Chapter 73
B y the time Hunt Industries came into view, night had well settled in, making the building’s light seem like an ominous fortress.
But a fortress was nothing without its king in a position of power, and right now, the king wasn’t just down. He was at the mercy of those he had tried to hurt the most. I knew so because the prince of the king had taken the side of justice.
Along the walk over, Morgan had texted me multiple times, advising me to come up to Edwin Hunt’s office. He stated that he had ensured the way for me forward would be without trouble and that I would have no resistance. After the recording that he had of Edwin, I believed him fully.
Sorry it took so long for me to believe you, brother. I guess it just took me some time to come to my senses. Better late than never, I suppose.
When I entered the doors, the building was mostly empty, save for a single secretary at the bottom.
“Hi, Chance Givens?”
“Yeah,” I said, surprised that the secretary not only seemed to know me, she was warm about it.
Perhaps more than the two of us are tired of Edwin’s rule.
Perhaps nearly everyone wants him gone… perhaps he’s truly a one-man show, and that everyone else is just a bribed fool in this game of business.
Even his wife, I realized. Even his wife had come along not for the love, but because it seemed to logically make the most sense. This was obvious before, but now it seemed especially pronounced.
I actually began to feel, of all things, pity for Edwin Hunt.
The man had more money than many countries combined, but he could never have the love that even just a fighting couple would have for each other.
At least the disputing couple were fighting for an ideal—for the ideal of a potential happy marriage.
No one wanted to fight Edwin in that respect because no one saw any reason to fight.
What a sad way to live life, I thought. I might have gone through a hell of a lot of stress over the previous few months and made some emotional and sexual mistakes—or at least questionable decisions—but at the end of the day, Morgan had wound up on my side, Layla had come to me, and now, if all went as I expected to, I’d even get to tell Claire that she would get a second chance at making her business work.
And who knew? Maybe even Sarah would somehow appear again, although she didn’t worry me as much as before. I assumed that if she was at her MBA program, she was happy and didn’t need me to reach out to her. It wasn’t like I needed her, anyways.
But that whole deal with Layla was something else to figure out.
The elevator doors to Edwin’s place were already waiting for me, open and inviting to the end of my perilous journey.
I stepped inside, pressed for the top floor, and stood with my hands folded in front of me, the recording in my pocket, and a determination to finish what I had set out to do this whole time.
The doors opened and I stepped forward. At the end of the long hallway, Edwin’s door had swung open, with no secretary nearby.
I stepped inside to see Morgan seated against Edwin’s desk, with Edwin sitting in one of his guest chairs.
The image was clear—Edwin was no longer in charge of the business.
“Hey, Chance,” I said. “Do you trust me now?”
I laughed but then turned my attention to Edwin.
It was strange; this whole time, I had imagined that I would look condescendingly upon Edwin when he was defeated. I imagined dancing a jig in front of him, laughing at him, reminding him that he had no one who loved him. But now?
Those feelings of pity were even stronger. This was a man who had dug his own grave, and yet had spent years thinking that he was digging his way to a pot of gold. In reality, it was just dirt being flung up that would some come back down on him.
He was a man on the verge of hitting his eighties with no one to love him. By my best guess, he would probably retire to some faraway island, get some hookers, eat a lot of good food, and pretend that was a good way to die. But he would have to know on his death bed that wasn’t true.
If ever there was a reminder that I did not want to wind up in a life like Edwin Hunt’s, this was it.
“So here’s the deal, Chance,” Morgan said. “You have the recording of my father threatening your life. There are more like it. We have an entire trail of evidence that my father has acted illegally, unethically, and cruelly.”
Noticeably, Edwin Hunt didn’t dare to say another word.
He just kept his head bowed, refusing to look at either of us.
There seemed to be something so damn tragic about it if it wasn’t so satisfying.
Just because I wasn’t going to visibly gloat didn’t mean I wasn’t going to derive some joy from seeing this moment come to fruition.
“I have made it clear to my father that this is the end of the line for him, and that he needs to resign. Otherwise, I will call 911 right now and have the cops arrest him with everything that I have present, including with the threat of death for us. However, Chance.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re the one that got hurt the most by this. You’re the one who decides whatever you want to do with him. You can put him in jail for the rest of his life, or you can just make him retire. Whatever you want his fate to be is in your hands.”
I walked over to Edwin Hunt, who still refused to look at me.
“Hey, look up at me, coward,” I said, setting the first condition I wanted met.
When I did, I saw a man who had been crying. It was almost laughable—what did he have to cry about in comparison to what he had done to everyone else? Here was a man who had absolutely no sense of perspective and deserved no pity in the world. Well, maybe he deserved pity, but not support and help.
