Ron Donaldo: Rise Of The Apex Don

Chapter 35

Two huge ex-convicts grabbed Dr. Aris and pushed him into the back of the armored truck. 

Ron walked to the front of the truck and climbed into the back cab. It was a mobile command center. It was filled with glowing computer screens running on heavy truck batteries. 

Silas, the nervous hacker, was sitting inside. He looked completely exhausted. He was drinking his fourth cup of coffee. 

"Sir, you are alive," Silas said, smiling weakly. 

"I am alive," Ron said. He sat down heavily in a black leather chair. He held his burned hands up. "Do you have medical supplies?"

Silas quickly opened a white box and tossed Ron a tube of burn cream and some clean white bandages. Ron slowly rubbed the cold cream onto his painful blisters. He wrapped his hands tightly in the bandages. 

"Silas," Ron said, his voice turning strictly to business. "I have something for you."

Zero climbed into the truck and handed Silas the silver hard drive from the laboratory. 

Ron reached into his pocket and pulled out the five highly encrypted smartphones he had stolen from Cross and the other mercenaries at the warehouse. He set them on the desk. 

Then, Ron pulled out the small, black satellite phone that Vane had used to call Theresa. He set that on the desk, too. 

"I have the servers from Sterling Tech. I have the phones of the mercenaries. And I have the Fixer's personal connection," Ron said. His blue eyes locked onto Silas. "The Director thinks he can hide in the dark. I want you to connect all these dots. I want to know exactly how Sterling Tech was moving The Director's money."

Silas pushed his glasses up his nose. His fingers cracked. "Give me thirty minutes, Sir. I will tear their secrets wide open."

The truck engine roared to life. General Vance drove them away from the city center, heading toward a safe, hidden location in the deep woods. 

Inside the back of the truck, the only sound was the rapid click-clack of Silas typing on his keyboards. He plugged the silver hard drive into his main computer. He connected thick cables to the stolen mercenary phones. 

Ron sat quietly. He watched the screens. He watched the lines of green code flying across the black monitors. 

Twenty minutes passed. 

Suddenly, Silas stopped typing. He leaned very close to the screen. His eyes went incredibly wide. He stopped breathing for a few seconds. 

"Oh my God," Silas whispered. 

"What is it?" Ron asked, sitting up straight. 

"Sir," Silas said, turning his chair around to face Ron. His face was pale with absolute shock. "I decrypted the banking keys on the mercenary phones. I matched the account numbers to the secret files on the Sterling Tech servers."

"And?" Ron asked. 

"Sterling Tech is a lie, Sir," Silas said softly. "It is a complete, total lie."

Ron frowned. "What do you mean? It is a multi-billion dollar tech company. They build engines. They build batteries."

"No, they don't," Silas said, shaking his head. "Marcus and Theresa told the world they were building engines. They showed the public a few shiny prototypes. But the truth is, the company has not made a single dollar of real profit in five years. They are entirely empty on the inside."

Silas typed a button. A massive, complicated spreadsheet appeared on the big screen. It showed huge numbers written in bright red. 

"The Director used Sterling Tech as a giant shield," Silas explained. "He used your good name and your brilliant designs to trick the biggest banks in the world. He took out massive, illegal, secret loans using Sterling Tech as collateral. Billions and billions of dollars."

"Where did the money go?" Ron asked. The Warlord inside him realized the true scope of the enemy's plan. 

"It went to the mercenaries," Silas pointed at the phones. "It went to corrupt politicians. It went to judges, police chiefs, and foreign warlords. The Director has been using your company as a private bank to fund a shadow empire. Sterling Tech currently owes fifty billion dollars in secret debt to criminal banks in Europe and Asia."

Ron stared at the red numbers on the screen. 

For five years, he had sat in a cold prison cell, thinking about his beautiful company. He thought Marcus and Theresa were getting rich off his hard work. But the truth was so much worse. His company was just a dead, hollow shell. It was a parasite. It was a monster that fed on dirty money. 

Ron looked down at his bandaged hands. 

His core struggle reached its final conclusion. He had wanted to save his company. He had wanted to take it back and be a proud CEO again. 

But a good man cannot live in a rotten house. If the house is full of poison, the only way to clean it is to burn it down. 

Ron looked up at Silas. His blue eyes were as hard and cold as diamonds. 

"What time do the financial markets open in New York?" Ron asked. 

Silas looked at the clock on the wall. "In exactly fifteen minutes, Sir. 9:30 AM."

Ron stood up. He walked to the glowing computer screens. 

"Silas," Ron commanded. "I want you to take all the money the Voretti Crime Family gave us. Every single dollar we have in our accounts. I want you to initiate a massive short sale against Sterling Tech stock."

Silas gasped. "Sir! You want to short the stock? A short sale means we are betting that the company will completely crash! If they survive, we will lose everything! The Voretti family will kill us!"

"They will not survive," Ron said smoothly. His voice was completely calm. He was the Warlord holding the ultimate weapon. "Because the second the market opens, I want you to hit 'Send'."

"Send what, Sir?"