Her Corporate Takedown: Entangled with a Billionaire

*CHAPTER 89: CYCLE OF EXPLOITATION*

"How is that an explanation?!"

I wanted to be patient with him, considering what he'd been going through, but I was getting more annoyed by the second.

"It's not funny!" I shouted, trying to drive my point across as he just stood there laughing hard with his hand over his mouth.

"I didn't know I looked that cool in your eyes."

"What are you talking about?"

"Did you really think that I would lose my mind just because I lost the race?"

"Then, why are you doing this?"

He walked to the other side of the table and took up a bag, which he handed to me.

"I would like you to change into these clothes."

I took the bag from him with a confused look.

"Shelli gave you the clothes you're wearing now, right? I can't have you wearing those anymore."

After staring at him with squinted eyes and a gaping mouth for a couple of minutes, it finally clicked.

"Fine. I'll change my clothes, but not my underwear."

My response was met with a loud chuckle as he turned around and walked away. I went behind the curtain to the back of the room and changed into a set of new clothes. When I emerged, Andrei came over to me before I had the chance to put down the bag of old clothes. He took the bag from me, placed it in a thick duffle bag, closed it, threw it down, then he stood very close to me. As usual, no explanation accompanied his unusual string of actions and I was left wondering whether I would need to defend myself in another round of 'Strip me'.

"I still detect some interference," he finally said.

"What does that-?"

"It means you also need to change your underwear. You also got those from Shelli, right? Wouldn't that be the best place to plant a device? Like I said before, I can't let you come with me with any kind of transmitter or comm device on you."

Reluctantly, I went behind the curtain again and completely changed the rest of my clothes.

"Does this have anything to do with telling me not to wash my hair at Shelli's apartment." The notion seemed ridiculous, but it bothered me enough that I needed to ask.

"Yea, she could have put nano trackers in the shampoo, and that would have been more annoying to get out of your hair."

The reply I got was even more ridiculous than I thought, but what else would you expect from this group of people? At this point, I don't think there was anything else that could surprise me.

"Now that you've finished changing, read the message I just sent you. We'll leave after I've gotten ready."

I placed the rest of the clothes in the black duffle bag and read the message Andrei sent me.

"Andrei cut off the transmission from all of the devices you planted on her." Roshni looked over at Shelli, who drove at full speed ahead down the empty street as though she was making up for not being in the race earlier.

"Hm, I guess that proves that this R-drive Andrei returned to me was really a copy. After all, the one I originally gave him would have wiped the chip completely clean," she replied as she swung the car to drift sharply around the corner.

As we approached a certain room, I heard the traitor speaking. "It's too bad that neither of your representatives beat mine," he seemed to be talking to the Chinese and Russian spies . "That means neither of you will obtain the car," he continued as he ended in a loud cackle.

As Andrei opened the door, I saw the Chinese and Russian spies turn to look at us with intense frustration, as there was nothing they could do to get the car with the very important chip from the traitor. According to Shelli's plan, all of the foreign parties involved were to remain clueless that the data from the chip had been stolen.

"Then, since my representative won the race, that means we will get the car. Is that right?"

But clearly, Andrei had other plans.

"Excuse me! Who are you and how do you know about this deal? I don't remember inviting anyone else," the traitor replied in German, the language Andrei spoke when he entered the room.

"I am merely the voice of my client," said Andrei, dressed in impeccable disguise, as he stepped in between me, who was equally unrecognizable, and the traitor that was aggressively approaching me.

Per Andrei's earlier message, I simply stood tall with refined elegance while he did all the talking. My idea of an imposing refined elegance was that of British royalty, so I imitated that somewhat even though I was supposed to be a German representative.

Regardless of the culture, I figured you couldn't go wrong with black, so I stood behind Andrei with half of my face covered by a black meshed veil that hung at the front of a black cocktail hat. Even though I plastered that fake mask on my face to look like a different person, the cautious Andrei had me hide my face even more, since I had already gotten very close to the target earlier.

"I could be wrong, but isn't this called going behind Shelli's back?" I asked him after we left the room where Andrei collected his winnings (the car) and shut down the traitor's operation.

"You might call it that in a normal setting, but this is work. We may be friends, but as my family's heir, I can't work for free, much less overlook a huge opportunity that was staring me right in the face."

"I see. However, wouldn't Shelli know that you're up to something when you destroyed all of her devices?"

"She would, but that's fine. She can speculate what I'm up to, and that's all I want her to do. As long as she has no concrete evidence, she can make up all the theories she wants to."

So his plan from the beginning was to lose the race on purpose. As usual, I felt very much third-rate for not being able to predict any of his intentions or even see the vaguest of hints towards them.

"And what was the reason you didn't tell me any of this before we started?"

"Are you underestimating Shelli? She would have known with one look on your face."

This time, we went to a different changing room to get out of our ridiculous 'British-inspired German spy' get-ups. We left that room through a trap door leading to a small, dark room on the floor below. Having returned to being Andrei and Leiya, we wore more normal disguises and briskly walked to the elevator and went down to the basement.

When we came off the elevator, I weaved through the mass of machinery and followed Andrei to the opposite end of the floor where there was a large brown door that blended in well with the dark wall. The door led to a passage of stairs that bent at a ninety-degree angle. At the end of the stairs, the door led to a large open space.

In the middle of the pitch black empty space stood a single car.

"Are you here?" Andrei called out.

When my vision adjusted, I saw that what stood in the center was the same black car that won the race. The lights immediately turned on and someone approached us from the middle of the room.

Andrei walked up to the man and they both exchanged a firm handshake.

