From Bullets To Billions Chapter 567: Only One

Karen was getting calls from all sorts of different mbers of her team. At first she was snappy with her replies, she told them to try and fight against what they were saying. Record what they said on their phones so they could use it to file a lawsuit against them. She had expected a response and she was ready to try and fight it back, that was until the number of different departnts, safety inspections and more continued to deliver news after news.

Each call felt heavier than the last. At first it had sounded like coincidence, one departnt picking at small details, another raising minor concerns, but as the hours passed it beca clear this wasn’t random. The pattern was too clean, too coordinated. Every few minutes another manager would call her, another issue raised, another violation discovered, another official threatening closure. Her replies slowly lost their sharpness. There were only so many tis she could tell them to docunt everything and push back before the weight of it started pressing down on her chest.

It was far too overwhelming for her in the situation she was in, and when the Departnt store finally shut, she was sat at her desk with multiple papers right in front of her.

The silence after the closure was worse than the noise. No ringing phones. No staff running in and out of her office. Just paper. Stacks of paper. Official notices stamped and signed. Docunts filled with legal terminology. Reports listing violations in cold, clinical language. The kind of language that made it sound like she had been negligent, careless, irresponsible.

"Restaurants closed down due to health and safety violations. Health and safety codes not up to standard all across the departnt store. Broken foundations that need to be repaired, and the list goes on from departnt to departnt. There even claiming that we built further then the land that were allowed on. It’s ridiculous what there managing to pull."

She flipped through another sheet, her fingers trembling slightly. The claims ranged from minor to absurd. So were technicalities that could be argued. Others were completely fabricated. asurents that didn’t match reality. Claims of structural instability that had never once appeared in previous inspections. It wasn’t just nitpicking, it was systematic dismantling.

Although Karen could fight so of these, legal process took a long ti to sort, and since so of these were governnt bodies, they had the power to shut down things before they even got settled.

That was the real problem. Even if she proved them wrong months later, it wouldn’t matter. The damage would already be done. Custors wouldn’t wait for court rulings. Vendors wouldn’t keep paying rent in a building that had been publicly declared unsafe. Reputation once shaken didn’t simply snap back into place.

The damage would be done before she could even do anything, and she was already seeing this place. The news of what had happened across the shops had co out. Especially with the top end restaurants being closed down for business due to the health and safety inspections.

She could already imagine the headlines. Luxury dining venue shut over violations. Departnt store under investigation. The public never read beyond the first few lines. They never questioned whether sothing was targeted or manipulated. They just avoided it.

Of course with how everything was going on, it was obvious that it was a targeted case. It wasn’t natural by any ans, but why should the vendors care about that? If the departnt was being targeted then it was best for them to just close their shops and put their resources into a different place.

Karen leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. Years. Years of negotiating contracts. Years of building trust with designers, restaurant owners, investors. She had fought hard to make the departnt store a flagship location. It wasn’t just another retail space. It was the face of her brand.

"All my years of hard work, everything I built up, even my own fashion brand, it’s flagship shop is in this store, and most of the sales co from here...with no footfall that’s dood, the warehouses I have to pay for... all of it the paynts to fix this place, all of it is gone."

Her voice cracked slightly as she spoke aloud. The warehouses alone cost a fortune. Inventory that would now sit untouched. Staff salaries that still had to be paid. Contractors demanding paynt for ergency repairs that might not even be necessary. Cash flow would dry up quickly under pressure like this.

Karen was almost pulling out her hair, as she thought about what she could do.

She had money, yes. But influence was sothing different. Whoever was behind this had managed to coordinate inspectors, governnt bodies, and enforcent departnts simultaneously. That wasn’t just wealth. That was reach.

’They must be a rather large and influential group who is targeting to be able to get all of these organisations to co after . Even with my money I doubt I could do anything.’ Karen thought and that’s when it ca to her mind.

There was one person she knew that had the strongest influential power and could stop all of this in a heartbeat, so she picked up the phone and made the call.

It wasn’t a call she wanted to make. Pride had stopped her many tis before. She had built her business largely independent of him. She had wanted to prove that she didn’t need his shadow looming over her success. But now this wasn’t about pride. This was survival.

After making the call, even though it was late at night, she knew when it ant business that she would have to venture out now. As she got in her car and drove away, she t with the familiar gated driveway, and she was nervous.

The Stern manor had always felt imposing at night. The gates tall, the driveway long, the lights casting long shadows across the stone. As the car rolled forward, she felt smaller with every tre.

Her body was sweating her heart was pounding, but if she lost the departnt store and her fashion brand, she would have lost everything she lived and worked for, which was why she had driven to the Stern manor.

She was currently inside the head office, where Dennis Stern was sat there waiting, with whisky right by his table.

"Your still needing that as a night cap, father." Karen said.

"Well with all the stress that my own family mbers still give to this day, it’s needed, although it has beco a habit that I am quite fond of." Dennis replied. "We all have our vices and mine is this, so leave be. Besides, I have a feeling I might need a few more glasses after our talk."

Karen gulped it was always like this, talking to her father, it wasn’t the sa as other families. It was almost like talking to the head CEO of a company that could fire you at any mont.

He didn’t look at her like a daughter in distress. He looked at her like an executive who had co to report losses. His posture was relaxed, but his eyes were sharp. Evaluating.

"Father, there has been issues at the departnt store. Issues that aren’t any fault of my own, I’m currently being targeted. They’re paying governnts, hiring goons and more to attack us. I think soone might be targeting the Stern family as a whole. Which was why I ca here. I thought maybe you could do sothing to stop them. Or could find out why they’re doing this, to make it an even playing ground."

Karen was trying to plead to her father by using words like the Stern family rather than her own business. There was a part of her that thought that this still might have been one of the Stern’s doing though, now though she just had to wait for her father’s answer.

Dennis took a slow sip of his whisky before placing the glass back down.

"You...disappoint ." Dennis claid.