Chapter 3 Who Is That Woman?

Olivia walked away without slowing down and disappeared at the end of the hallway.

The employees on the 33rd floor pressed themselves against the walls, watching her like they were looking at a dead woman.

Olivia pressed the elevator's down button.

Just as the metal doors were about to close, the VIP-only elevator next to it let out a low, dull "ding."

That elevator was reserved exclusively for the top leadership of Vanguard Threshold Group.

The frosted doors slid open on both sides.

More than a dozen executives in black suits, barely daring to breathe, swarmed around a single man as he stepped out.

A hand-tailored black suit wrapped around his imposing frame. His features were sharp and chiseled, and his gray-blue eyes carried the cold indifference of someone who saw everything beneath him.

The air pressure in the entire floor seemed to drop.

Clarence, who had just stepped out of his office, went pale. He scrambled over in a near-panic, bending at the waist in an almost painfully submissive bow.

"Mr. Carter! What brings you personally to the R&D department?"

Raymond didn't even look up.

His steps slowed for just a moment. His straight nose twitched slightly. There was a faint trace of cold fir in the air.

That scent. It was identical to the trail he had tracked through the hacker's data stream the night before.

Raymond snapped his head to the side. His gaze cut past Clarence's head and locked onto the closing elevator.

Through the narrowing gap, a slight figure clutching a cardboard box vanished in an instant.

"Who is that woman?"

Clarence followed his gaze and turned around, quickly putting on a smile. "Her name is Olivia Smith. She used to be an assistant. I just fired her for stealing classified information."

He was terrified that his lowlife ex-girlfriend might offend the Wolf King.

Raymond looked away. The corner of his mouth curved into a dangerously subtle smile.

An assistant?

She was most likely a top-tier hacker who had single-handedly torn through three of Vanguard Threshold Group's highest-level firewalls. A creature capable of unleashing the full pressure of pure-blooded royalty.

That evening. The rooftop banquet hall of the Velvet Sands Hotel.

Elodie had changed into a custom silver mermaid gown and was moving through the crowd of elites on Clarence's arm.

"Mr. Fisher, is there really a groundbreaking announcement tonight?" A Wall Street heavyweight raised his glass and probed.

"Of course." Clarence lifted his chin slightly. "The 'Bloodline Fusion Serum,' led by Elodie, will completely cure the fatal gene collapse that plagues high-ranking wolf bloodlines."

The moment the words left his mouth.

The heavy carved doors of the banquet hall were pushed open from the outside.

The noise cut off instantly.

Olivia walked in across the red carpet.

The stiff office clothes were gone.

A wine-red velvet backless gown wrapped around her curves like flowing fire. Without the black-framed glasses, her striking, almost aggressive beauty was fully exposed under the lights.

Clarence stared at the radiant woman, his heart pounding out of control before he could stop it.

Elodie caught him staring, and jealousy twisted her face into something ugly.

"Olivia!" Clarence snapped back to his senses and stormed toward her, dropping his voice to a furious hiss. "Where the hell are the security guards! Who let this woman in!"

Olivia stopped. She held up two slender fingers, casually dangling a gold-embossed black card in front of his face.

"Vanguard Threshold Group's highest-tier invitation." Her red lips curved slightly. "Mr. Fisher, is this how you treat your top-tier guests?"

Clarence's pupils shrank.

That was a black card that only Vanguard Threshold Group's board members had the authority to issue.

"Where did you steal that from?"

"Steal?" Olivia let out a soft laugh. "Maybe someone got on their knees and begged me to take it."

"You're lying!" Elodie grabbed her skirt and rushed over, clutching Clarence's arm. "You put on a new dress and suddenly think you belong here? This is my night. Get out."

Olivia's gaze drifted slowly across Elodie's face.

"I hope you've memorized your speech well enough." She stepped past both of them and walked straight to the VIP seat in the front row.

Eight o'clock sharp.

The spotlight converged on the stage.

Elodie glided up, her smile flawless.

"Ladies and gentlemen, tonight I will present on behalf of Vanguard Threshold Group the final data model for the Bloodline Fusion Serum!"

The room erupted in applause.

Elodie pressed the remote with barely contained excitement.

The full-wall holographic display behind her powered on.

