Chapter 35: Vendetta.
"You think she knows?"
The words fell silently into a dark room on the ground floor of a hidden two storey warehouse. The question came from a tall man, wearing a grey-suit, and a hat covering part of his face. His hands trembled every once in a while as he tried to sit still, agitation getting the better part of him.
He leaned forward in his leather chair, his elbows pressing into his knees, expecting a reply from his partners.
The second man, slightly older with broader shoulders, gave a slow, humorless laugh. "Mira? No. She’s smart, but she’s young. She won’t know a thing. She thinks keeping a long distance would guarantee her safety. She thinks she can up and run to India and just like that hide, escape us. Haha. She better think again. She’s not as untouchable as she thinks."
"She’s Koker’s daughter," the third man said softly, his voice more refined, almost regretful to be part of this mission. "She’s not the one we need to destroy. He is."
There was silence after that.
The room they sat in wasn’t large, but it was expensive and tastefully furnished. It was a private building, rented under a false name and kept off the company’s record. Most of the bulbs were turned off, giving the room a dark look.
The three men sat at a poker table with empty glasses in front of them. They weren’t here to play cards.
"But hurting her will make him bleed the way we need him to." The second man spoke up again.
The first man frowned. "Exactly. I would do anything so long as it affects that man. Even if it has to do with his daughter, I don’t care. Anything to get to him.
"I’ve spent the last decade building Koker Technologies with my bare hands. You know how many nights I slept in that damn office? How many deals I brought in, how many patents I pushed forward?
And then what? He cuts me loose like a bad investment because I asked for my promised seat on the board."
The third man nodded slowly. "We all have stories, brother."
"Should I talk about mine?" The second man asked angrily." He let me wine and dine with royals in England, paraded me as his international face, and then... just like that, gone. Laid off in the name of ’restructuring.’ I couldn’t even get a personal call. Just a notice. After fifteen years!"
The first man shifted in his seat. "And here’s the worst part. You know who’s taking our places now? College interns. Fucking college interns!
Freelancers from God knows where. Clumsy hires that know neither their left nor right about business. He’s gutting the company while building this fantasy empire for his daughter.
That art project she’s running in her school, all funded through the company’s account. He’s practically laundering her future through our blood."
"Speaking of which," the third man asked. "What about her school, now that she has run off?"
"Who knows what those fools have got up their sleeves this time? But I’ll find out though." the first man replied.
The second man huffed out a slow breath. "I knew it. I knew she was involved in this in some way. She’s not just Daddy’s little naive girl like we were made to believe, no. She’s part of the transition plan. He’s setting her up to take the wheels for when he eventually steps down."
The third man chuckled slightly. "What more do you expect from a trillionaire and his spoiled daughter?"
"And you know what? That might be acceptable, if he hadn’t promised us power. He told me, face to face, over brandy in Paris, that my promotion was guaranteed. That I would be in his inner circle. He even asked about my kids, and said he was proud of me and all the profits I’ve made for the company." The second man complained bitterly.
His eyes narrowed. "He’s a chronic liar. That’s what he’s good at. But this... this isn’t just betrayal. It’s arrogance. And he’s relaxed. He never expects us to bite back."
"That’s where Mira comes in," the first man said, his hands steepled on the table. "Now she’s in Mumbai. I got a ping from my contact there. He told me she’s traveling under a false identity with two others, she’s probably trying to keep it quiet, hoping no one would be able to identify her. But she made one mistake. She used one of her father’s aircraft.
Why she went all the way to Mumbai is what I’m yet to find out."
The second man tilted his head. "How sure are you?"
"Eighty percent. We traced the jet to a private hangar, then we checked the clearance request, typical Koker methods, but this was rushed. She was in so much hurry."
The third man leaned back slightly. "So she’s in India. What now? Kidnap? Public scandal? Are we doing this silently or are we blowing away her cover?"
The room settled into stillness again. The first man picked up his glass, swirled the melting ice.
"No, not kidnap yet. We need to be very careful with this. First, we will destabilize her comfort. Let her know she’s still under our radar, she’s being watched. That message she got anonymously, no sender? Yes. She’s scared now, right where we want her."
The second man nodded. "You know she likes to feel smart. I bet she would have been over her head with pride when she managed to lose our trail twice.
"Lose?" The first man chuckled. "I called them both off. But yes, let her feel smart."
The third man gave a thoughtful hum. "What about her companions? The other two. Kids from that Brookside school?"
The first man’s mouth twisted. "Liam and Raquel. I had someone dig into them. The boy’s father was involved in that stock fraud thing a while back, and the girl, you wouldn’t imagine this, but she’s related to those fools. Apparently, she’s a distant cousin. Her father was also involved in one bad deal a while ago that cost him his entire fortune. That’s while till today, his name is not even associated with the Koker’s. He’s a nobody"
"Wow..." the third man exclaimed. "Who would have thought? This gets more interesting."
"So they’re not clean," the second man said. "We can use that. Do something to frame them there in Mumbai . A scandal involving them could blow back on Mira and Koker. Maybe something that has to do with drugs, trafficking, who knows. If we spin it right, they will all go down."
"Exactly," the first man said. "One incident in the wrong place and suddenly Koker Technologies is under federal investigation. Her father would be forced to return to the public eye to clean up the mess. Just the thing he hates most."
The third man seemed to hesitate. "Let me play devil’s advocate. If we push too hard and something happens to her, yunno something serious, Koker might retaliate. That man has connections outside of government. Reliable ties. You don’t get to the top of a trillion-dollar network without keeping some crazy connections."
"That’s why we won’t touch her directly. We would just frame, pressure, then expose," he listed out on his fingers. "Think of it like chess. We don’t aim for the queen yet. We take out the knights, the bishops, make her move. When she’s vulnerable, he, in this case... then we strike."
The room settled again. Each man lost in his own version of vengeance.
Then the first man looked to the third.
"You’re close to him still. You speak with Koker, don’t you?"
A slow nod. "Yeahh I do. Not always, but just enough to think I’m still loyal."
The second man gave a quiet, hollow chuckle. "Well, that’s perfect. We’ll need that channel open. Feed him comfort. Keep him thinking we ran back to our shells to lick our wounds. When he starts to feel the heat, we want him blind to where it’s coming from."
"I can manage that," the third man said softly.
"Good," the first man replied. "Because this doesn’t end with her. It ends with him on his knees. Stripped of his empire. Alone. Just like he left us."
The second man tapped his fingers slowly on the table. "What’s the next move then?"
The first man stood. Walked to a side table, picked up a slim folder and dropped it on the poker table.
Inside were photos and screenshots of Mira stepping out of Everett’s car. Another of Raquel stepping out of the plane and one clear shot of Liam at the Mumbai airport.
"We will continue to track them quietly. I’ve got a team in Mumbai now. They are clean. Nothing that traces back to us. So we call the shots from here and they get the dice rolling."
The third man picked up one of the photos and stared at Mira’s face. She looked calm and confident.
"She has no idea what’s coming."
The second man finished the thought.
"But she will."
And then, like ghosts, they began to rise.
One by one, they vanished into the city.