Chapter 239: Greedy Supplier

Chapter 239: Chapter 239: Greedy Supplier

The soft morning sunlight filtered through the sheer curtains of the master bedroom at The Zenith, warming the dark hardwood floor. Jake Rivers stood by the mirror near the dressing area, buttoning a tailored charcoal field jacket over a crisp white shirt.

Catharine walked up behind him in her cream silk robe, her long hair falling loosely over her shoulders. She wrapped her arms naturally around his waist, resting her head against his back as he adjusted his watch strap.

"You’re up early," Catharine murmured softly, her voice still warm with sleep. "I thought you didn’t have to be at Aurelia Capitals until nine."

Jake turned around in her arms, smiling down at her as he brought his hands up to gently frame her face. "Change of plans. Marcus wants us to run a full site clearance walkthrough this morning before the heavy drilling teams start laying the primary runway foundations."

Catharine blinked, looking up at him. "Wait... the site for Mult International Airport? Isn’t Mult nine hundred kilometers north of the capital?"

"It is," Jake nodded smoothly, thumbing a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "We’re flying up to inspect the terrain, review the soil metrics, and double-check the structural logistics with the head engineers on the ground."

"How are you even getting up there and back in time?" she asked, leaning into his touch. "Are you taking a commercial flight?"

"Adrian arranged his family’s private Gulfstream," Jake replied. "We’re leaving from the executive terminal in forty minutes. The flight up takes just under an hour and fifteen minutes at cruising altitude. We’ll inspect the site and fly straight back this afternoon."

Catharine raised an eyebrow, a teasing smile touching her lips. "Why don’t you guys just spend the night in Mult? The official groundbreaking ceremony with President Spencer and the Ministry of Transport is Friday morning anyway. Flying nine hundred kilometers back and forth twice in twenty-four hours sounds exhausting."

Jake pulled her close by the waist, wrapping his arms securely around her frame until she was flush against his chest. He leaned down, pressing a warm, slow kiss to her temple.

"Because I’d miss you," Jake whispered close to her ear, his voice dropping into a smooth, low register. "And I have no intention of staying in a hotel nine hundred kilometers away when I have you waiting for me right here."

Catharine let out a soft, breathless laugh, her cheeks flushing as she looped her arms around his neck. "Smooth talker. Go on then, before Marcus leaves you behind on the tarmac."

"He wouldn’t dare," Jake smirked, giving her one last lingering kiss before heading for the airstrip.

---

By eight-forty-five, at the private terminal of Aurelia’s executive airport, a sleek, deep-navy Gulfstream G650 stood idling on the tarmac, its twin engines whining softly into the morning air.

Miller pulled the Brabus directly alongside the boarding stairs. Jake stepped out, flanked by Elias, and walked toward the small group assembled near the boarding stairs.

Marcus Sheele stood near the base of the steps, perfectly groomed in a sharp suit with a leather document case tucked under his arm, looking completely refreshed despite the late hour they had retired the night before. Adrian Vale stood beside him in a crisp black shirt, calmly sipping a bitter espresso from a porcelain cup.

Inside the open cabin, however, the picture was vastly different. Noah Chen and Leon Hart were slumping back against the plush leather executive seats, wearing dark sunglasses indoors and nursing bottles of sparkling water.

Jake climbed the stairs, a faint smirk playing on his lips. "You two look like you got run over by a freight train."

"Don’t speak so loud, Jake... your voice is echoing inside my skull," Noah groaned, lowering his sunglasses an inch to glare weakly at him. "I think my liver stayed behind at the bar."

Marcus turned his head, looking into the cabin with a cold, unforgiving eyebrow raised. "I explicitly warned both of you on the mezzanine last night that drinking excessively was an operational error. What time did you even leave the club?"

"Four-thirty," Leon muttered from his seat, pressing a cold towel against his forehead with a quiet wince. "And it’s not even our fault! You and Adrian abandoned us! Jake took off early to drop his student off, so Noah and I were stuck having to entertain those four hyperactive girls by ourselves for two extra hours!"

"Nobody forced you to open a fourth bottle of thirty-year scotch, Leon," Adrian noted dryly from the steps, taking another deliberate sip of his espresso before stepping aboard.

