians! You think I couldn't touch that terminal without your voiceprint? I hired coders to wipe the root voice-auth directly! The warehouse receipts were split and sent out this morning, and the crypto fully cleared the darknet! The dock sign-offs on their end already bounced back! I saved on transit fees and banked eight million clean for the family! The system you guarded so carefully took me half a day to crack wide open!"

Dominic's face swelled with arrogant confidence again.

He slammed down the rest of his whiskey, turned to the guests, and yelled, "Did you hear that? That is real efficiency! Some people sit in their seats thinking they're irreplaceable, when they can't even touch the heels of fresh blood—"

Before the words cleared his mouth, the satellite phone inside his suit screeched with a piercing buzz.

No caller ID on the glass. Just a flashing string of scarlet hexadecimal code.

That red line only lit up for top-tier international syndicates.

Dominic stared at the screen, arrogance dripping from his eyes.

He flashed the phone at me, laughing out loud. "See that? Viktor himself, the godfather of St. Petersburg, calling directly! Camilla, open your eyes wide and see how a real boss rates Sienna!"

To drag my name through the dirt in front of everyone, Dominic hit speaker with an easy flick of his finger.

"Mister Viktor, I trust the diamonds are safely in the vault. A pleasure doing business—"

Praise never came through the speaker.

A heavy Russian voice thundered through the mic, suffocating with raw murder:

"Corvin, put a gun to your own head. That stupid bitch of yours just led a sixty-million-dollar dirty bomb straight into Antwerp customs. If you can't produce sixty million in cash compensation within twenty-four hours, I guarantee you, not a single person bearing the Corvin name will remain alive in New York!"