Everyone held their breath.

Then.

A piercing alarm tore through the speakers.

The screen never showed any data model. Instead, it was swallowed instantly by a flood of crimson corrupted code.

【Core data locked. Owner: Olivia Smith. Unauthorized access detected. Main server formatting in progress — 30%... 50%...】

The powerful figures in the audience went pale and grabbed their phones.

Every drop of color drained from Elodie's face. She frantically jabbed at the remote. "What's happening! Someone in the back — pull the power!"

"It won't work!" The technical director's voice cracked through her earpiece, on the verge of breaking down. "The base-level logic is locked. The virus is wiping every classified file in Vanguard Threshold Group's system."

Down in the audience, Olivia slowly swirled her glass of red wine.

"Ms. Turner, this is your own project. How do you not even know the basic decryption code?"

Over a hundred sharp stares cut straight to Elodie.

"It was you!" Elodie pointed at Olivia, her voice cracking into a shriek. "You put something in the USB drive! You thief!"

"Thief?" Olivia stood up. Her heels clicked against the hardwood floor with clean, sharp sounds. 

"One year. Three hundred and sixty-five days and nights. Every single dataset in that lab was worked out by my own hands. You took Clarence's leash and actually thought you could swallow what was mine?"

She turned to look at Clarence, whose face had gone ashen.

"Clarence, that USB drive was just a decoy virus." Olivia's lips curved. "The moment Elodie plugged it into the main console, ten years of Vanguard Threshold Group's classified files were automatically packaged and sent to my private inbox."

Clarence's eyes went bloodshot. His composure was completely shattered.

The IPO was finished. Vanguard Threshold Group was finished.

"You bitch! I'll tear you apart!"

The savage energy of a high-ranking Alpha exploded outward. Clarence became a blur, his hand shaped into a claw, driving straight for Olivia's slender throat.

Olivia didn't move. Not even her eyelashes trembled.

In the instant that the hand was half an inch from her neck.

The two three-meter-tall solid wood doors of the banquet hall were blasted into splinters by a force of terrifying magnitude.

A wave of freezing arctic air crashed into the hall like a tsunami, instantly crushing Clarence's pheromones into nothing.

The crystal chandeliers above swung wildly. Glass shattered one after another.

A dark, imposing figure stepped through the dust and smoke like a god of death walking into the world.

Raymond.

The pure-blooded Wolf King.

He simply stood there, and the sheer weight of his royal bloodline pressure brought every high-ranking wolf in the room to their knees.

Clarence, caught directly in its path, didn't even get the chance to scream.

His charging body was slammed into the floor by an invisible force. The marble cracked beneath him. The sound of breaking bones made everyone's skin crawl.

Raymond walked through the shattered glass, his boots hitting the floor with heavy, measured thuds.

He stopped in front of Olivia.

The entire hall went dead silent, broken only by Clarence's pained, convulsive gasps.

Under the stunned, disbelieving stares of everyone present, the tyrant who controlled the arteries of the global economy went down on one knee.

He took Olivia's hand and pressed his lips to the back of her fingers.

"First time meeting you in person, my queen." Raymond looked up. His gray-blue eyes churned with a possessive hunger that bordered on obsession. "I'm very pleased with this reunion gift you've arranged."

He had recognized her the moment he saw her. Tricks that simple could never fool his eyes.

Olivia's golden slit pupils contracted sharply. She instinctively tried to pull her hand back.

Raymond closed his grip and pulled her straight into his arms.

The icy scent of cold fir wrapped around her from head to toe, cutting her off from everyone else's view.

He glanced sideways at Clarence on the floor, the way someone might look at a piece of garbage.

"Effective immediately, Vanguard Threshold Group belongs to her." His low, rough voice delivered the verdict. "As for the trash on the floor — chop it up and feed it to the dogs."

Olivia was pressed against the man's hard chest, her palms braced against his shoulders.

Raymond lowered his head. His rough fingertips traced slowly along her exposed neck, over her pulse point.

"My runaway queen. Now it's time to settle the interest you've racked up all this time."

Olivia's heart jumped with guilt. She tried to pull back, but Raymond held her in place.

If it hadn't been for her search for her mother's belongings, she never would have gone near Clarence in the first place.