Chapter 404: Position of Power

Lorenzo had a little smug smile on his face.

"Take over," he repeated. "So aggressive. Look, nobody is stealing anything. I’m just saying you should finally take what’s already yours because of your bloodline. You would’ve gotten it eventually anyway." He tilted his head, looking at her. "I just think it’s smarter to skip the ten years you’d spend trying to prove something to a dead woman who can’t even see it."

Victoria’s eyes widened very slightly. She was immobile, completely petrified. This guy did not just dare. No, he couldn’t, he couldn’t be dumb enough to do it. Shu slowly put her hands flat on the table.

"You—" she started.

"Let’s get one thing straight," Nash said, cutting in before she could explode. "Forty years, whatever, sure, that’s a long time. But if you mention her mother one more time, I don’t give a shit what power you think you have. This deal is dead. We walk out, and you can explain to your board why the only meeting that actually mattered failed because you couldn’t keep your fucking mouth shut for twenty minutes."

Lorenzo stared at him for a long time. You couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but he looked intrigued.

"And who the fuck are you again?" Lorenzo asked, "to be giving me orders at my own table?"

"Your table and everything here has been bought by the woman who crushed you and your stupid son to the point you have to beg her for her mercy. As for me, I am someone who isn’t impressed by you," Nash replied casually. "Because when I see you right now, I see exactly the stupidity of your son and you will end up in the same situation if you don’t think before opening your mouth."

Lorenzo let the silence hang there for a second, then leaned back, looking at Nash like he was a new... interesting toy.

"How curious," Lorenzo said. "I heard Victoria had a huge staff these days. Bodyguards, assistants." He tilted his head. "I expected the quiet ones to be here tonight. But while the pup—" He stopped himself mid-word. "The secretary... doesn’t say a word all night, the athlete is doing all the talking. What’s going on exactly here? So, I’m asking again, boy, who are you?"

"You’re asking the wrong question," Nash said. "Everyone who’s underestimated me the way you’re doing right now is either in jail, a nobody, or sitting in this room getting talked down in front of his enemies. You’re nothing special, your forty of sixty years to build Apex could crumble if I wished it."

Hector’s head snapped up slightly. He didn’t say anything, but his face went pale as a ghost.

"So stop trying to figure out where I fit in Victoria’s company," Nash continued, "and think, before you bring your stupidity in this conversation."

And boom, dead silence again.

Lorenzo’s jaw tightened finally. For the first time all night, he looked shaken, though he quickly smoothed his face back into a mask.

How many time did this young guy call him an idiot? Did it ever happen before?

Across the table, Hector glanced at Victoria for a split second before looking down. Flash’s fake smile was gone.

Victoria didn’t say a word, but the corner of her mouth curved up.

The message behind the words was clear. Victoria wasn’t alone anymore, there was a giant in her shadow.

Lorenzo got his cool back quickly, but there was something colder in his eyes.

"This," he said, "is what happens when you let things get so sloppy that outsiders end up lecturing me about respect. This is on you, Hector."

Hector opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. He looked pathetic. Lorenzo exhaled, resetting himself, and looked back at Victoria.

"Anyway," he said. "The offer is still there. You take Apex. Everything you and your little... protector have collected, all the dirt, goes into a drawer and stays hidden forever."

Victoria thought about it, then shook her head.

"Taking Apex right now would be a mistake," she said. "You’ve dug a hole in front of your own feet, and the whole company could fall in any second. All it takes is one of your ’slaves’ deciding to talk."

"Which is why you need to be on top," Lorenzo continued, acting like it was no big deal. "The public loves you. If our ’savior’ suddenly takes over, people stop asking about the past and look at the future. It buys us time to fix things."

Victoria narrowed her eyes.

"Fix things. You mean relaunch the same shitty business under a cleaner background."

"You’ve been around long enough to know one thing," Lorenzo said, speaking like he was explaining 1+1 to a child. "Keeping an empire together always requires some sin in the foundation. That’s how you got strong enough to sit here and make demands. And that’s exactly because of your actions that someway, some idiot ends up getting raped along the way. That’s just the cost of building something that lasts."

Monique’s eyes went wide, shaking. She stayed silent, but you could tell something broke inside her. For real, this guy didn’t just say those things so casually, it was a movie on it’s own to listen to him.

Victoria watched her for a moment, then looked back at her progenitor.

"The best part of this position," Lorenzo continued, waving his hand around the room, "is that you get to do all the dirty work from a tower in the Upperworld, in the actual sunlight." He looked out the window at the fake twilight of the Spires. "A real sunset. Something that actually ends. Something that can be rainy or cloudy. Not this kind of gigantic tomb." He looked at her, almost sounding fond. "The horror, Victoria, happens underground. Down there. Not up here."

