The Grand commander's Return; Ex-wife's fatal Mistake

Chapter 14: The Mocking Text

Nala Sawyer sprawled across the white leather sofa in her penthouse, her silk evening gown rumpled from the evening's celebrations. Her cheeks were flushed with alcohol, her eyes glassy with triumphant intoxication as she stared up at the television.

"Look at that," Nala purred, pointing a crimson-manicured finger at the financial news broadcast. "Another record-breaking surge in early-morning futures. Analysts are calling us the corporate dynasty of the decade."

Martha Sawyer sat across from her, sipping a martini with a cold, satisfied smile. Martha adjusted her diamond necklace, her eyes shining with malicious pride as she looked at her daughter.

"You and Brody played your cards brilliantly, my pet," Martha praised smoothly, setting her glass down on the coffee table with a soft clack. "Old Chairman Cromwell is practically ready to hand over the entire corporate registry to you. And to think, just a week ago, we had that useless parasite Declan dragging our family name down in the mud."

Nala let out a sharp laugh, tossing her head back against the leather cushions. "Declan. God, I had almost forgotten his miserable face."

She picked up her smartphone from the table, her thumb swiping across the screen with drunken amusement.

"You know what would make this night absolute perfection?" Nala grinned, her lips curling into a cruel sneer. "Let's remind the beggar what he missed out on."

Martha chuckled darkly, leaning forward with complete approval. "Go ahead, darling. Remind him of his place in the gutter."

Nala opened her messaging app, scrolling past her high-society contacts until she tapped on Declan’s old number. She hadn't messaged him since the rainy afternoon she threw him out of the mansion like garbage.

Her fingers flew across the keyboard, tapping out a smug message dripping with arrogance.

NALA: Hope you're watching the financial news tonight, Declan. Brody and I just secured a five-hundred-million-dollar state grid empire while you're probably freezing on some park bench. Enjoy living the rest of your pathetic life in total obscurity. Some men are simply born to be losers.

She hit send with a satisfied smirk, tossing the phone back onto the table as she raised her champagne glass.

"To our absolute dominance," Nala toasted, clinking her glass against Martha’s.

"To the extinction of the weak," Martha replied, her eyes gleaming with cold malice.

Bzzzt.

The phone on the glass table vibrated almost instantly.

Nala giggled, leaning over eagerly to pick it up. "Look at that. He couldn't even wait five seconds to reply. He's probably crying his eyes out, begging me to take him back."

She swiped the notification open, expecting to see a pathetic plea or a furious, broken defense.

Instead, the message screen was entirely blank, replaced by a cold, automated system warning stamped in stark crimson lettering.

SYSTEM NOTICE: MESSAGE FAILED TO DELIVER. REASON: THE RECIPIENT HAS PERMANENTLY BLOCKED THIS NUMBER. ERROR CODE: USER NO LONGER EXISTS IN THIS NETWORK.

Nala’s triumphant smile instantly froze on her face. The glass of champagne slipped from her trembling fingers, shattering against the marble floor as the chilling notification stared back at her from the dark screen.

"What is it, Nala?" Martha asked, her brow furrowing in confusion as she saw her daughter's sudden pale face.

"He blocked me," Nala whispered, her voice tight with a strange, sudden mixture of humiliation and unexplainable fury. "That penniless ghost actually blocked my line."

Inside Griffin Tower, Declan Wilde didn't even glance at the secondary screen where Nala's incoming message had been intercepted and erased forever. Three years of marriage, three years of humiliation and silent sacrifice, wiped away in a fraction of a second without a single thought.

Beside him, Fiona Griffin stood with her arms crossed, watching the screen. She saw the notification flicker and vanish, then looked at Declan's calm, unreadable face.

"An old contact?" Fiona asked softly, her tone unusually gentle.

"No one important," Declan replied smoothly, his voice completely flat. "Just someone from a past life who thinks the world revolves around money."

Fiona looked at him quietly. Beneath his calm exterior, she could sense the deep, invisible scars of a man who had been deeply betrayed, yet carried himself with the quiet dignity of a king. Her chest tightened slightly with unspoken sympathy, but she quickly focused back on the task at hand.

"Marcus just popped up on the grid," Fiona said, her tone growing serious. "The tracker you planted on his phone in the vault caught him setting up an encrypted line from a hotel suite. He's trying to sell stolen Griffin encryption keys directly to a Kurogane Syndicate broker."

Declan’s dark eyes sharpened, all emotion disappearing behind a wall of cold, lethal focus. The Kurogane Syndicate was the shadow organization that had terrorized the global markets, targeted Fiona, and destroyed lives from behind the scenes. Catching their top leader was the main reason he had agreed to step out of the shadows.

He reached forward, pulling up a secondary interface on his screen.

"Marcus is a terrified rat running straight back to his nest," Declan said, his fingers gliding smoothly across the keyboard. "If we cut his connection now, we only catch a traitor. But if we leave his line open, he leads us straight to the mastermind behind the Kurogane Syndicate."

Declan launched a quiet routing script into Marcus's background signal. Instead of locking Marcus out, Declan's system seamlessly diverted Marcus's terminal into a hidden mirror network. To Marcus, the auction was still live and his Kurogane handlers were responding. To Declan, every message, location tag, and decrypted file was being recorded in real time.

On Declan's wall monitor, a bright green indicator confirmed total containment.

"He thinks he's successfully selling your data," Declan explained, turning to Fiona. "Every message he sends to his handlers right now is mapping out the syndicate's true location. He's giving us the entire network."

Fiona looked at the data streams flowing across the wall display, then turned back to Declan, her eyes shining with quiet admiration and deep trust.

"Play him along, Declan," Fiona said softly, stepping closer to his side. "When Marcus delivers us to Kurogane, we take down the whole syndicate together."

Declan leaned back in his chair, watching Cromwell Capital's stock ticker reach its peak on the news feed. Brody and Nala thought they were standing on top of the world, completely blind to the trap closing in on them.