Fourteen

Mr Zhao stood up indignantly from his chair and glared at her, "Just who do you think you are to speak to me? I have a granddaughter your age!" He said with a trembling voice.

All around the table, the men seated were trembling and visibly sweating at the mention of fraud. Each one of them in that room had used the company in a way to advance their finances and lives in some way or the other.

Suddenly Natzin clapped her hands together and bowed apologetically.

"My willful mouth has led me astray once again, I am deeply sorry for offending you. Why don't we start all over again? The staff can bring us food and after you all eat we can move unto more serious matters."

"What do you think this is? Did you drag us out of our houses so early in the day and keep us waiting for close to an hour just to offer us food? Do we look hungry to you?" Another man at the table leapt to his feet and demanded angrily while his cohorts murmured and frowned in agreement.

"I had forgotten for a moment that all of you here have fed yourselves fat on the hard work of my father and mother." Natzin said coldly and a chill of unease went through the inhabitants of the room.

"Who did you say you were again?" One of the men who was sat at the table asked.

They had each gotten an invitation, asking them to come to one of the most prestigious clubs for a celebration. Excited at the thought of being able to gorge themselves on someone else's dime they had rushed to the venue without questioning the strange summons.

"My name is Zhu Natzin, the sole heir to Zhu Luxury who was kicked out of my position with the help of all your greedy and overachieving selves and I have come back to retake my position."

The room went quiet then Mr Zhao raised a suspicious eyebrow.

"Is this the new method of fraud? Natzin has been dead for over three years. Someone call the police and get this woman out of here."

Natzin pulled off the hat she had been wearing which had a scrap of lace covering her upper face and disguising her identity. As the hat dropped, a collective gasp went through the room and their eyes while their jaws dropped widened in shock.

There in front of them stood the spitting image of Zhu wife, it was as if she had come back to life. The last time anyone had seen Natzin, she had pretty much looked like a young girl, flighty and brimming with youthful exuberance.

The person standing before them looked less like a young girl and more like a fully mature and confident woman of the world, her aura of power extending across the room and dominating everyone.

"It is a ghost!" A couple of the men scrambled up and backed away, pushing their chairs to the ground.

With an eye roll, Natzin placed a hand on Mr Zhao's shoulder and he flinched. She felt him shivering under her hand and she turned an eye over everyone in the room.

"Mr Zhao, are you shivering because you think that I am a ghost…" then she turned and looked him in the eye. "Or have you realized that this is your judgment day and I am here to mete out a very harsh punishment for your sins?"

Mr Zhao regained his senses and shrugged her hand off almost violently then he glared at her.

"Why should I be afraid of you? Why should anyone of us be afraid of you?" He asked as he pointed to his colleagues who nodded in agreement.

Even if she was indeed Natzin, dead or alive she had no power, everything she had was stripped away from her.

Natzin lazily took her seat then played with her fingers as she spoke, "You should all be very afraid. First of all, you threw me under the bus after all that my parents did for you and your families, or don't you fear karma? And in the event that you don't fear karma then surely this will make you quake in your boots."

With a wave of her hand, Yujin went around the table with a heap of files which he distributed to each of the men at the table.

"I understand that you are eager to go about your days but I strongly advise that you take a look at the files in front of you first." She said.

The men looked at Mr Zhao who was unofficially the chairman of the group of shareholders. He glanced curiously at the file in front of him and even though he tried to resist, eventually his guilt forced him to pick it up even as a voice inside him said that she was only bluffing but when he opened the file and saw the first page he sat heavily on his chair.

Seeing his response, the men rushed to open their own files and they blanched and felt ill while Natzin looked nonchalantly at their expressions of fear.

"How did you get this, why are you in possession of these documents?" Mr Zhao asked.

"I have the documents because you and your greedy colleagues have been doing business with me." She explained with a sinister smile. "I knew none of you could resist so I posed the fraudulent businesses and you took the bait."

Over the previous year, Natzin had been engaging the shareholders with different projects which they quietly worked on and diverted into their own private accounts. They had siphoned millions from the company thanks to this.

Every one of them was guilty of taking on these kinds of projects and thanks to them, Zhu Luxury's shares continued to fall and the line of hotels had lost their former glamour.

"What do you want?" He asked shakily as sweat poured over his head.

He knew at the point that he was screwed, the life of his entire family was destroyed. He did not think for a moment that he was solely the reason he was in that mess, he put the blame entirely on Natzin and he wished that he could just strangle her right then.

"Since you people are so adept in the language of fraud I am going to cut to the chase and not beat about the bush, I want a bribe."

She paused for a moment and Yujin went out and came back with two intimidatingly stocky men in black suits who stood protectively behind Natzin.

"My apologies for the presence of my friends." She said, indicating the two men who looked on in seeming disinterest. "But i know how emotional things like this can get and I would hate to have to add assault to your long lists of crimes." She taunted.

"Now, back to what I want." She said and looked intently at them and raising the anxiety level in the room. "I want twenty million from each of you and it has to be paid by the end of today or I go to the police with this laundry list of crimes." She finished smugly.