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CHAPTER 76Two weeks later, Jack was fast asleep when the Smiths and their cronies struck. They struck him hard and they struck him well. There was no way he would have seen it coming. The series of events that accumulated to the eventual strike were so random and so coincidental that Jack would never have thought they were so carefully planned out and that his own tendencies to do what was logical over what was emotional was used against him.“Bro! Bro!” Mildred frantically ran into Jack’s room at the wee hours of the next morning. She had been fast asleep too but the rapid sound of notifications hitting her phone for minutes unending woke her up.“What is it, Mildred? It’s still early in the morning. My fucking alarm hasn’t gone off yet,” Jack replied in a groggy voice, stretching his frame and yawning.“There’s trouble bro. Trouble,” Mildred replied in a shaky voice. “The bank just called…..there was a glitch, a…someone hacked. Our money, all of our money is gone.”“Slow down Mildre
CHAPTER 77A deep frown covered Jack’s face as soon as he saw Laurel Smith. He thought his enemies had come to mock him. Not once did it cross Jack’s mind that they could be behind his predicament, it was just hard for him to think in that manner because he truly believed that their account was impenetrable.The software engineers and developers were left clueless. The only thing they kept telling Jack was that the transaction was authorised from his end but the only problem was that the IP address wasn’t his, it wasn’t even there.“These people looked up to you Jack and you just let them down like this? That’s not a good quality for a leader to possess,” Laurel continued in a smug tone, walking to the middle of the room.Everything was going according to their plan. Jack would grovel and beg just like they wanted him to and when he was done, they had a plan to bury him alive, so he could keep dying and reawaken under the weight of the sand above him. An eternal punishment for the man
CHAPTER 78Once Jack left the conference room in the manner that he did, Mildred tried her best to handle the aftermath properly but the damage had already been done.Publications maligning and slandering the Bolton family were already everywhere. The investors were calling, majority shareholders were threatening, minority shareholders were staging a peaceful protest against the company.They were being hit with lawsuits from different angles and Jack was at the middle of it all, overnight he had gone from the most loved hero to the most hated villain.It was like dejavu to Jack. This was exactly how he felt eleven years ago when Christopher framed him. He was clueless, broken and deeply sad. That was the same exact feeling that he had right now.He just felt so lethargic, he knew he had to do something, the circumstances were much different and the stakes were far higher but he just couldn’t bring himself to critically start to brainstorm for solutions and likely possibilities with al
CHAPTER 79“Where’s who? There’s no one here gentlemen,” Jack replied, standing firm on his feet from the shove.“Bullshit,” One of the men replied.“We saw her run in this direction. Bring her out now before we mess you and your fancy cottage up,” Another one threatened.Jack observed the four men in front of him. He knew he could take on all four of them if worse comes to worst, besides its not like they can kill him.“There’s no need to make threats, I told you there’s no one here but be my guest if you want to check but I must warn you, there will be consequences,” Jack replied.“The fuck do you mean by that? Are you threatening us? Do you want to die?” One of the men challenged Jack angrily.“Tear the place apart, find that bitch and bring her here. The boss needs her alive. I’ll deal with these arrogant fool myself,” the first of the men said.The cottage was still dark since Jack has turned off the lights. It wasn’t pitch black that the men couldn’t see each other because rays o
CHAPTER 80“My academic background is in neuroscience but I’ve had a love for programming and coding since I was a child so it just kind of grew on me till my adulthood. And with the emergence of artificial intelligence and machine learning, an idea came to my mind two years ago, to develop a self taught artificial intelligence that could completely replicate human behaviour and our thought patterns, almost becoming like a human itself.”Jack scoffed. “Is that even possible? Robots are robots. People coded them. They can never think for themselves.”“You are right. I can’t quite make them think like humans but they will be the closest thing to the power and extent of human thought.”“How?” Jack asked. His interest was already piqued and the businessman side of his persona was already calculating potential ways that he could make profit off of this if it turned out to be legit.“Through my background in neuroscience. We humans are creatures of habit and all my software needs to do is le
CHAPTER 81“You both shouldn’t have put yourself out there like that, openly ridiculing him,” the thumb said to the smith brothers. “You worry too much. There’s no way he can think or even know that we are behind this. You said the money is untraceable right?” Laurel replied.“Yeah pretty much I guess,” The thumb replied.“You guess? What does that even mean? Can the money be traced or not?” Gregory asked in an alarmed tone, his voice slightly raised.They didn’t want anything traced back to them at all, not necessarily because they were scared of what Jack could do to them but they had openly ridiculed him in front of millions across the country and if it so happens that people find out they were behind the scandal, it would tarnish their image completely and they could face a lot of years behind bars.“Relax okay? If it’s online, it means it can be traced. I just put a lot of misleading prints to cover the actual transfer prints of the money. It would take a genius smarter than me t
CHAPTER 82“Are you sure you can do this?” Jack asked Alicia once they got back to his office from the cottage that day. Mildred was against it and even Jack himself was reluctant but like Alicia said, there was no harm in trying.“Have a little faith. I’ll do my best,” Alicia replied confidently.This wasn’t her first rodeo. She had done stuff like this in the past for fun previously. From the young age of five, she could already build and develop complex models that some self acclaimed geniuses couldn’t.She was always drawn to computers and coding and programming but her parents wanted their only daughter to be a neurologist which Alicia had no choice but to study with equal passion but she never let go of her love for the software programming and hacking world.“Alright,” Jack replied. “Give it your best shot.”Alicia started her work, tapping away on the keyboard frantically. She initially thought it was going to be a piece of cake but it turned out to be way harder than she expec
CHAPTER 83“For real?” Mildred’s eyes widened with excitement. She stared keenly at the computer screen and she could see the digits clearly written on it.She grabbed Alicia and hugged her tightly, planting kisses on her cheek. “I knew it. I knew you could do it.”“I’m pretty sure you didn’t,” Jack replied and they all laughed heartily.“It’s fine, the good thing is we found the money,” Alicia replied.“So what’s the next step? Can you recover it?” Jack asked keenly. His hopes were up. Even though it took Alicia a while and it cost him a lot of resources, it was the first glimmer of light in their otherwise bleak situation.“Let me try. It’s not going to be easy. Whoever’s behind this should already know I found the money and they’ll be looking to move it out as soon as possible and if the person behind the hack was to move the money and cover it in a layer of networks like they did before, the money may become damn near impossible to find.”“So then we have to hurry and move it out t