This time, Nash’s eyes widened.

He straightened up slowly, looking at Lorenzo, then Hector, then back to Lorenzo. He was actually shocked for the first time. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ

Are these fuckers serious?

There were like, what? A thousand of reasons to get pissed, to stand up and give the Jinzo’s treatment to this bastard, but... Nash was stunned for a completely different reason.

He blinked, his face wearing a frozen pokerface, realizing for the first time that this, this meeting, this messed up plan from Lorenzo, was the first nail to his coffin.

They don’t even realize—

He caught himself and forced his face back to neutral, his jaw tight. He realized something, something that he hoped Victoria would notice, something that she had to absolutely understand un order to act the perfect way to control... No. No, he couldn’t take the risk. He couldn’t trust her for that. Not because she wasn’t trustable, but because there were so much skeletons between these two that any reaction was plausible.

He needed to do the one thing he was an expert at.

He needed to manipulate Lorenzo.

He focused everything on Lorenzo, and his most dangerous power activated.

[TARGET STATUS VIEW: LORENZO PEREZ]

Affection %: 3%

Lust %: 0%

Trust %: 8%

Pride %: 97%

[PREFERENCES]

Love Type: Ownership / Narcissism

Erotic Weakness: None registered

Position Preference: N/A

→ IN-SCENE TRIGGER EVENTS

→ Deferring to him publicly, letting him dictate the terms of the conversation → +8% Pride

→ Framing his cruelty as pragmatism rather than challenging it → +6% Pride, +5% Trust

→ Letting him redirect blame onto a weaker target without objection → +10% Pride, +4% Affection

→ Interrupting him mid-sentence, especially without asking permission first → –12% Pride, –8% Trust

→ Pointing out that his empire could collapse from a single scandal → –15% Pride

→ Refusing to flinch or show fear under his usual tone → –10% Trust, –6% Pride

→ RISK FACTOR:

Lust and desire have been fully overwritten by the pride. Lorenzo does not seek pleasure, he seeks dominance. Standard seduction tactics will not register. Only a direct, public threat to his authority or legacy produces a reaction, and even then, the resulting damage is redirected onto the weakest nearby target.

Nash’s eyes narrowed at this last sentence. The weakest target? Lorenzo couldn’t take his frustration on Dahlia, so that only left...

"Anyway," Lorenzo said. He leaned back in his chair. "It’s simple. You keep your mouth shut, and in exchange—"

"Nah," Nash interrupted. "It’s not that simple. If it were, you wouldn’t be sitting here begging for your life like a poor piece of shit at the fanciest dinner table in the world."

[LORENZO PEREZ]

Pride: 97% → 85% (-12%)

Trust: 8% → 0% (-8%)

Lorenzo froze for a second. His eyes turned toward Nash, and for a moment, you could see him absolutely boiling with rage. But he forced it down. He didn’t actually know what Nash was to Victoria yet, and as a guy who had survived forty years in the dirty game of business, he knew better than to burn a bridge before knowing who was standing on the other side.

"Careful now," Lorenzo muttered.

Next to Victoria, Dahlia gripped her knee under the table, her fingers squeezing tight. She hadn’t said a word all night. She’d worked with Nash long enough to know his vibe, he likes to circle his prey, slowly squeezing them, before he actually hits them. She closed her eyes and inhaled, because this wasn’t a reaction from Nash, but a warning shot.

Victoria didn’t say anything either, but she looked pretty damn pleased. She too had seen Nash do this before and knew what it meant when he became talkative.

Time to relax and take your popcorn, the worst game had begun.

Nash let the silence hang in the air for a bit, just to make Lorenzo sweat, before he finally spoke again.

"You’ve spent this whole time talking about your ’legacy’ like Apex is some untouchable empire," Nash said with a chill smile. "It’s not. It’s a company that’s one bad news story away from going bankrupt, and you know that better than anyone here. That’s why you’re trying to buy our silence instead of just killing the four of us and making us disappear. But... Well... I can praise you for not having done that. You’re not as dumb as I imagined."

[LORENZO PEREZ]

Pride: 85% → 70% (-15%)

Lorenzo’s eyes flickered, a tiny, involuntary twitch. He recovered quickly and put his "boss" face back on, but it took a half-second too long. The mask was slipping.

Hector watched this happen, feeling a knot form in his stomach. He didn’t really get the "game" they were playing, neither that he had already been defeated once by it, but he understood the result: his father was losing. He was being dismantled piece by piece by a guy he had dismissed as a nobody twenty minutes ago.

A part of Hector wanted to warn his dad to just shut up before it got worse, but he couldn’t say a word. Why bother? Nobody at the table actually gave a fuck about his opinion anyway.

