An unassuming firm in Geneva, secretly funded by decades of Maggia profits, began buying up the shares being dumped by European banks.
A 'high risk, high reward' investment group in Singapore, backed by the Triad's old money, started absorbing the stock from the Asian markets.
In New York, a dozen aggressive trading houses, all secretly owned by Fisk, entered the fray, creating the illusion of opportunistic vultures picking at a corporate carcass.
But it was all a perfectly coordinated dance. While the world saw chaos, Amon saw a meticulous acquisition.
Fisk was buying a global infrastructure of oil fields, refineries, a fleet of supertankers and a portfolio of patents for pennies on the dollar.
He was acquiring the physical assets of a global superpower for less than the cost of a new skyscraper.
…
Meanwhile, in a series of secluded mansions and luxury apartments around the world, the true architects of Project Basilisk were experiencing their own personal apocalypses.
These were the men who had sat above the CEO, the shadowy council of senior partners and old money investors who had greenlit and funded the project.
They had believed themselves untouchable, insulated by layers of corporate denial and legal firewalls.
Sir Reginald Harrington, a retired British industrialist and the primary financial backer of Basilisk, watched the news from his estate in the English countryside.
The fire at the New Jersey lab had been a setback, but he had believed the research data was securely backed up. He had just gotten off an encrypted call with his contacts at Roxxon.
The backups were corrupted beyond recovery. His multi billion Origin investment in owning the world's food supply had literally gone up in smoke.
As he was pouring a stiff drink, his personal banker called. The private accounts in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands where he held the bulk of his personal fortune had been frozen by the banks themselves.
An anonymous source had provided them with irrefutable proof that the funds were directly linked to financing illegal bio weapons research, a violation of international banking treaties that would see the banks themselves dismantled if they didn't cooperate.
Sir Reginald stared at his phone, his hand trembling. His fortune was gone. His project was ash. He was ruined and he didn't even know who had done it.
In a high rise in Dubai, another partner, a Saudi prince, found his own world collapsing.
The blackmail material Wesley had used on the board members was nothing compared to the file that was anonymously delivered to the royal court.
It detailed not only his involvement with Basilisk but also his plans to use it to destabilize the agricultural output of his kingdom's political rivals. It was an act of treason.
His family, to save themselves from an international scandal, quietly disavowed him. His assets were seized, his titles stripped. By nightfall, he was a prisoner in his own palace.
One by one, the secret cabal behind Basilisk was dismantled. They were simply... erased. Their wealth, their power, their influence… all of it vanished, leaving them as hollowed out shells of their former selves.
Their ruin was as silent and total as the destruction of the lab itself.
…
Back in the world of legitimate business, the team of elite mercenaries Roxxon had hired to attack Umbrella was getting restless.
They were holed up in a rented warehouse in Delaware, a team of twenty hardened killers armed with enough explosives to level a city block.
For days, they had been waiting for the final "go" order from their handler.
Their leader, a former Special Forces colonel named Stryker, tried to make the call.
The encrypted number was disconnected. He tried the emergency backup. Also disconnected. He went to the bank to draw on their operational funds.
The account had been emptied and closed.
They had been cut off. They were a ghost team, hired for a mission that no longer existed, by a company that was now a global pariah.
Their only option was to scatter to the winds, their formidable skills useless, their payday a distant memory. The physical threat to Umbrella had evaporated without a single shot being fired.
…
The final transaction cleared at 4:00 PM, just as the global markets closed. On the main screen in Wilson Fisk's penthouse, a single number glowed in the dim light: 78.4%.
That was the final tally. Through a dizzying labyrinth of over two hundred shell corporations, offshore investment firms and anonymous trusts, he now controlled a commanding majority of what was once Roxxon Oil.
There was no room for a counter move, no possibility of a proxy war for board seats.
He had just consumed the company. The company, or what was left of its shattered husk, was his. Which meant it was Amon's.
Fisk stared at the number, a feeling he couldn't quite identify settling deep in his chest.
It wasn't the triumphant pride he had felt when he had finally crushed the last of his old street level rivals. It wasn't the quiet satisfaction of a perfectly executed political maneuver. This was a foreign sensation, a chilling sense of awe.
For the first time in his life, he was a part of something truly larger than his own monumental ambition. He was a puppet, yes, a fact that still left a bitter taste in his mouth.
But in the last few months, he had been a puppet allowed to pull the strings on a masterpiece of corporate destruction and the experience had been transformative.
He had watched, with a professional's appreciation, as the plan Amon had laid out unfolded with the beautiful inevitability of a collapsing star.
He had seen power exercised on a scale he had never dreamed of. His own methods, the methods that had made him the Kingpin of New York, had been about brute force, intimidation and the careful application of fear.
Amon's methods were different. It was a power that was clean, silent, efficient and absolute. It broke markets. It erased them from the ledger of relevance.
It was a power that understood that true control wasn't about holding a gun to someone's head; it was about owning the company that manufactured the gun, the bank that held the money and the political system that made it all legal.
An unfamiliar satisfaction settled over him. He had been a master and he had been humbled. But in that humbling, he had been given a new education.
He was learning. He was adapting. He was seeing the world not just as a city to be controlled, but as a global system of systems to be manipulated. In this new world, this new game with its impossibly high stakes, he would not just be a player.
He would be the best, most ruthless and most effective student his invisible masters had ever seen.
The King of New York, the titan of crime who had ruled through fear and shadow, was dead.
Fisk turned from the screen and looked out at his city. The sun was beginning to set, painting the sky in hues of orange and bruised purple. It was still his city. He still controlled its dark heart. But his role had changed.
He was no longer just its king. He was its manager, the warden of its shadows and the public facing CEO of a newly acquired global empire built on the ruins of his predecessor.
He was the King of Ash. And as the first stars began to appear in the twilight sky, he knew, with a certainty that thrilled him as much as it terrified him, that he was just getting started.
…
Amon watched it all unfold from his bunker, a silent puppet master pulling strings that reached from the darkest corners of the underworld to the highest floors of corporate power.
Red Queen appeared beside him, looking immensely satisfied. "See? Who needs drone strikes when you have good, old fashioned character assassination and financial ruin?"
She looked at Amon's stoic face. "You should really smile, you know. You just saved the world's oxygen and made a ton of money doing it. The original would be very proud."
Amon simply adjusted his monocle, "The task is not yet complete. Roxxon is wounded, not dead."
Red Queen's holographic avatar tilted her head, a playful curiosity in her synthesized voice. "What more is there to do? You've bankrupted them, humiliated them and you own more than 75% their stock. You hold the leash. What's left?"
"A company is not just its stock price," Amon replied, turning his attention from the financial data to a complex organizational chart of Roxxon's global operations. "It is a network of people, infrastructure and influence. Fisk's hostile takeover gives us legal ownership, but ownership is not control. We must now gut the existing leadership and rebuild the company's nervous system in our own image."
PS: We just need 3 more Power Stones for our first bonus chapter in this novel. Come on guys, we're so close, haha.
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