745 The Billion-Dollar Collapse: How a Pregnant Wife Stripped Her Arrogant CEO Husband of His Empire and Left Him with Nothing / Chapter 90 / 100

Chapter 90 - The Long Island Maneuver

Three miles away, inside a cavernous, poorly lit commercial warehouse tucked deep into the industrial grid of Long Island City, the air smelled sharply of ozone, stale coffee, and hot hydraulic fluid.

Viktor Vance paced across the stained concrete floor, his heavy leather boots echoing off the corrugated metal walls. In the center of the bay, a large, modified commercial flatbed truck sat idling, its bed loaded down with racks of heavy-duty military-surplus signal intelligence gear, humming with a low, menacing whine.

At the main console, Leo’s fingers danced across a bank of glowing monitors, watching streams of data cascade down the screens in angry matrices of red and green text.

"We have alignment," Leo announced, his voice tight with nervous anticipation. "We’re pinging the primary utility easement running under Broadway. The inductive probe is locked onto the legacy copper trunk connecting Hartwell Prime to the outer boroughs."

Viktor stopped pacing, walking briskly over to the console and leaning heavily over Leo’s shoulder. "Are we reading any traffic from the Astoria node?"

"Traffic?" Leo laughed dryly. "Viktor, we aren't just reading traffic. We’re sitting right on top of their main data artery. The signal is wide open, bouncing straight out of a basement utility panel in that youth center."

"Then cut the line," Viktor ordered, his eyes gleaming with cold triumph. "Disable the municipal regulators, flood the circuit with fifty thousand volts of raw feedback, and burn their entire switching architecture down to the bare silicon. Let Emily Hartwell try to build a financial empire when her communications grid is a pile of melted slag."

Leo’s fingers flew across the keyboard, executing the override sequence. On the master diagnostic display, a bright green line representing the secure analog carrier began to waver, turning an ominous, pulsing amber as the power output surged from standard telemetry levels up into industrial-grade surge territory.

"Executing feedback loop in three... two..." Leo muttered, hitting the final carriage return.

Inside the warehouse, the massive diesel generator mounted on the back of the flatbed groaned violently, its exhaust pipes spitting a cloud of black smoke as it drew massive amounts of power directly from the commercial grid.

For one second, the monitors flared blindingly bright.

Then, every screen on the console instantly went pitch black.

Leo froze, his fingers suspended over the silent keyboard. He stared blankly at his reflection in the darkened glass. "What... what just happened?"

Before Viktor could answer, a loud, muffled pop echoed from the rear utility compartment of the flatbed. A thick plume of white, acrid smoke began to curl out from the ventilation grilles of the signal rack, accompanied by the sharp, unmistakable smell of fried circuit boards and melted copper insulation.

Leo scrambled out of his seat, tearing open the metal access door of the mobile rig. Inside, every single server blade, routing card, and cryptographic accelerator had been cleanly, perfectly fused into a single, useless block of molten silicon and twisted wire.

Viktor stared at the smoking wreckage, his face draining of all color. "How..." he whispered, his voice trembling with disbelief. "How is that possible? We hit them with the surge."