"Hey, it’s fine," Leon argued weakly, leaning his head back against the headrest. "It’s an hour and fifteen minutes in the air. By the time Adrian’s pilot lands us on the northern strip in Mult, the coffee will have kicked in and we’ll be fine."

"You better be," Marcus said, boarding behind them as the flight crew secured the main cabin door. "We’re inspecting a multi-billion-mark international site today. I won’t have my fellow board members stumbling over surveying equipment."

The Gulfstream taxied smoothly down the private strip and lifted off into the clear blue sky, turning north toward the province of Mult.

---

At ten-fifteen in the morning, the jet touched down smoothly on the long runway of Mult’s existing regional airfield.

A convoy of four heavy-duty black off-road SUVs was already waiting directly on the tarmac, engines idling. Thanks to President Spencer personally signing off on the executive tender, Aurelia Capitals hadn’t encountered a single administrative hurdle or municipal roadblock. The land acquisition had been settled instantly, local authorities were eager to cooperate, and the regional administration had cleared all red tape ahead of time.

The motorcade drove twenty minutes outside the city center, arriving at the sprawling nine-hundred-hectare perimeter of the new international airport site. The sheer scale was staggering. Massive earthen berms marked the boundary, while dozens of heavy cranes, bulldozers, and industrial rigs stood like iron giants across the horizon.

Chief Engineer Daniel and his senior engineering leads were waiting at the site office, hard hats tucked under their arms. They bowed respectfully as Jake, Marcus, Adrian, Noah, and Leon stepped out of the vehicles.

"Mr. Rivers, Mr. Sheele, gentlemen," Daniel greeted warmly, shaking their hands in turn. "Welcome to Mult. Everything is fully prepared for your inspection."

"Lead the way, Daniel," Marcus commanded, unfolding a high-resolution blueprint across the hood of a nearby utility truck. "Show me the soil compaction tests for Block B first. I want to know if the groundwater table is going to give us headaches during the deep excavation phase."

The group set off along the muddy access road, flanked by surveyors carrying laser-measuring gear and structural schematics. Huge excavator arms rose against the skyline like iron giants, tearing away brush and leveling the uneven terrain where the central terminal structure would eventually rise.

"We ran the core soil samples yesterday afternoon, Mr. Sheele," Daniel explained, pointing toward a massive pit where heavy drills were boring into the earth. "The bedrock is shallower than expected on the northern ridge—around fourteen meters down. That’s going to save us nearly two weeks on piling operations."

"Good," Jake said, stopping at the edge of a high embankment overlooking the south quadrant. He leaned over the temporary safety guardrail, his eyes tracking the line of bulldozers flattening the soil. "What about the municipal drainage connection? City Hall claimed the secondary sewer main was mapped six meters further east than where your preliminary team found it."

Daniel blinked, clearly caught off guard that Jake knew the exact discrepancy from a hundred-page municipal audit report.

"Ah... yes, Mr. Rivers," Daniel stammered, quickly flipping through his clipboard. "Our ground-penetrating radar flagged the shift two nights ago. Municipal records were outdated by twelve years. We’ve already re-routed the temporary bypass trench to avoid cutting into the main power conduit."

Marcus glanced over at Jake with a subtle, approving nod. "If we had hit that power line, the municipal council would have used it as an excuse to audit our environmental compliance permits for a month."

"It wasn’t an oversight by municipal clerks either," Adrian spoke up, his voice dangerously smooth as he adjusted his cuffs. "Minister of Trade and Minerals, Duke Timber, along with Minister of Commerce, Troy Husks, personally signed off on those outdated infrastructure schematics before handing the regional file over to the President’s office."

Noah scoffed, adjusting his sunglasses despite the morning sun. "They tried to lay a subtle bureaucratic landmine. If we hit that line, Timber and Husks would have stepped in publicly as ’concerned regulators’ to delay construction and demand a cabinet oversight committee."

"Idiots," Leon muttered, kicking a loose stone down the embankment. "They thought they could play local civil games with Aurelia Capitals."

"I thought their political interference would’ve died the moment President Spencer granted us executive authority over the site," Marcus said coldly, turning back to Daniel. "Did they cause any logistical issues with the regional utility boards?"

"None that we couldn’t bypass, Mr. Sheele," Daniel replied, though his tone suddenly wavered slightly. He paused, shuffling a secondary stack of reports on his clipboard with a hesitant look.

