Chapter 73: Chapter 73; Chairman Su
Now, late morning sunlight stretched faintly across the massive windows of his private office on the upper eastern floor, yet the atmosphere inside remained suffocatingly cold. Several men stood silently near the doorway, waiting for instructions. None dared speak first.
Chairman Su sat behind his desk, slowly reviewing the overnight reports, though his mind remained fixed elsewhere. The map was gone. His fingers tapped once against the polished surface of the desk. Whoever had entered the study last night had known exactly what to take—not the money, not the political files, not the offshore documents—only the map. That left one dangerous possibility: someone else already knew what the mine contained.
A knock sounded at the office door. One of his senior security directors entered carefully.
"Chairman."
Chairman Su did not look up immediately. "What."
The man swallowed before speaking. "We completed the preliminary surveillance review. There are still missing intervals between two-thirteen and two-thirty-one a.m. Whoever entered the eastern wing bypassed three internal camera loops."
Chairman Su finally lifted his eyes, cold and sharp. "Internal assistance?"
"We can’t confirm yet."
The answer narrowed the possibilities considerably. Very few outsiders could navigate the estate’s security system with such precision without help or prior knowledge.
The security director continued, lowering his voice. "We also found traces of movement inside Miss Su Wan’s former bedroom. Drawers were disturbed, hidden compartments checked, and the mattress was lifted. It appears they searched her room first before entering the study."
Silence settled over the office. The sequence was no longer a coincidence.
Chairman Su leaned back slowly, his expression darkening with thought. For years he had believed the watch had disappeared completely after the original incident. Yet now multiple people had died trying to retrieve it, and someone had specifically searched Su Wan’s room.
"Should we bring Miss Su back to the estate for questioning?" the director asked carefully.
"No," Chairman Su answered immediately—too immediately, even he noticed.
A brief silence followed. For the first time in years, something about Su Wan herself felt uncertain in his calculations. Not emotional. Not weak. Unpredictable. And unpredictability within powerful families could quickly become dangerous.
Chairman Su rose from his chair and walked toward the massive windows overlooking the city beyond the estate. The skyline stretched cold and distant under the pale daylight, hiding the intricate web of politicians, corporations, routes, drugs, mines, and family structures that moved invisibly beneath the surface. Everything had remained tightly controlled for years.
Until now.
He turned back toward the desk and picked up his phone. The first call connected almost immediately.
"Chairman Su," a nervous male voice answered.
"I need transaction reviews from last night," Chairman Su said calmly. "Large cash deposits. Private handling only."
The bank manager hesitated. "How large?"
"Unusual enough that your staff would remember."
After a brief pause, the manager replied, "No major cash movement was flagged through our primary branches."
"Check again," Chairman Su ordered, his voice calm yet chilling the office further. "Especially private vault processing and VIP counters."
The call ended. Another began almost immediately, then another. He contacted one bank after another—private managers, underground finance handlers, and shadow investment channels connected quietly beneath the official system.
"Have any clients attempted large-volume cash conversion since midnight?"
"No."
"Not publicly."
"Nothing unusual through registered systems."
Chairman Su lowered the phone slowly after the fourth call. Whoever had stolen the reserves had not rushed to move the money. That meant one of two things: either they were experienced enough to wait, or they already had somewhere safe to hide it. Neither possibility pleased him.
His eyes darkened. If the attackers had understood the value of untraceable cash, bypassed the surveillance system, taken only the map, and avoided immediate banking movement, then this was not amateur theft. This was strategic. Structured. Someone intelligent was moving against them now.
And for the first time in years, Chairman Su could no longer clearly see the board.
Chairman Su remained standing near the windows for several moments after ending the last banking call. The office behind him had fallen into complete silence. No one near the doorway dared interrupt his thoughts; the tension in the room had grown heavy and precise, the kind that surfaced only when a man accustomed to absolute control realized someone had moved against him without permission.
Slowly, he returned to his desk and picked up the phone once more. This time the calls were different—no banks, no financial managers. These were private lines connected to hidden operations.
