Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System!-Chapter 500: Ashfords Vs Wilders

Parker stared at the pendant in Helena’s hands like he’d just realized he’d been playing checkers while everyone else was playing 4D chess with reality itself. The damn thing suddenly felt like it weighed more than everything the Ashfords could scrape together in their wildest trust fund dreams—and that was saying something, considering these people probably wiped their asses with hundred-dollar bills.

But this? This little piece of metal and cosmic fuckery represented something way beyond money—it was like holding a piece of his mother’s grand design. And knowing her, she probably planned this exact moment down to the millisecond because she was extra like that.

’Holy shit, Mom really said, "let me just casually manipulate fate across four decades" and called it Tuesday.’

Even if the whole thing had been orchestrated, infected into by the Ashfords with help from... something. Some entity not bound by boardrooms or stock prices. Something otherworldly. And then they’d used that leverage to threaten Tessa. Force her into a marriage with Aleric. A cold-blooded play to consolidate power under the guise of unity.

The little mundanes had been used and hadn’t counted on Parker.

They hadn’t known that the man Tessa loved—quietly, secretly—was Parker, the one Grandfather Wilder owed his life to, the son of the very woman who had pulled him out of a back-alley death four decades ago.

And now all the threads were tightening.

Right here. Right now.

*

Grandfather Wilder stepped forward with the kind of energy that made everyone in the ballroom suddenly remember why this old bastard survived when everyone else from his generation had become footnotes in very expensive obituaries. His weathered face was set in an expression that could cut glass and probably intimidate small countries into surrendering their lunch money.

The man looked like he was about to deliver the kind of verbal beatdown that got talked about in business schools for decades, and honestly? Everyone there was absolutely there for it.

This was the moment. Everyone knew he’d just been fucking with the Ashfords about giving Tessa away—not after what those pendejos tried to pull.

He turned to face Dominic Ashford with the kind of slow, deliberate movement that screamed, "I’m about to end this man’s whole career and maybe his will to live," and the air in the ballroom grew so thick with tension you could probably cut it with a butter knife and serve it at dinner parties.

"Dominic," Grandfather Wilder said, his voice carrying the kind of calm authority that made nuclear weapons seem like firecrackers, "we need to talk. Man to man. Family to family. Because apparently, your definition of ’partnership’ involves threatening my granddaughter and treating my family like we’re some kind of corporate acquisition you can just... purchase."

The old man’s voice could freeze hell over and make the devil ask for a sweater.

Dominic’s face was already doing that thing where it cycled through colors that didn’t exist in nature, but he was trying to maintain that media empire composure like his reputation wasn’t currently being fed through a wood chipper.

"Now hold on, Luciano—"

"No, you hold on, cabrón," the old man interrupted, and several people in the crowd actually gasped because Grandfather Wilder had just dropped Spanish profanity like he was channeling his inner telenovela villain. "You sent your boy here to my family home, to force my granddaughter into this sick engagement—which, by the way, was supposed to be a celebration, not a hostile takeover attempt if you had trusted the process and if you pathetic boy had balls big enough to convince her years ago—and you had the absolute audacity to think you could pressure us into this arrangement."

Parker could practically hear the phantom echo of the entity behind the Ashfords—some force that smelled like old blood and unnatural patience—slipping into shadows as things started to turn.

Aleric, who’d finally managed to peel himself off the marble floor and reassemble what was left of his dignity, stepped forward like he was about to say something that might salvage this clusterfuck of a situation.

But honestly, the kid looked like he’d gotten hit by a truck full of reality checks and cosmic justice, so his chances of saying anything intelligent were about as good as a snowball’s survival prospects in actual hell.

Poor bastard still thought this was about money and traditional power plays. freewebnσvel.cøm

"Sir, with all due respect," Aleric started, his voice cracking like a pubescent teenager trying to ask someone to prom, "the Ashford family has resources that could benefit—"

"Resources?" Grandfather Wilder laughed, and it wasn’t a pleasant sound. It was the kind of laugh that made people check their life insurance policies and maybe start praying to whatever deity handled cosmic justice. "Son, let me tell you something about resources. Forty years ago, I was broken, bleeding in an alley, watching everything I’d built crumble because of forces I couldn’t understand or fight. As my life flashed before my eyes, I thought I was finished, my family, my son, our family generation failed and ended by me. Done. Finito."

The entire ballroom hung on every word like it was the most gripping Netflix series they’d ever binged.

"But a woman named Val—" he gestured toward Helena, who was still holding the pendant like she was presenting evidence in a cosmic court case, "—she didn’t just save my life. She gave me something your family, with all your media empire bullshit and your generational wealth and your stock portfolios, could never provide. She gave me understanding. Protection. Another second life through rains of bullets on that motorcycle future."

And that woman—Val—had a son. Parker. The same Parker who had stepped into the Ashfords’ little puppet show and torn it apart. The same Parker who, by some divine irony, had been dating Tessa under their noses. The same Parker who had just made this whole damn ballroom realize what kind of protection they were actually dealing with.

Parker smiled; ’Old man, even if all the gods and beings in Existence had gathered against you, mom would’ve saved you still like it was another Friday, just for her son’s awakening’

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