Chapter 135: Holding All the Cards

Since his name was on the deed now, he wanted to know every single moving part inside his new fortress.

Jude walked right through the front doors with his hands casually in his pockets.

The second his shoes hit the lobby floor, the receptionist behind the front desk rushed forward and bowed low with a warm smile.

"Good afternoon, Chairman Lawson! Welcome to the club, sir!"

"Afternoon," Jude nodded. "Is Vanessa in her office? Show me up."

"Right away, sir... please follow me!"

She stepped out from behind the desk, swiped the private elevator keycard, and rode up with him to the executive floor.

All down the carpeted hallways, every bartender, security guard, and floor manager they passed stopped in their tracks, pressing against the wall to bow and greet Jude with polite smiles.

Yet the second Jude turned the corner and walked out of earshot, those smiles vanished into hushed whispers.

"So that’s the Jude Lawson who took the club last night for a hundred grand?"

"Still feels unreal... why the hell would Miss Lee hand five years of our hard work to someone so young?"

"You don’t think the rumors from the ballroom are true, do you? What’s his real relationship with Miss Lee?"

"Oh, please... have you seen Miss Lee? With her connections and wealth, she could snap her fingers and have any elite on his knees! Why would she just hand the keys away?"

"Then what the hell was she thinking giving him the whole building?!"

Even without looking back, Jude’s sharp hearing caught every single word.

And even if he hadn’t heard them, the doubt in their eyes was obvious...

To the staff who had worked under Chelsea and Vanessa for years, Jude was an unproven newcomer who swept the board overnight.

Jude didn’t care in the slightest; he already had a very simple plan to ensure every employee in this building respected his authority.

Stopping outside the double doors at the end of the hall, the receptionist bowed and stepped away.

Jude paused for a beat, then gave the wood a firm knock.

"Come in!"

Vanessa’s clear voice called from inside.

Pushing the door open, Jude stepped in.

Behind the wide desk, Vanessa stood up immediately as he walked in.

Today, she had traded last night’s formal attire for a sharp, fitted black suit jacket and a high-waisted pencil skirt with heels. The clean cut gave her a striking confidence.

"Good afternoon, Chairman Lawson," Vanessa said. "Please have a seat on the couch while I pull the files."

"Take your time," Jude said, sitting down on the sofa.

Two minutes later, Vanessa walked back out of the private vault carrying a stack of financial binders, setting them down on the glass table in front of him.

"Chairman Lawson, these are the full financial audits and tax records for the Heavens Club over the last three years," Vanessa said softly. "Please take a look."

Jude glanced at the giant pile of numbers once, then looked up at her without opening a single page. "Chelsea trusted you enough to run a multi-billion-dollar business for five straight years, which means I trust you completely. As long as you tell me the books are clean, I don’t need to read a single line."

Vanessa blinked. "Thank you for the trust, sir. In that case... let me walk you through how the Heavens Club is set up."

"Go ahead," Jude said, leaning back comfortably.

"The building runs on three separate levels," Vanessa began. "Level one is the Lounge and Bar on the ground floor. That area is open to wealthy walk-ins without any background checks, and it pulls in the bulk of our daily cash flow."

"Got it," Jude nodded.

Bar profits were nice, but raw cash was the last thing he cared about.

"Level two is the Heavens Club proper, taking up floors two through four," Vanessa continued. "This area is strictly for top corporate executives and elite families, split across seven private dining and lounge departments. It runs on a strictly closed membership system... and just applying for an entry-level silver card requires a non-refundable one-million-dollar initiation fee."

"A million dollars just to get in the door," Jude said, raising an eyebrow with a slight nod.

Even in Manhattan, charging seven figures just for a basic membership card was a serious filter.

"And above those two sits our third and most important tier... Heavens Commerce," Vanessa said. "It takes up the private penthouse floors, and it’s the real beating heart of this entire building. Membership is strictly limited to the biggest titans and political heavyweights across the East Coast. The fee for a single seat up there is fifty million dollars."

Jude nodded slowly. That was the real prize...

The network that had brought three hundred billionaires scrambling into the ballroom last night was sitting right upstairs.

"When someone applies for a seat in Heavens Commerce, who checks them out?" Jude asked.

"Every file crosses my desk for the final stamp," Vanessa answered smoothly.

"Good to know," Jude said.

Vanessa stood up, walked over to a hidden wall safe behind the wood paneling, punched in a rolling code, scanned her thumb, and pulled out a binder.

She set it on the table in front of him.

"What’s in here?" Jude asked, picking it up.

"This is the master list of every single member of Heavens Commerce, Chairman Lawson," Vanessa said respectfully.

Jude flipped it open and scanned the pages.

Every profile was detailed down to the bone... CEOs of public mega-corporations, old-money Wall Street banking bosses, and top government regulators.

Basically, anyone who held real power in New York had their name inked in this book!

"And there’s one more thing you need to see," Vanessa added.

She reached back into the safe and pulled out a small hard drive, setting it down next to the list.

Jude looked down at the encrypted drive, curious. "What’s on it?"

"Secret camera footage and audio recordings of every member upstairs," Vanessa explained. "Publicly, our rules guarantee total privacy in our penthouse suites. But from day one of construction, Miss Lee had tiny cameras and hidden microphones built right into the walls of every VIP room. Because our members think this club is the safest place in the city, they make their dirtiest backroom deals and private mistakes right upstairs. Almost every name in that book has ruinous blackmail on this drive. If we ever need one of those billionaires to fall in line, convincing them takes about two seconds."

For three full seconds, Jude stared at the hard drive in silence.

Suddenly, the whole mystery behind the Heavens Club’s "connections" snapped right into focus.

No wonder every syndicate in New York was foaming at the mouth to buy this place...

The power was locked inside this tiny block of metal.

Whoever held this drive basically had half of New York’s ruling class by the throat!