The first call was answered after only two rings. "How are the western facilities?" Chairman Su asked.
"Production slowed after the last inspections, but operations remain stable," the man on the other end replied.
"Deaths?"
"Seven confirmed this week."
Chairman Su’s expression remained unchanged. "Contain the media. And the formula?"
"The latest batches are stronger, but addiction escalation is becoming harder to regulate."
He lowered his gaze briefly to the reports spread across the desk. Profit had always risen fastest when desperation spread in the right way. The call ended shortly afterward.
Another line connected. "The southern routes?" he asked, his voice lower.
"Still operational," came the careful reply, "but regulators are growing aggressive after the hospital incidents."
Chairman Su’s fingers tapped once against the desk. "The politicians?"
"Handled."
The next call lasted longer. "How far is the excavation?"
Static crackled faintly before the answer came. "Still incomplete. We found traces beneath the third sector, but without the full directional sequence we can’t confirm the chamber location."
Chairman Su’s eyes darkened. The mine again. For years they had poured money, lives, routes, and influence into locating the correct section beneath the mountains, all without success. And now the map was gone.
"What about the secondary tunnels?"
"Collapsed after the last attempt."
"And the workers?"
"Disposed of."
The response was cold and routine, as though the disappearance of lives beneath the mountain no longer carried any weight.
"Continue digging," Chairman Su ordered. "Quietly."
The call disconnected. Another began immediately, this time to one of the hidden proxy shareholders tied to Lu Conglomerate’s secondary investment structures.
"How exposed are our positions?"
"Not publicly," the older man replied, "but if internal audits begin—"
"They won’t," Chairman Su interrupted calmly. "They cannot afford that yet."
Still, his expression darkened slightly. The situation surrounding the Lu family was destabilizing faster than expected. Too many moving pieces. Too many people suddenly searching for things long buried. And now someone had entered his study directly.
The final call connected several minutes later. This line remained silent longer than the others.
"Do we accelerate the contingency?" the voice on the other end finally asked.
Chairman Su stood motionless beside the desk as the question hung heavily in the air. Outside the windows, pale daylight stretched across the city, concealing the intricate web beneath: drug routes still moving, money vanishing through offshore channels, hidden shareholders shifting positions, and powerful families circling one another like predators beneath layers of silk and glass. Everything had remained patient, careful, and tightly controlled for years.
But now the structure was beginning to crack.
His gaze lowered to the empty space where the map had once rested.
"Yes," he said quietly. "Accelerate everything."
Chairman Su remained standing near the windows for several moments after the final call ended. The words "Accelerate everything" lingered heavily in the air long after the line had gone silent. Near the doorway, the waiting men exchanged subtle glances before quickly lowering their eyes. None of them fully understood what "everything" entailed, but they understood enough to feel uneasy.
He placed the phone back on the desk and returned to the windows. The city skyline stretched endlessly beneath the pale daylight, clean and polished on the surface, while invisible structures moved quietly underneath—money, routes, influence, leverage, bodies, and secrets buried so deeply that most people would never survive discovering them. For years he had maintained the delicate balance with care: the Lu family powerful in public, the Su family powerful in private, and the hidden structures that connected them acknowledged by neither side. That was how stability had endured.
But now someone had stepped directly onto the board.
A knock sounded at the office door. Another assistant entered carrying a black folder and placed it carefully on the desk before stepping back. Chairman Su opened it slowly. Inside were updated reports on the Lu family: board instability projections, internal inheritance evaluations, shareholder vulnerabilities, media sensitivity indexes, and succession timelines centered on Lu Shaohan.
His eyes moved calmly across the documents until they stopped on a line marked in red: Public perception surrounding Madam Lu was increasing rapidly after yesterday’s confrontation. A second report followed beneath it: Internal support among secondary Lu staff was shifting toward Madam Lu.
His expression darkened faintly. That was fast—too fast. Household influence inside families like the Lus usually took years to build, yet Su Wan’s position had strengthened dramatically in less than two days. Not through emotion, but through structure and careful positioning.