"Do you like the new car?" Andrei asked the unfamiliar man.

"I love it!" the unfamiliar man replied. "I didn't believe it when you said you would give me a faster car, but the numbers don't lie."

The unfamiliar man continued an enthusiastic discussion with Andrei about the specs of the new car, which looked very much like the car that won the race. Since I had nothing better to do while I stood by waiting, I tried putting together the pieces of this entire operation in my head with what I knew, but from Andrei's perspective.

Shelli got wind of a traitor from the White House who smuggled top secret information inside this car that was going to belong to a prominent race car driver called, Martin. The traitor then made contact with Chinese and Russian spies to try to sell them the information, but only if their representatives won this race against Martin. However, even though the traitor made this promise, he had no intention of handing the chip over to either of them.

The traitor was so confident that Martin would win the race that he carelessly made that promise to both spies. However, his original aim was only to make it seem that the chip was so valuable that the Chinese and Russian spies would go to great lengths to get it from him by competing in the race. This way, he could propose a higher price to Saudi Arabia and sell it for ludicrous amounts of money.

Shelli wanted to retrieve the stolen data so she asked Andrei to participate in this race as Martin and win, to prevent the Chinese and Russian spies from getting the car with the chip in it. For insurance, she also gave Andrei a device to copy and delete the data so that, just in case one of the spies got the car, at least the data was gone. However, Andrei saw an even greater opportunity here to obtain this secret data for himself, as part of his duty to 'keep tabs on the other families', as he explained on our way here.

Shelli knew there was a strong possibility that Andrei would give her only a copy of the data and not delete the original from the car. That is why she planted devices on my clothes that I borrowed from the apartment. She apparently even attached microscopic spy devices to my underwear, thinking that Andrei wouldn't pick up on them. Perhaps he normally wouldn't, or just not care about it, but this time he was adamant about getting rid of all of Shelli's spy devices.

Even though he lost the race, Andrei made sure that he ended up as the true winner. After losing the race, we pretended to be German spies and claimed the car as our prize. This way, all the former interested parties would have seen that the car with the chip was no longer up for grabs and that they had lost their right to the information . If things had occurred as Shelli wanted, then the spies would have no doubt started a massive hunt for the traitor and the information when they found out they had been scammed.

In addition, with the way Andrei wrapped things up, the original driver of the car was also free and separated from the case, since he was no longer in possession of the highly-sought-after car. To make it more rewarding for the driver, Andrei made a different deal with him to give him a new car if he had lost the race. I blamed the fact that I didn't recognize this man immediately on my lack of a photographic memory, for this man was the spitting image of the disguise Andrei had worn for the race, which was the same as the man who Andrei raced on the mountain.

Martin was also pretty slick for making a deal with Shelli to say that his replacement absolutely had to make sure he would win the race, when, in fact, he cared about no such thing. I wondered if Andrei told him to say that? If so, then I surmise the purpose would be to create distance between Andrei and Martin, to overshadow the fact that they had made a separate deal.

"By the way, I could always use a good driver. If you ever want a side gig, you know how to reach me," Andrei said to Martin after he handed over a pouch with the car papers, ended their conversation with another handshake and parted ways.

Did he just try to recruit him to work for his family? Was it that easy to get a job in a spy family? I thought my situation was the exception, but I was clearly wrong.

I was surprised that my head didn't start spinning while I tried to sort out this mess of a mission where everyone was using everyone else for their own objectives. I've also noticed that the situation gets even crazier when two heirs are involved. Just look at what happened with Gillian. Even though she was Paladin's second in-command, she certainly had the air of an heir like Andrei and was able to hold her own against him.

"So close," said Andrei in a sympathetic tone as we drove on the lonely streets in the middle of the night.

"Are you talking to me?"

"Looks like you put together almost everything correctly about that mission, but you just missed one thing."

"How did you even know I was doing that? Weren't you in heavy dialogue with that guy?"

"No matter what I'm doing, I'm always paying attention to you," he wasted no time in spouting a cheesy line in this enclosed space where it was already difficult to breathe. He smiled and chuckled as he watched my face squirm, then locked the window as I was about to press the button to wind it down.

"What exactly did I miss?" I asked after we finally got to our next destination, which was unfortunately not my home with a shower and a bed.

"The original chip that Shelli was after was a decoy. Sure, it had valuable information on it, but the real reason I wanted that car and why I needed to cut Shelli off was because there were two other chips in that car that they were attempting to smuggle to England."

Isn't Gillian from England? I probably shouldn't relate everything I hear about England to her.

"No, you probably should. Since one of the items that was hidden in the car was a device containing a piece of the Anticode program."

Are you kidding me?

"No, I'm not," he replied, chuckling again.

I entered the elevator of the new building that I entered with Andrei and we made our way down to the lowest level. Sadly, I made the mistake of standing too close to the door and my already strained heart could not handle what came next.

"By the way, I forgot to tell you something," I said while facing the elevator door and talking softly to his blurry reflection in the shiny metal door. "Sometimes, I think you're cool." More like all the time. "Especially tonight, you looked really cool driving. Even though you drove like a madman."

"Oh, is that the first time you've complimented me out loud?"

"Is it? I wasn't keeping track."

"Well, I've got something to tell you as well…," he said as he proceeded to lean his hand against the elevator door from behind me, but with my head still turned slightly to face him, he leaned forward too close for comfort, the heat from his breath lingered on my ear until the elevator shook violently when it landed on the basement floor.

"…and that is, I always get what I want," he whispered as he put emphasis on the word 'always'.