Creating America: My campaign manager was Roosevelt

Chapter 183 Breakup

Leo stared at Evelyn.

The arrogance emanating from her filled every inch of the study.

She stood there, her eyes full of certainty, and this condescending attitude stung Leo.

He felt a tightness in the back of his neck. He wanted to yell, but he knew that any loss of control at this moment would be seen as weakness. Leo adjusted his breathing.

Instead of immediately erupting, he slowed down his movements.

He lowered his head, carefully smoothed out the wrinkles at the hem of his suit, and calmly fastened the loose button with his fingers.

He wrapped himself in the mayor's authority again, forcibly relaxing his tense muscles and adopting an attitude that remained unchanged even when facing an abyss.

After finishing tidying up, Leo raised his head, his gaze cold.

"You think you've got this in the bag."

His voice was steady.

"Evelyn, you certainly have guts. You predicted the moment when the funding pool would run out, you predicted the weakness of those mayors, and you predicted that I would have to step in and clean up their mess for the sake of votes and for that crumbling coalition."

Leo walked to the desk.

He braced himself on the table, leaning forward sharply, his young face close to Evelyn's, abruptly breaking the safe distance between them. "In your model, I am a rational participant. I will bow to you, accept your funding, and hand over the keys to power to preserve my political alliance, to keep Murphy's Senate seat, and for the so-called greater good."

"That makes perfect sense."

"If it were any other politician, they would accept your terms without hesitation. After all, sacrificing the interests of a few peripheral cities in exchange for the consolidation of core power is a very worthwhile deal in their eyes."

"But Evelyn, you've forgotten something."

Leo slowly straightened up.

He was a head taller than Evelyn.

At this moment, taking advantage of his height, he lowered his head slightly and looked at the woman in front of him at an almost slanted angle.

This is an extremely aggressive stance.

"To be able to build such an alliance in this fragmented Rust Belt, to bring together the mayors of cities like Erie, Scranton, and Johnstown at one table."

"It's not based on betrayal."

"If I were someone who would easily betray allies to climb the social ladder, I would have knelt down when Morganfield extended an olive branch to me. I wouldn't be where I am today, much less standing here negotiating with you."

"So, you overlooked one thing."

"What?" Evelyn frowned.

She didn't like the look in Leo's eyes now; instead of the fear she expected, his eyes burned with a kind of mad flame.

"You've miscalculated; I'm not a qualified politician."

Leo stared into her eyes.

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"If you think that by holding these cities hostage, I have to accept you ruling over us as emperor, then you're wrong."

"I will kill the hostage myself."

Evelyn was only slightly taken aback, then her expression remained indifferent.

"Kill the hostage?"

Evelyn's voice was completely flat as she looked at Leo as if he were a gambler bluffing at the negotiating table.

"Leo, do you know what you're saying?"

"That wasn't just a default of a few hundred million dollars; it was the collapse of the entire industrial renaissance alliance."

"Once those cities find their ballots worthless, Murphy's electoral base will explode instantly, and your political credibility will be completely wiped out. You will be torn apart by angry voters, and you will become a sinner in the Rust Belt forever."

Evelyn looked at Leo.

"Do you dare?"

"You've put in so much effort and made so many deals to build this alliance."

"Are you willing to destroy it?"

"Give it a try."

Leo responded coldly, his gaze showing no sign of averting.

"Do you think I'm sitting here for that so-called leader title? Do you think I care about even the slightest bit of my political future?" "Evelyn, you underestimate me."

Leo turned around, walked to the window, and looked out at the manor.

"I'm someone who climbed up from the bottom, I know what it means to have nothing. If I lose, I'll just go back to that coffee shop and wash cups, I don't care."

"But I will never allow my city, my allies, to become the private property of someone like you."

"Are you trying to blackmail me with liquidity?"

Leo suddenly turned around, his eyes fierce.

"Then I'll make the rust belt stop flowing."

"I will use all my administrative power in City Hall to block all settlement channels between Pittsburgh and all other cities. I will freeze all bill exchange in the name of financial security."

"I will bring that system to a complete standstill."

"You want to be the emperor?"

"Then I'll burn the palace to ashes, so you won't even have a chair to sit on."