Jake noticed the engineer’s hesitation immediately. "What is it, Daniel?"

Daniel swallowed hard, glancing nervously between the five heirs. "Well... it’s not the ministers, sir. It’s regarding our regional aggregate and concrete logistics. A major regional supplier, Mark Smith, who controls the primary gravel quarries in Mult, suddenly raised his material rates by thirty-five percent this morning."

Leon raised an eyebrow, a cold smirk touching his lips. "Thirty-five percent? On a state-level infrastructure contract?"

"Mark Smith believes that because the timeline is so tight for tomorrow’s ceremony, we’re forced to buy locally," Daniel explained carefully. "He thinks... well, to be frank, gentlemen, he openly told my site manager that even if you five are heirs to major conglomerates, you’re still just kids running your first massive regional project. He figures the oldest among you is barely past thirty and that you’ll just sign off on the price gouge to avoid delays in front of President Spencer."

Noah let out a loud, genuine laugh. "He called us kids? That’s adorable."

"Mark Smith," Adrian Vale repeated softly, his dark eyes narrowing into a razor-sharp, chilling stare. "He owns Smith Aggregates and holds three mining concessions in the northern valley, correct?"

"Yes, Mr. Vale," Daniel confirmed quickly.

"He’s overconfident because he thinks he has a regional monopoly," Adrian said smoothly, turning his gaze toward the far horizon. "He doesn’t realize the Vale Group owns forty percent of his primary creditor’s equity in the capital. I’ll take care of him."

"Make sure he learns a permanent lesson in market pricing," Marcus added indifferently, before motioning down the access track. "Let’s inspect the structural steel supply next."

The walkthrough continued across the vast project grounds for the next two hours, with the five heirs thoroughly vetting every remaining operational sector. Daniel walked them down the four-kilometer stretch carved out for Runway 1, where they reviewed the laser-guided grading machines leveling the crushed limestone base. Jake personally verified the drainage slope calculations to ensure the tarmac could withstand seasonal downpours without pooling.

They then toured the massive logistics yard along the site’s western edge. Thousands of tons of heavy structural steel girders and high-grade rebar were neatly stacked in secured bays. Daniel confirmed that the Meridian Group had locked in phased deliveries, completely bypassing local price-gougers like Mark Smith and guaranteeing zero material shortages for the upcoming framing phase.

Finally, Adrian and Noah walked the eastern boundary to review the high-voltage substation connections and security fencing installations, verifying that the utility feeds bypassed old municipal lines completely to avoid future maintenance disputes with Timber and Husks’ administrative remnants.

By two-thirty in the afternoon, the exhaustive inspection finally concluded back at the main staging office. The sun was high, and a layer of fine dust coated the boots of all five men. Noah and Leon had completely sweated off their hangovers, their sharp executive instincts fully engaged after three hours of intense technical review.

"The site preparation is flawless, Daniel," Jake stated, handing his safety vest back to an assistant. "Everything is ready for tomorrow."

"Thank you, Mr. Rivers," Daniel bowed deeply. "We will have the ceremonial stage, seating for the ministerial delegation, and the press platform fully built by five o’clock this evening."

"Good," Marcus added, checking his watch. "President Spencer’s advance team will arrive at eight tomorrow morning. Ensure the perimeter security matches the protocol we submitted."

With the thorough inspection complete, the five men returned to their motorcade. By three-fifteen, Adrian’s Gulfstream was back in the air, roaring south toward the capital.

---

It was just past five-thirty in the evening when the private elevator chimed softly inside the penthouse at The Zenith.

Jake walked into the quiet livingroom, unbuttoning his jacket and setting his briefcase on the side table. The apartment was peaceful, bathed in the warm golden light of the fading sunset filtering through the high floor-to-ceiling windows.

Catharine emerged from the study carrying a cup of tea. Seeing him walk in, a soft, bright smile spread across her face.

"You’re actually back," she said softly, setting her cup down and walking into his arms.

Jake wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her close and resting his chin against her hair as she breathed in the scent of his coat—faintly carrying the crisp, dusty air of the northern plains.

"I told you I’d be home," Jake murmured, leaning down to catch her lips in a deep, gentle kiss. "This is the one place I want to be right now."

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