The phone was slammed down.
Darren held his phone, frozen in bed.
Top Secret?
Although he was a dissolute playboy, he knew what this implied.
This meant the other party wasn't just some rich second generation or official second generation, but one of that small, mysterious group truly standing at the apex of the nation's power pyramid.
"How could... how could this happen..."
Darren's lips trembled, and his phone slipped to the floor.
The effeminate man nearby flashed a hint of ecstasy in his eyes, but feigned panic on his face.
"Bro, what... what should we do? Even uncle Vasily has been suspended?"
Just then, the door to the hospital room was violently kicked open.
Bang!
A powerful middle-aged man wearing an expensive suit rushed in, followed by a group of bodyguards in black.
It was none other than Darren's father, the Desantos Family patriarch, Silvester Desantos.
At this moment, Silvester's face was ashen, his forehead covered in cold sweat, and his eyes filled with terror.
"Dad? Why are you here? You have to help me sort this out..."
Darren had yet to realize the seriousness of the situation, and instinctively wanted to complain tearfully.
Slap!
An extremely loud slap landed viciously on Darren's face.
Silvester Desantos had put all his strength into the slap, swelling half of Darren's face, drawing blood from his lip, and leaving him completely stunned.
"Sort this out? I'm here to collect your corpse today."
Silvester Desantos was trembling with rage, pointing at Darren's nose and cursing.
"You stupid son, you moron! How did I usually teach you? I told you to keep a low profile! Do you know who just called me? It was the National Security Service, it was the Military Department!"
"They said you are suspected of endangering national security and attempting to assault an important national leader."
"Now, all of our group's bank accounts have been frozen, all our partners just announced contract terminations, and the IRS and Industry and Commerce Bureau are already on their way to the company."
"It's all over, just because you, you hormonal animal, were fighting over a girl."
The angrier Silvester Desantos became, the more he wanted to grab the nearby chair and smash it, but the bodyguards held him back tightly.
"Dad... I didn't know, I really didn't know who he was..."
Darren finally broke down, wetting his pants in fear, and burst into wails.
In the corner, the effeminate man watched the scene, feeling utterly delighted.
'Hehehe the Desantos Family has fallen.'
He quietly retreated behind the crowd, trying to minimize his presence, while inwardly plotting how to get his own father to swallow up the Desantos Family's remaining market share upon returning.
He had bet correctly.
That young man truly was an iron wall, a titanium alloy plate capable of smashing the Desantos Family's large ship into pieces.
Meanwhile, in another quiet and elegant teahouse in D.C.
Steve was sitting by the window with Stefanie, savoring a cup of excellent hot chocolate.
Fred quickly walked up to Steve, bowed slightly, and reported in a low voice.
"Director, we just received news that the Desantos Family has been completely controlled, all assets frozen, and relevant personnel are under investigation."
Hearing this, Steve took a small sip of tea and said calmly.
"Mhm, don't worry about them, it's just dogs fighting dogs. The kid next to Darren has malicious intent, but letting him succeed once won't hurt, as long as they stop bothering Stefanie."
"Yes."
Fred nodded, and his expression immediately became more serious.
"Furthermore, there is a more crucial piece of news: the National Treasury just sent a confidential telegram saying that the deployment is almost complete and they are preparing to close the net."
Hearing this, Steve put down his teacup, a sharp glint flashing in his eyes.
"Is it finally time to begin..."
He looked at the bustling city outside the window and murmured inwardly.
"Time to harvest the crops."
Almost simultaneously.
Across the ocean, in Shangai, in the City of London, and in Moscow.
Alarms blared almost simultaneously in the core computer rooms of central banks and top investment banks across various countries.
That was the highest level Red Alert, triggered only when a catastrophic financial disaster occurred.
"What happened? Is it a system failure?"
Countless traders stared at their screens in horror.
They saw that the gold price chart, which was already weak due to America's previous sell-off, suddenly showed a terrifying vertical cliff dive.
Monitoring data showed that over 50 major offshore gold trading accounts worldwide dumped massive quantities of physical gold in the same second, regardless of cost or consequence.
The entities behind these accounts were complex, including mysterious offshore funds and seemingly unrelated shell companies, but their operation at this moment was singular.
Sell!
And the magnitude of this sell-off... was exactly one hundred times the total amount America had previously dumped.
Was that thousands of tons?
Tens of thousands of tons?
Or hundreds of thousands of tons?!
This number instilled fear in them.
'This is impossible, there isn't this much gold on Earth."
At the Kremlin Headquarters, the Director of the Economic Intelligence Analysis Bureau looked at the report in his hands, his own hands shaking.
"Director, according to the top-secret intelligence just received, America...
America is suspected of having mastered some kind of alchemy technology, and its national gold reserve is, on a physical level... nearly infinite."
Before the governments of various countries could react.
An article titled "Financial Apocalypse Brought by America?" was first published by some unknown media outlet and instantly swept across the global network.
Panic was completely unleashed.
If there is too much of something, it loses value—that's a truth even a three-year-old understands.
If gold truly became as cheap as copper and iron, then all financial systems based on the gold standard would instantly collapse.
The London Gold Market halted trading immediately upon opening.
Within one hour, the price of gold plummeted by 25%, setting the largest single-day drop in the three millennia since humans began keeping financial records.
But this was only the beginning.
With the collapse of the spot market, trillions of dollars worth of gold-anchored financial derivatives markets instantly chain-exploded.
In Switzerland, a top private bank with two hundred years of history declared insolvency and immediately went into bankruptcy liquidation after heavily investing in gold futures, all within ten minutes.
The world was shaken.
Countless investors, ruined by margin calls, wailed on rooftops.
"A scam! This is a complete and utter scam."
"No wonder America was frantically dumping gold before; they were setting a trap for us, these fucking americans."
Global public opinion instantly reversed, criticizing America fiercely, but the American government maintained a strange silence, and even used the plummeted competing currencies on the international market to frantically snap up various mineral resources and high-tech equipment.
And in this storm, the most miserable victim was China.
In Beijing, the Ministry of Finance Building was utterly silent.
It had taken over a large amount of gold futures sold by Russia at a high price a few days ago, attempting to help its master stabilize the market.
As a result, they were now stuck with all of it.
"It's over... everything is over..."
The Minister of Finance slumped on the floor, staring at the astronomical red figures of loss on the screen.
The Yuan exchange rate instantly collapsed, prices skyrocketed, and even toilet paper was snatched up from supermarkets.
Angry citizens rushed into the streets, and some even began storming the streets.