?Chapter 1524:


    Meanwhile, inside Kyle’s secluded vi, the study was brightly lit. Maia sat calmly before herptop, her postureposed, her expression steady as streams of data flowed across the screen.


    “It’s time,” she said quietly to herself. “Tomorrow, the moment the market opens, we begin a full-scale acquisition of Cooper Group’s prime assets.”


    Maia began to weigh her options, quietly tallying the resources at her disposal. Between MCN’s liquid assets, her earlier profits, and the loans secured through mortgages, she could scrape together roughly 1.5 billion dors. An impressive sum by any standard—yet set against the vast wreckage of Cooper Group, it still fell short.


    Just then, a soft buzz broke the silence. Her phone vibrated in her hand. Maia picked it up and found a message from Zoey—short, but carrying unmistakable weight. “Maia, I don’t have much, but everything I have is yours. I’ve asked Siena to take care of it. This time, it all depends on you.”


    A quiet warmth spread through her chest.


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    Before that feeling could settle, her phone vibrated again. A bank notification shed across the screen: her checking ount ending in 0228 had been credited with two billion dors. The remark bore Siena’s name.


    Two billion. Maia’s fingers tightened around the phone.


    She hadn’t even lowered her hand when another alert came through. She nced at the screen—and froze. Her checking ount ending in 0228 had been credited with ten billion dors. Once again, the remark read: Siena.


    Ten billion. Maia stared at the screen, instinctively counting the zeroes as though afraid they might vanish. For a brief moment she sat perfectly still, Zoey’s earlier words echoing in her mind. I don’t have much, but everything I have is yours.


    Maia’s lips twitched.


    Was this what Zoey meant by “not much”? She couldn’t help wondering whether they had a very different understanding of that phrase.


    Far away in Drakmire, inside a private room of a top-tier club that was equal partsvish and suffocating, thick smoke hung in the air. Around a table sat several heavily built men, arms covered in tattoos, ying cards.


    Bang!


    A tall man in a ck suit, a cigar clenched between his teeth, mmed his palm onto the table and sent cards scattering in every direction. “What did you just say? That bastard Axell is dead? No damn way!”


    He shot to his feet, expression dark. “Damn it. That bastard still owed me money. He got off far too easily.” He turned coldly to the underling who had delivered the news. “Go. Check the books. I want to know exactly how much that fool owed me—principal and interest included.”


    Shaking with nerves, the underling hurriedly flipped open the ledger and punched numbers into a calctor. “L-Leo… Axell borrowed three billion dors from us as bridge capital. ording to your terms, he now owes more than six billion.”


    “Damn it!” Leo Reid cursed, drawing hard on his cigar. “Six billion? That much?”


    “Yes, Leo, absolutely,” the underling said, wiping sweat from his brow. “To be precise, six billion two hundred and eighty-five million dors.”


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