Chapter 567: Only One Karen was getting calls from all sorts of different members of her team. At first she was snappy with her replies, she told them to try and fight against what they were saying. Record what they said on their phones so they could use it to file a lawsuit against them. She had expected a response and she was ready to try and fight it back, that was until the number of different departments, safety inspections and more continued to deliver news after news. Each call felt heavier than the last. At first it had sounded like coincidence, one department picking at small details, another raising minor concerns, but as the hours passed it became clear this wasn’t random. The pattern was too clean, too coordinated. Every few minutes another manager would call her, another issue raised, another violation discovered, another official threatening closure. Her replies slowly lost their sharpness. There were only so many times she could tell them to document everything and push back before the weight of it started pressing down on her chest. It was far too overwhelming for her in the situation she was in, and when the Department store finally shut, she was sat at her desk with multiple papers right in front of her. The silence after the closure was worse than the noise. No ringing phones. No staff running in and out of her office. Just paper. Stacks of paper. Official notices stamped and signed. Documents filled with legal terminology. Reports listing violations in cold, clinical language. The kind of language that made it sound like she had been negligent, careless, irresponsible. "Restaurants closed down due to health and safety violations. Health and safety codes not up to standard all across the department store. Broken foundations that need to be repaired, and the list goes on from department to department. There even claiming that we built further then the land that were allowed on. It’s ridiculous what there managing to pull." She flipped through another sheet, her fingers trembling slightly. The claims ranged from minor to absurd. Some were technicalities that could be argued. Others were completely fabricated. Measurements that didn’t match reality. Claims of structural instability that had never once appeared in previous inspections. It wasn’t just nitpicking, it was systematic dismantling. Although Karen could fight some of these, legal process took a long time to sort, and since some of these were government bodies, they had the power to shut down things before they even got settled. That was the real problem. Even if she proved them wrong months later, it wouldn’t matter. The damage would already be done. Customers wouldn’t wait for court rulings. Vendors wouldn’t keep paying rent in a building that had been publicly declared unsafe. Reputation once shaken didn’t simply snap back into place. The damage would be done before she could even do anything, and she was already seeing this place. The news of what had happened across the shops had come out. Especially with the top end restaurants being closed down for business due to the health and safety inspections. She could already imagine the headlines. Luxury dining venue shut over violations. Department store under investigation. The public never read beyond the first few lines. They never questioned whether something was targeted or manipulated. They just avoided it. Of course with how everything was going on, it was obvious that it was a targeted case. It wasn’t natural by any means, but why should the vendors care about that? If the department was being targeted then it was best for them to just close their shops and put their resources into a different place. Karen leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. Years. Years of negotiating contracts. Years of building trust with designers, restaurant owners, investors. She had fought hard to make the department store a flagship location. It wasn’t just another retail space. It was the face of her brand. "All my years of hard work, everything I built up, even my own fashion brand, it’s flagship shop is in this store, and most of the sales come from here...with no footfall that’s doomed, the warehouses I have to pay for... all of it the payments to fix this place, all of it is gone." Her voice cracked slightly as she spoke aloud. The warehouses alone cost a fortune. Inventory that would now sit untouched. Staff salaries that still had to be paid. Contractors demanding payment for emergency repairs that might not even be necessary. Cash flow would dry up quickly under pressure like this. Karen was almost pulling out her hair, as she thought about what she could do. She had money, yes. But influence was something different. Whoever was behind this had managed to coordinate inspectors, government bodies, and enforcement departments simultaneously. That wasn’t just wealth. That was reach. ’They must be a rather large and influential group who is targeting me to be able to get all of these organisations to come after me. Even with my money I doubt I could do anything.’ Karen thought and that’s when it came to her mind. There was one person she knew that had the strongest influential power and could stop all of this in a heartbeat, so she picked up the phone and made the call. It wasn’t a call she wanted to make. Pride had stopped her many times before. She had built her business largely independent of him. She had wanted to prove that she didn’t need his shadow looming over her success. But now this wasn’t about pride. This was survival. After making the call, even though it was late at night, she knew when it meant business that she would have to venture out now. As she got in her car and drove away, she met with the familiar gated driveway, and she was nervous. The Stern manor had always felt imposing at night. The gates tall, the driveway long, the lights casting long shadows across the stone. As the car rolled forward, she felt smaller with every metre. Her body was sweating her heart was pounding, but if she lost the department store and her fashion brand, she would have lost everything she lived and worked for, which was why she had driven to the Stern manor. She was currently inside the head office, where Dennis Stern was sat there waiting, with whisky right by his table. "Your still needing that as a night cap, father." Karen said. "Well with all the stress that my own family members still give me to this day, it’s needed, although it has become a habit that I am quite fond of." Dennis replied. "We all have our vices and mine is this, so leave me be. Besides, I have a feeling I might need a few more glasses after our talk." Karen gulped it was always like this, talking to her father, it wasn’t the same as other families. It was almost like talking to the head CEO of a company that could fire you at any moment. He didn’t look at her like a daughter in distress. He looked at her like an executive who had come to report losses. His posture was relaxed, but his eyes were sharp. Evaluating. "Father, there has been issues at the department store. Issues that aren’t any fault of my own, I’m currently being targeted. They’re paying governments, hiring goons and more to attack us. I think someone might be targeting the Stern family as a whole. Which was why I came here. I thought maybe you could do something to stop them. Or could find out why they’re doing this, to make it an even playing ground." Karen was trying to plead to her father by using words like the Stern family rather than her own business. There was a part of her that thought that this still might have been one of the Stern’s doing though, now though she just had to wait for her father’s answer. Dennis took a slow sip of his whisky before placing the glass back down. "You...disappoint me." Dennis claimed.