Gloria directly jumped onto the coffee table in front of Coster, looking down at him. She pulled down her sunglasses to reveal her eyes as she looked at Coster’s face, speaking deliberately as if afraid he wouldn’t understand.
"I said, not a single dollar less. Do you understand?"
Surrounded by his underlings, Coster wasn’t going to give in. He didn’t believe a corporate lackey would have such resolve. Would the boss’s business really require people risking their lives?
He stood up, gritting his teeth, pointing the revolver at Gloria’s head.
"You’re bluffing me, huh? I was raised on fear! Go ahead, try it if you dare!"
His eyes were bloodshot, his face ferocious. Even though Gloria was standing on the coffee table, she was still shorter than him by a fraction, but she didn’t give an inch in terms of momentum.
"Do you believe I’ll shoot you dead right now?"
"Really? I don’t believe you."
Gloria didn’t flinch at all. She even grabbed the barrel of the revolver and bent it to point at her own forehead.
"Come on, fire! Let me see how many lives you have to trade with me."
As if recalling something, Gloria added to Coster,
"You’d better tell your hacker to be careful. The bomb is connected to my transceiver signal. If the neural pulse frequency exceeds the threshold, it’ll explode instantly."
"Here’s a bonus message. Before this gig, I was half an emergency doctor. Maybe one of your lives was saved by me."
Coster’s lips trembled. He’d seen plenty of reckless edgelords and punks, all walking the line on the edge of death in pursuit of getting rich overnight or becoming legends.
But never had a corporate lackey dared to do this.
They had a privileged life, high social status, and would never roll in the mud with thugs, much less use their life to make threats.
He looked into Gloria’s eyes, trying to find a hint of panic.
But unfortunately, there was none of that in Gloria’s eyes. Since that night, she had ordered herself to do everything the other side commanded at any cost.
Even if it meant betting her own life.
So the person in front of him was serious.
Even if the bomb was fake, Coster didn’t dare to gamble.
His lips trembled, then his hands started shaking, almost unable to hold the gun.
And Gloria had no intention of letting him off the hook.
"What’s the matter, sir? Is your gun not working, or you don’t know how to use it? Need me to teach you?"
She pulled out the gun tied to her waist and pointed it at Coster’s head.
The surrounding underlings immediately panicked, but facing such a large amount of explosives, they dared not move. This was at least ten kilos, enough to send half a football field’s worth of people sky high. They’d even shut the warehouse doors, making it hard to escape, really like shooting themselves in the foot.
Coster’s face was pale, with beads of sweat on his forehead. The liquor he just drank now oozed out completely.
"Haha...." His throat sounded dry as if scorched by a branding iron.
"I was just joking with you, no need to take it seriously."
After saying this, he spread his hands out and then put down the gun, ordering his deputies to bring up the remaining box of money.
Coster managed a grim smile.
"All the money’s here. Our Sixth Street Gang never shortchanges business partners."
Gloria glanced at the box of money, then put away her gun. She put her sunglasses back on, flicked her red curls from her forehead, and gave Coster a charming, toothy smile,
although in his eyes, it looked like the smile of a madwoman.
"We like to do business with honest people, sir, but I hope next time you won’t tell such humorless cold jokes."
She then signaled to Wildman to take the money box from the table and instructed the others to bring down the box with the full set of exoskeleton parts from the vehicle.
Coster asked somewhat urgently, "No need to check?"
Gloria stuck her gun back in her belt, then jumped down from the coffee table, ready to leave by car. Hearing this, she replied, her back to Coster,
"Since you said the Sixth Street Gang never shortchanges business partners, why wouldn’t I believe you?"
"Of course, our company doesn’t want the Sixth Street Gang to have gaps due to needing to find someone new to hand over business next time. Business thrives on harmony."
Halfway through, Gloria seemed to recall something, called over the giant, and after saying a few words, he nodded immediately and started to remove the explosives vest he was wearing.
He was the one who suggested making the bomb vest; now he could only say,
’Am I awesome or what?’
The confrontation just now felt like a scene straight out of a Hong Kong gangster film. He felt even cooler than when fighting with the Night Wanderer, like the reincarnation of Chow Yun-fat, just remarkably suave.
And his actions startled those Sixth Street Gang thugs, who thought this group of corporate lackeys was going to double-cross.
But luckily, the giant only removed the explosives vest and placed it on the coffee table in front of Coster along with the detonator.
And then, with an air of arrogance and swagger, he said,
"Our boss lady said, this is the tip you asked for, no need for change. It cost me over two thousand to have it made, remember, I am the West Lake Giant!"
Coster was too exhausted to gripe about the bizarre name. Even as he watched these corporate lackeys load the exoskeleton equipment boxes and drive the vehicle out of the warehouse, he couldn’t snap out of it.
Long after they left, he slumped back onto the sofa, not caring about his own embarrassment, while his underling took the explosives vest out to a remote area to disarm.
Whether real or fake, they were just nobodies at the bottom, living without rights.
Soon, the person disarming the bomb came back and said,
"Boss, the bomb is real, but it wasn’t connected to a transceiver, only a detonator trigger it; we can reuse it once dismantled."
Coster’s undershirt was drenched in cold sweat. He leaned back exhaustedly, hands over his face as if trying to wash away the adrenaline.
"Damn it, we ran into a bunch of lunatics today."