Chapter 473: A Peaceful Victory
Bruno’s words were cold and sharp enough to send chills down the spine of the President of the United States who had rushed to answer his call after being told about what was to be discussed.
"Well, hello there Mr. President... I must say you are lucky you caught me on a good day, for if you had kept me waiting on any other, the consequences would be severe...."
The President had plotted to announce his victory in securing a southern neighbor that was stable and in America’s pocket, while also reinforcing the Monroe doctrine in the process. But now, that dream was about to come crashing down.
Because the devil had come to collect a debt owed to him, and the signer was the American people, the price to be paid? The soul of their nation. And thus Bruno’s words, calling a man who should in theory be more powerful than him, seemed all the more dreadful as he waited silently on the other side of the lien for a proper response.
It took more than a few moments for the President to reclaim his calm, and when he finally did, his voice slightly broke as he tried to muster a proper response to what his aide had told him.
"Is this conversation... I presume to be like the others?"
What he meant from this question was obvious, but he was trying his best to word it in a way that couldn’t possibly damn him any further. And as a result, Bruno simply smirked on the other end of the line.
Sitting in his palace’s office, wearing the comfortable and humble clothes of a working man, while sipping from a glass of the finest distilled spirits money could buy. A truly paradoxical scene. All the while he spoke like a man who was capable of coercing emperors and kings to sign Faustian bargains to him with the most ecstatic of smiles on their faces.
"But of course, where would the fun be in these little discussions of ours if I didn’t at least have some mementos to cherish them by? Now don’t play coy with me, you know why I have called right?
Tsk, Tsk, Tsk, Mr. Hughes... That was a very bold, yet very foolish move on your part. I’m talking of course as an innocent and unbiased bystander of course, but when you had your agents turn the Sons of Liberty against their advisors, did you really think they wouldn’t be prepared for that?
Did you actually believe that they had fled Mexico without a trace after you invited them there and betrayed them? Congratulations, you have now funded the opposition... The men you crossed are very petty, and vindictive, and they will not stop until Washington is under the Flag of Mexico, or whatever the hell the revolutionaries they are now arming and training to be your enemies will call the country after they have won it.... Not a wise move indeed..."
Charles Evans Hughes could practically feel his blood boiling inside him. Bruno was threatening to outright violate the Monroe doctrine, and the man was flaunting it in his face. He was the President of the United States, and there was nothing he could do...
Because the dirt Bruno had on the United States didn’t end with him and his administration. Calls went in and out of the Oval Office daily, and many of them were senators, congressmen, governors, and supreme court justices of both parties.