Evelyn looked at Leo.

She has seen greedy people, hypocritical people, and cruel people.

But she had never met anyone like that before.

This is the kind of person who would rather choose self-destruction than be controlled.

This completely contradicts her business logic.

In her world, maximizing profits is the only truth, and no one would choose a lose-lose outcome for the sake of so-called "dignity" or "control".

This is irrational.

This is even irrational.

But looking into Leo's unwavering eyes, she knew he was serious.

He's really capable of doing it.

"You're crazy."

Evelyn gritted her teeth and forced out those words.

"Maybe."

Leo straightened his collar and regained his composure.

"In a madman's world, the rules are made by madmen."

"Now, the choice is yours."

Leo walked toward the door.

"Either you obediently follow my requirements, propose a new solution, fix that vulnerability, turn the system into a real service platform, and earn the transaction fees you deserve."

"Or, let's press that red button together."

"Let's all die together."

Leo's hand gripped the doorknob.

"Don't tell me your bunch of top Wall Street financial experts can't even handle this kind of thing."

"Tomorrow morning at nine o'clock."

Leo, with his back to Evelyn, left her an ultimatum.

"If I don't see your solution."

"Then just wait and see the press conference when Pittsburgh issues the freeze order."

Goodnight, Miss Saint-Cloud.

Leo disappeared outside the door.

The atmosphere was oppressive on the way back.

Leo sat in the back seat, eyes closed, trying to calm his racing heart.

He just made a huge gamble; he put all his chips on the table.

"Mr. President."

Leo asked inwardly, his voice trembling.

Will she compromise?

"Capitalists are all greedy; they fear loss most of all. She must have been frightened by my resolute and crazy behavior just now," Roosevelt's voice echoed in his mind.

This time, his voice wasn't as confident as usual.

"Logically speaking, yes."

"In conventional business logic, no one is willing to lose hundreds of millions of dollars just to save face. When faced with a madman who comes in with a bomb, the most rational choice is to give him money and get him out of here."

"That's how Morganfield compromised."

"but·……"

Roosevelt's voice became somewhat hesitant.

"That woman, the way she looked at you, something was off."

"Something's not right?"

"She's too calm," Roosevelt analyzed. "When you threatened to kill us all, there was no fear in her eyes." "Leo, you need to be prepared."

"Perhaps we've met our match this time."

Leo opened his eyes.

He watched the streetlights rushing past the window, the light and shadows intertwining on his face.

"What if she doesn't compromise?"

"If everything remains the same at nine o'clock tomorrow morning, should I really announce a freeze on bill payments?"

Roosevelt remained silent for a long time.

"That's the cruelest part of politics, Leo."

"If you issue a threat but don't dare to carry it out, you will lose all your deterrent power, and everyone will know that you are just a paper tiger who only talks big."

"But if you carry out the threat and cause disastrous consequences, you will bear full responsibility."

"This is a one-way street."

"Once you step into that study, there's no turning back."

Leo clenched his fist.

"Then let's gamble to the bitter end."

A suffocating silence fell over the carriage, with only the low rumble of the engine and the sound of tires rubbing against the ground echoing in the ears.

Leo leaned back in the back seat, his body swaying slightly with the bumps of the vehicle.

His heart was still pounding. He closed his eyes and forced himself to take a deep breath.

Once, twice, three times.

The overwhelming heat that threatened to spiral out of control gradually subsided, and reason regained control of the brain.

He began to review the whole incident.

From the initial concept to the introduction of St. Cloud Capital, and now to the complete break.

Every step, every detail, was replaying in his mind.

Suddenly, a thought flashed through my mind.

"Mr. President."

Leo suddenly spoke in his mind.

I have a question for you.

"Ask away," Roosevelt replied.

"When I first established this bill platform and brought in St. Cloud Capital as a funding pool..."

Leo paused, then said, "Did you foresee this happening today?"

"Did you already know that Evelyn would exploit the system's vulnerabilities to turn against me? Did you already know that if left unchecked, this so-called win-win alliance would sooner or later become her private colony?"

A brief silence fell over the space of consciousness.

"Leo, I am a politician, not a prophet."

