He stormed out through the main entrance without looking back.The remaining tycoons began gathering their things and rising from their seats, eager to escape before anything else could happen."The show has just begun," Ethan said. His calm voice carried easily across the hall. "I would ask all of you to stay."The heavyset man turned with an angry scowl."You want to use the Harlow family's name to steal our conference order shares," the heavyset man accused. "We are not fools.""Anyone who walks out that door right now will regret it for the rest of their life," Ethan said. His tone carried no threat, only a quiet, absolute certainty that made something in the back of every businessman's mind hesitate.They shouted back at him defiantly. They cursed and protested and accused him of arrogance. But something in his manner gave them pause. Decades of business instinct told them that a man who speaks this calmly in a room full of hostile people either has nothing or has everything.One

Several female pharmaceutical leaders shifted uncomfortably in their seats. One of them stood and turned toward Ethan with a disapproving frown."Three of them are women," the woman said. "Are you just going to stand there while they are beaten like animals?"Ethan looked at her without expression."You are welcome to take the punishment in their place," Ethan offered. His voice was perfectly polite.The woman sat back down without another word. Nobody else spoke up after that.Mrs. Hayes felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. She checked the screen and her exhausted face brightened instantly. She leaned toward Victoria and whispered urgently."We have a lead on the clinic break in," Mrs. Hayes reported. Her voice carried quiet, fierce satisfaction.She pulled up a video file on her phone. The footage came from an infrared camera mounted on an unmanned shop directly across the alley from the Cole Clinic. The camera belonged to a vacant storefront managed by Harlow Properties, running t

A bodyguard stepped forward and stuffed a thick rag into Tyler's screaming mouth, muffling his words into nothing but wet, muted grunts. The leather strap came down across his back in heavy, rhythmic blows. Each strike opened fresh wounds on top of the old ones until his shirt was nothing but bloody ribbons.Tyler's body convulsed with each blow, growing weaker and weaker until his head dropped forward and he went completely limp on the ropes. Unconscious.Sophia, Diane, and Ashley turned their faces away from the sight. But even with their eyes averted, each of them managed to shoot hateful, burning glares at Ethan, blaming him entirely for every single thing that had happened to them.Ethan walked to the center of the hall and addressed the room."It is time to discuss cooperation," Ethan said.The nine pharmaceutical tycoons scoffed almost in unison."You have no standing to negotiate with us," the heavyset man said, shaking his head dismissively."You are a clinic handyman who mar

He walked to the tea table, picked up the rosewood box containing the White Dragon Root, and tucked it under his arm."In four days, all nine of your companies will come crawling back to me," Ethan said to the room. He turned and walked toward the exit with Victoria and Mrs. Hayes falling into step behind him.The tycoons scoffed loudly at his retreating back."Crawling back to a clinic handyman," the heavyset man laughed. "I would sooner eat my own shoes.""Delusional to the very end," the sharp featured woman agreed, shaking her head.But at the head of the hall, Thompson Sr. sat frozen in his chair. His face had gone completely white. His eyes bulged so wide the blood vessels were visible around the edges.The Dragon's Blood Antitoxin was the exclusive creation of the Medical Sage Arthur Cole himself. It was a formula so rare and so powerful that its very existence was considered a myth by most of the medical world.And the Thompson family's celebrated Detox Formula, the product th

The tycoons abandoned every remaining scrap of dignity. They crowded around as Ethan unfolded the nine pages and spread them across a stone garden bench. Each leader found the formula corresponding to their own flagship product and bent over it with narrowed, expert eyes.The heavyset man's face went pale within ten seconds of reading. The sharp featured woman pressed her hand against her mouth. A third tycoon removed his glasses, wiped them on his shirt, put them back on, and read the same paragraph three times.Every formula was genuine. Every formula was superior. And every single one of them, if produced and brought to market, would devastate the current version being sold by these very companies.Thompson Sr. held the Dragon's Blood Antitoxin formula in both trembling hands. He read through it once, then twice, then a third time. A burst of ecstatic, breathless laughter erupted from his throat, so loud and so joyful that nearby birds scattered from the garden trees."I agree to y