Ethan's reaction was beyond swift, almost like teleportation.
His expression instantly shifted to one of appropriate reverence and intimacy.
Like the most loyal knight, he steadily caught his mother's outstretched wrist at the bottom of the stairs.
And accepted a heavy document bag.
His movements were fluid, carrying an ingrained noble upbringing.
"My precious, always so thoughtful."
Victoria's lips curved slightly, accepting her son's thoughtfulness with pleasure.
Once she stood, her gaze swept over her husband's ashen face, "Now, can you tell me what made the 'Roosevelt Whiskey' boil over prematurely?"
Her tone was gentle, but the end of her sentence carried an undeniable sharpness.
"Victoria, it's those… Bush family…"
Howard squeezed out a roar-like growl from deep within his chest, like a wounded dragon, striding towards the only anchor and haven in his life.
However, upon meeting Victoria's eyes, as serene as if they contained the stars and the sea, the original city-destroying ferocity miraculously and slowly receded, settled, and finally transformed into an almost devout dependence and… an urgent need to confide.
"They're going to launch Project Sirius!
Sacrificing blood to so-called gods!"
"—'Mad dogs with crude oil and sulfur in their brains'?"
Victoria accurately repeated her husband's "poetic expression," her eyes elegantly upturned at the corners, with a hint of playfulness: "My dear, I feel your anger, but your vocabulary… seems to still be stuck on the West Point parade ground."
"Uh…"
"Heh heh."
Noticing Howard's embarrassment, Ethan let out a very soft chuckle from his throat.
His father, known for his "fierceness" in New York politics, only revealed this rare, almost clumsy docility in front of his beloved.
Victoria ignored her son's small gesture, gracefully sitting down like a queen, and casually placed the document bag on her lap.
Her gaze instantly became more terrifying than Howard's rage—it was absolute rationality at absolute zero, as if she had insight into the threads of the loom of fate: "Project Sirius… So you were worried about this?"
"What else?!"
Howard's brows furrowed again, his voice heavy as lead, "Our foundation, our heart, is in New York!
Victoria, once the sky over Manhattan is ignited, it won't just affect the Twin Towers!
The pulse of the entire financial world will stop!
Our Franklin lineage's century of accumulation…"
The "we" in his mouth clearly referred to the branch within the Roosevelt family, established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, which now firmly controls New York's core resources.
As a living history of America, the Roosevelt family has continuously branched out over centuries.
Today, their bloodline is like the roots of an oak tree, deeply embedded in every inch of the power soil of the European and American continents, coexisting with the nation (this "nation" refers to a massive cross-border community of interests).
From beneath the dome of Capitol Hill in Washington to the ivory towers of Ivy League schools, and to the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Roosevelt name is ubiquitous, woven into a giant net covering every corner of elite society.
"Please put aside your fears, Howard, Ethan.
In this world, it's not just those Texas brutes from the Bush family, with their heads full of inferior crude oil, who get to cast the dice on the wheel of fate!"
Victoria's gaze swept over her husband's ashen face and the flicker of wavering in her son's eyes: "Even if the sky over New York is indeed ignited by them, the Roosevelt family will stand firm upon the ashes, and even… draw abundant nourishment from it to sustain the next century."
"What?!"
Hearing his wife's reply, Howard's roar was abruptly choked off as if by invisible threads.
And Ethan's heart, too, felt as if it had been gripped by a cold hand, skipping a beat.
His voice carried a hint of extreme, suppressed tension.
Could it be that the family's reach had already extended into an even darker abyss that even he, a transmigrator, had not glimpsed?
"Mom…"
You already knew that Bush would launch Sirius soon?!"
"Heh heh!
Want to know?"
Victoria did not answer directly, but instead gently placed the document bag in her hand on the gleaming Carrara white marble coffee table, her movements elegant yet carrying an undeniable authority, "Then take a look at this."
Howard sank heavily into the deep red velvet armchair symbolizing the family's authority.
His gaze, as if drawn by a magnet, was fixed on the ominous document bag, his outstretched fingers trembling slightly with a tremor he himself hadn't noticed, seized by a vast unknown.
Ethan silently approached, sitting beside his father.
His eyes were sharp as a hawk's, his brain operating like an overclocked quantum computer, furiously calculating every possibility, every consequence—what was Victoria's trump card?
How much did the family really know?
Would his carefully woven "Prescott Testimony" be mercilessly exposed at this moment?
"Sshh—"
Howard almost violently tore open the seal of the document bag.
The inner cover immediately caught his eye—below the Roosevelt family's majestic eagle claw emblem gripping the thorn-entwined globe, a scarlet "TOP SECRET" stamp, like a red-hot branding iron fiercely pressed down, exuded the soul-shaking aura of the highest authorization from the Elder Council.
"Obsidian Fund?!"
As a direct descendant of the family, Ethan knew all too well what that name meant—it was the ultimate fangs buried deep within the family's bloodline, operating in the shadows for generations, only activated at "doomsday moments" concerning the family's survival!
Activating it was tantamount to declaring a silent, life-and-death shadow war!
Victoria's voice was calm and unruffled, as if she were reading a cold financial statement, every syllable tempered with absolute rationality and ruthless calculation: "Since the first ray of dawn in June pierced Manhattan's mist, the precise gears of Zurich, Switzerland, the deep harbors of the Cayman Islands, the invisible channels of Liechtenstein… these capital havens, existing outside the rule of sunlight, have become the extending veins of 'Obsidian.' "
"The family's core lifelines in New York—those foundations flowing with golden blood, supporting our glory in the sunlight—have been silently dismantled, transferred, and reassembled, like props in the hands of the most skilled magician.
They have donned a magnificent camouflage woven from offshore trusts and shell matrices, so intricate it would dizzy any regulator, hidden beneath the chaotic mist of globalization, awaiting the storm."
She paused slightly, her gaze precisely locking onto key data in the document, as if admiring a meticulously drawn battle map: "At the same time, 'Obsidian's' claws have long reached into the abyss of the capital market.
We have built an astonishing scale of death positions, dispersed across thousands of ghost accounts.
The targets are the insurance giants that draped the World Trade Twin Towers in an 'immortal' illusion (on the document page, several top insurance companies' names were highlighted);
The real estate trusts deeply rooted in that steel jungle, sucking the blood of exorbitant rents;
And the airlines whose routes crisscross like a deadly spiderweb beneath the Twin Towers' domes, destined to become sacrifices for the 'anthem'…"