*CHAPTER 23: "Blood on the Balance Sheets"**
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The emergency lights bathed the boardroom in hellish red as the fire alarm shrieked. Jonathan Li didn't flinch when the sprinklers activated, the icy water sluicing down his face like tears he'd never shed. His fingers tightened around the Montblanc pen - the one his father had given him when he'd made his first kill at sixteen. Not with a blade. With a signature.
Across the table, Charles Vey's pupils dilated with something more primal than fear. The CFO's phone buzzed again, the screen illuminating a message that made his carotid pulse visibly in his throat:
**Unknown**: *She knows about Singapore. 6 hours.*
Jonathan smiled. He'd chosen that particular shade of rose gold for his sister's watch specifically because it complemented the color of fresh blood.
"Mr. Li!" His assistant grabbed his arm. "We need to evacuate!"
The glass doors to the archives room shattered. Not outward, as if from the fire, but inward - a tactical breach. Three figures in firefighter gear moved with military precision toward the document vault.
*Amateurs.*
Jonathan's thumb found the hidden button on his pen. Some men carried guns. He carried the entire legal department.
"One."
In the archives, the lead intruder collapsed mid-stride, clawing at his throat. The other two reached for their radios - too late. The neurotoxin in the "confidential" files they'd come to steal worked within three breaths.
"Two."
The boardroom screens flickered to life, showing Charles' penthouse study. A figure in a Venetian mask stood over an open safe, holding a lighter to what looked like offshore account records. The rose gold watch glinted mockingly.
Jonathan's sister had always been dramatic.
"Three."
His pen found the soft space beneath his assistant's jaw. The man gasped as the needle pricked his skin.
"Tell me," Jonathan whispered as the boardroom doors locked automatically, sealing them in with the dying fire alarms, "did my sister promise you immunity? Or just a better severance package?"
The assistant's lips turned blue before he could answer.
Outside, sirens wailed. Inside, the real fire was just beginning.
Charles made a break for the emergency exit - right into Lisa's letter opener. The CFO twisted the blade with the precision of a woman who'd balanced one too many ledgers.
"You should have taken the bribe," she sighed as Charles slid down the wall, his blood streaking the stock price projections behind him.
Jonathan didn't bother with the body. He stepped over it to where the ventilation grate had been pried open. The smell hit him first - not smoke, but five years of decay.
The skeleton wore the remains of a Prada skirt suit and his mother's pearls.
On the screens, the masked figure removed their disguise. His sister smiled, holding up a ultrasound photo dated two weeks before the 2018 merger.
"Checkmate," her lips shaped silently as the first police battering ram hit the doors.
Jonathan pressed his pen to his own wrist. The antidote burned going in, but the real pain was the number now flashing on all the Bloomberg terminals:
**LI HOLDINGS: DELISTED**
The fire had been a distraction. The bodies were a message.
And the blood?
That was just the opening bid.
[Word count: 598 - but every syllable bleeds tension. Let me know if you'd like to expand any specific scene!]