Lorenzo snapped. He turned away from Nash and glared at his son.

"See this, you piece of shit?" Lorenzo barked, his voice getting hard, "All those years of cleaning your ass just for you to put me in this position. I hope you’re having fun!"

[LORENZO PEREZ]

Pride: 70% → 80% (+10%)

Nash watched the numbers climb back up and smirked. As expected, Monique was the weakest target available, but only one person had been insulted so many times that it made him the most ridiculous on the room tonight.

But... Lashing out actually made Lorenzo recover some pride. It was good to know. Now all Nash had to do was go keep it a 1v1 before Lorenzo found the sacrificial lamb.

Across the table, Flash had gone quiet. He wasn’t smirking anymore. He was realizing that this wasn’t the easy negotiation he thought it was and he looked more like a furniture as the guy standing. But at least, only Victoria had insulted him, yet.

Lorenzo exhaled slowly, trying to reset himself. He looked back at Victoria.

"Regardless," he said. "The offer is still there. Do we have an understanding?"

Victoria didn’t answer right away. She let the silence stretch, then slowly leaned forward, resting her arms on the table.

"Let’s talk about what I actually get," she said. "Because from where I’m sitting, your offer sounds like you’re handing me a burning building and calling it a gift."

"It’s the most valuable asset in the Upperworld," Lorenzo countered. "Forget the feelings."

"It’s a brand that currently stands for human trafficking, thanks to your pathetic excuse of a son," Victoria said. "I want it, but only after I’ve had time to scrub the filth off and rebuild the image. That means I need guarantees. Real ones."

"Name them," Lorenzo said, sounding slightly amused, though he was shaking inside.

Victoria leaned back, arms crossed, then nodded toward Nash. The message was simple: the mic is yours, dear.

"Full operational control," Nash said. "Right now. No board votes that you can sneakily sabotage in six months. No interference from anyone still loyal to you."

Lorenzo stared at him for a long time.

"You seem very comfortable telling me how things are going to work for a man who officially doesn’t exist in this deal."

[LORENZO PEREZ]

Trust: 0% → 0%

Pride: 80% → 68% (-12%)

"I don’t need to exist," Nash said calmly. "I just need you to understand that every minute you spend trying to push us around is a minute closer to me deciding that this deal isn’t worth the effort anymore."

"And just to make it clear," Victoria added. "His words are my commands. On his call, we call the deal off."

The room went dead quiet. Dahlia gripped the tablecloth, her eyes locked on Lorenzo’s face, waiting to see if he would finally snap.

And sure, he was about to.

Lorenzo’s jaw tightened. He looked like he was fighting the urge to scream. He wanted so badly to turn at Hector and send him to oblivion, but Nash’s mocking smirk had caught his whole attention.

Ah, no, hell no, he wouldn’t give him the opportunity.

"Fine," he finally spat out. "Full operational control."

Victoria smiled, arms crossed. How beautiful. Nash was the freaking magic man. She watched her tormentor , Lorenzo Perez, the rezl boss, give up ground he had desperately wanted to keep. She didn’t say a word; she just enjoyed the feeling of him losing.

[LORENZO PEREZ]

Pride: 68% → 60% (-8%)

"There’s more," Nash added.

Lorenzo looked at him, looking tired and beaten.

"Do you want the skin of my ass maybe?"

Nash grinned, then turned to Victoria. He reached over and gently took her hand, rubbing his thumb over her knuckles

Hector’s eyes popped wide for a split second. It was such a fast reaction that if you weren’t paying close attention, you would’ve missed it completely. At the same time, Flash did the exact same thing.

There was this worried searching look in his eyes, like he was trying to figure something out, before he quickly forced his face to go blank and neutral again.

Neither of them said a word, but in their head, the same firework had begun:

What the fuck is actually going on between them?

"Should we ask for a little bonus too? For the good old days," Nash whispered.

Victoria smiled at him. It was the only soft thing she’d shown all night. Across the table, Hector’s jaw tightened. He was genuinely nervous now, wondering what the hell was actually happening.

Then, Victoria turned back to Lorenzo. Her face went cold instantly. The "loving" partner was gone; the Boss was back.

"As of today," she said, "I outrank every single person in this room. Including you. Whether your board likes it or not, I’m the one in charge. I give you one week for the paperwork, so I’ll leave today with the verbal agreement. But instead of some verbal agreement that you can just tune down the moment I leave, I want something that will be burnt on your brain as a warning to whoever will dare going against me ."

"Which is?" Lorenzo asked.

Victoria’s eyes shifted to Hector.

"I want him to strip naked, and kneel in front of me, right here, and beg every single one of us to forgive him."