Two days of relentless tension roared past like a whirlwind. Inside the makeshift M&A war room, the air was thick with the scent of ozone from office equipment left running overnight. The frantic clatter of keyboards alternated with the steady rustle of flipping pages. Adisorn sat immersed in high-stakes concentration, scrutinizing scanned dossiers with narrowed eyes. The blue light from the monitors reflected in his sharp pupils, where faint shadows of exhaustion had begun to bloom—yet his gaze remained electric.
"Mr. Markrim..." Jing Yi stepped in, a massive stack of documents cradled in her arms. The accountant's face was pale with alarm. "I've found a significant anomaly... one that could shift the entire trajectory of this deal."
Adisorn tore his eyes away from the complex debt structure graphs on his screen. He swiveled his chair to face the papers placed before him. "What kind of anomaly, Jing Yi?"
"In KCC's expenditure accounts. There is a recurring entry titled 'Special Project Advisory Fee,'" she explained, handing him a document underscored in deep crimson. "These funds were transferred to a firm called Fei Yuan Assets. My background check revealed they are registered as a management consultancy, but when I sent someone to the physical address... it's just a derelict building on the outskirts of the city. It's a shell company."
"Who authorized these 'phantom' payments?" Adisorn asked, tracing the numbers that had been meticulously fragmented into small sums to evade audits.
"This is the most shocking part..." Jing Yi pointed to the signature line at the bottom, marked by a post-it note. "It wasn't CFO Lu Rong, as we initially suspected. Every single one of them bears the signature of Chairwoman Zhou Mi Ling."
Adisorn fell silent. A faint, mocking smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. He set the document down slowly and reclined into his leather chair. His gaze, once hard, became unfathomably deep and chillingly still.
Chairwoman Mi Ling... the woman the world viewed as fragile, untainted, and loyal to a fault. Employees adored her kindness, seeing her as a 'white cloth' being stained by a ruthless board. But a memory flickered in Adisorn's mind—the evening after he had met her at the coffee shop, when Tum had approached him with a grave expression.
"Mr. Sorn, are you certain about choosing Mi Ling as a piece in this game?" Tum had asked with concern. "When you spoke to her, I saw an aura that shouldn't be trusted. It was a murky blend: the yellow of schemes, the red of ambition, and the black of secrets so deep they were suffocating. I think we've misread this woman."
At the time, Adisorn had merely nodded with a smile that made Tum frown. "I know..."
"How could you know?" Tum had wondered. He was the one with the 'special eyes,' yet Adisorn seemed to perceive the same darkness without the need for the supernatural.
Adisorn had grinned like a devil who had finally met his own kind. As a man who had trampled over others to reach the summit, he didn't need mystical vision to recognize evil.
"No one who climbs to the chair of a CK Group subsidiary is a 'white cloth' who allows themselves to be easily stained, Tum," Adisorn had replied. "If she were truly weak, those vultures would have devoured her years ago. The fact that she stands tall under such immense pressure is proof of how sharp her hidden talons truly are. She isn't a pitiful victim; she is the one player we must never underestimate."
Snapping back to the present, Adisorn looked at the documents on his desk with an icy stare. His long fingers tapped a steady, rhythmic cadence on the paper.
"It seems Chairwoman Mi Ling is playing a much larger game than we anticipated."
"What kind of game, Mr. Markrim?" Jing Yi whispered.
"The game of someone who knows they are about to fall from grace," Adisorn narrowed his eyes. "She realizes that after the M&A deal is finalized, her position will no longer be secure. So, she began embezzling funds through non-existent projects. Instead of grand heists that would draw suspicion, she chose small, fragmented payouts that her authority as Chairwoman could authorize directly—bypassing the CFO's scrutiny."
He flipped through the advisory fees that had permeated the accounts like a malignant cancer. "Chairwoman Mi Ling is no victim. Beneath that mask of unwavering loyalty lies one of the most cold-blooded players in the room."
Adisorn gathered the documents into a neat pile, his eyes alight with a new, superior strategy.
"Jing Yi, keep this under absolute secrecy. Not a word to anyone—not even Dr. Li Ming. This information will be our 'leash'." He offered a smile laced with dark intent. "I will wait for the perfect moment... then I will tug on this leash and make her dance to the rhythm of my game alone."