Roosevelt finally spoke.

"I don't have a crystal ball, so I can't see what day and what hour Evelyn will make her move."

"But I know something called political science."

"Just as water flows downhill and apples fall to the ground, in the world of power, no vacuum can exist for long." "You designed a massive financial system, but left a regulatory vacuum; you gave capital enormous liquidity, but didn't put a bridle of power on it."

"Then capital will inevitably try to devour power."

"This doesn't need to be predicted; it's inevitable."

Roosevelt's voice turned serious.

"If it weren't Evelyn today, it would have been Morganfield, or some other financial tycoon."

"It's the instinct of a wild animal."

"So, yes, I anticipated the betrayal, and I anticipated the backlash."

Leo clenched his fists. "Then why didn't you warn me sooner? Why didn't you let me plug that loophole from the beginning? If you had intervened earlier, I wouldn't have had to be in that study, pointing a gun at my head and risking my life against her!"

"Because you won't be able to learn it that way."

Roosevelt coldly interrupted him.

"If I had told you to be wary of her from the beginning, you would have just seen this as a tactical fix."

"You might think that as long as you change a few lines of code and sign a few supplementary agreements, everything will be fine."

"You will never truly feel the suffocating feeling of being strangled by capital."

"You'll never understand. These vampires will never open their mouths unless you put a knife to their throats and show a madness that leads to mutual destruction."

"I led you into that trap so that you would learn how to bare your fangs in a desperate situation."

"You can't learn this lesson from books, nor can you learn it from my speech."

"Only when you truly smell death can you truly grasp the reins to tame this beast."

"And, Leo."

Roosevelt's voice suddenly lowered, carrying a rare hint of weariness.

"I have to confess something."

"That's why I'm letting you face it on your own."

"My era is too far back."

"I understand human nature, I understand political maneuvering, and I know how to wage war."

"However, faced with the complex financial derivatives of your time, faced with those quantitative algorithms that trade hundreds of millions of times per second, faced with this new exploitative system built on fiber optics and servers..."

"Sometimes I also feel overwhelmed."

"I can see Evelyn's greed, but I can't understand her model. I can tell you how to negotiate, but I can't tell you how to fix those damn code bugs."

"I might... really not be able to help you much."

Leo was stunned.

"I am nurturing you, my child."

Roosevelt looked at Leo with hopeful eyes.

"We're in Pittsburgh now, in Pennsylvania. The rules of the game are still relatively primitive here, and the enemies are more straightforward." "I can use my experience to cover for you and guide you."

"But you still have a long way to go."

"When you one day step out of here, when you actually step into Washington, and face the actuaries at the Federal Reserve, the top traders on Wall Street, and the complex game of globalization."

"The water there is ten thousand times deeper than here."

"I can't even understand the rules there."

"If I'm still holding your hand like a babysitter when the time comes, you'll die."

You must learn to walk on your own.

"You must learn to spot traps yourself, sharpen your knife yourself, and decide for yourself when to kill."

"Tonight, you faced capital alone."

"Although the posture was a bit awkward, and although I almost fell to my death."

Roosevelt smiled; it was a smile of satisfaction.

"But in the end, you made it through on your own."

"Perhaps the road ahead is smooth, or perhaps it's a precipice, but ultimately you chose this path yourself."

Leo rested his head against the car window.

The resentment that had been stuck in his chest began to slowly ease.

They didn't disappear; instead, they slowly sank to the deepest part of my heart.

He understood Roosevelt's intention.

He would never learn how to breathe underwater if he didn't experience this near-death suffocation.

Only in that instant, the moment he made his own decision, did he truly become a player at this gambling table.

An unprecedented sense of clarity flowed through his mind.

Roosevelt was a lighthouse on shore, but a lighthouse cannot steer the ship for the captain.

The hand holding the steering wheel must be his own.

One day, he will sail to that deep sea that even Roosevelt never set foot in.

Leo took a deep breath, as if the stale air in his lungs was being expelled with it.

"Thank you, Mr. President."

Leo said softly to himself.

"I will remember this feeling."

He looked at the pair of eyes reflected in the car window.

"Next time."

"Next time in Washington."

"I will do better."