“For all that you’ve done to me? I should have your fucking ass thrown in jail.
Maybe you can learn what it’s like to take it up the ass like you’ve tried to deal with me for so long.
Do you know what it’s like to go through life knowing the person who is supposed to be your father figure treats you like shit? ”
Edwin glanced down.
“Hey, eyes up, fucker,” I snapped.
When Edwin refused to do so, I shrugged.
“Call the cops.”
“Fine,” Edwin said, quickly raising his eyes.
I smirked and crossed my arms.
“You know, I could handle a lot of shit from you, Edwin. I just grew accustomed to it and learned how the rules were. At least Melanie was someone I could call Mom. I had love from somewhere. And I had love from my brother, Morgan. But you know what? I will never call you father, and that’s not my loss.
It’s yours. Mom and my brother here proved they were worthy of being called those names, but you never even tried, so I never even saw it that way.
“And that’s just from the family side. For the amount of people you have fucked over in the business world, it would give people a great sense of karma and justice to see your ass locked up. You can go join Bernie Madoff in scheming ways to screw people over more.”
I let the silence weight on Edwin for a few moments as I relished how difficult this all was for him, how challenging it must have been to realize that he was defeated and there was no amount of negotiating he could do to get out of this.
For once in his life, he was the one in a position where he could not get out of it; he was the one getting fucked, and in his mind, that might have been literal.
“Thus, for all of that, I should have Morgan call the cops right now.”
I should.
“But, unlike you, I have mercy,” I said.
“Your greatest punishment is the fact that you’re going to die alone, knowing no one loves you.
You don’t have more than a few years left in this world, Edwin.
Whether you spend them here or behind prison bars makes no difference.
You think you can take that money and buy a nicer home on the other side, if there is such a thing? No.”
“Chance?”
“Oh, don’t worry Morgan, I’m not letting him completely off the hook.”
I grabbed a chair, pulled it right up in front of Edwin, and met him at eye level.
“Here’s how this is going to work, Edwin,” I said. “You are going to announce to the board that you are going to retire within one month. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. When you retire, you are going to hand off your company stock to Morgan and I, fifty-fifty.”
“No!”
“No?” I said, laughing. “Then not only will you spend time in jail, we’ll release everything on these tapes to the world so your name will get dragged through the fucking mud.
And by the way, lest you think that all we have are these tapes, I have a list of about two dozen people who are on record accusing you of unethical behavior, of you ruining them, and you berating them.
So even if you find a way to weasel your way out of the legal system, the public courts will find you guilty before the police ever put you in a courtroom.
And the court of the markets will drop Hunt Industries’ stock so fast you’ll wonder if there’s even a floor for you to hit. ”
Edwin’s initial outburst had come not of anger but of desperation. I don’t think I’d ever seen a man who had gone so long in his life without losing, or at least such losses were so rare they barely registered. But this was well beyond a loss. This was an annihilation of his empire.
“What about seventy-five twenty-five?”
“No.”
I was surprised to hear that it wasn’t me who had said that, but Morgan.
“Fifty-fifty, Dad. That’s the deal.”
Edwin dropped his head, rubbed his hands over his face, and groaned.
“I gotta admit, boys, if I wasn’t so damn pissed, I’d be impressed,” he said. “This is the kind of business move that would—”
“That we would never do if you weren’t such a shithead,” I interrupted. “You think we wanted to do this? Unlike you, we’re clean businessmen. But we knew that to fight the devil, you’ve got to play on his terms. So say you’re impressed all you want, Edwin. We’re never going back to this.”
Edwin had no response. Good. I liked him when he had shut the hell up and didn’t have anything more to say.
“So let me understand this right,” Edwin said. “I am to resign within one month. I am to give you my shares fifty-fifty.”
“And Chance gets in the will with an equal amount to me,” Morgan said.
“Morgan, are you—”
“I mean, you can not do it, and then I’ll give him the money anyways.”
Morgan really has been on my side this whole time. I’ll be damned. It was all a setup, all a part of his plan to topple my adoptive father.
I just can’t believe this actually happened. People never follow through on their promises to me. They always abandoned or hurt me.
And yet, here we are.
“Very well,” Edwin said.
“And let me make one thing clear, boy,” I said, using his derogatory term that he so liked to apply to me.
“You will make this announcement tomorrow. If I do not receive word from Morgan that you have announced your resignation, effective within one month, then I will send all of this to both the police and the Wall Street Journal, and you can kiss all of this goodbye.”
“And if I do resign?”
“Then so long as nothing else shady happens for the rest of our lives, these tapes and notes will remain confidential,” I said.
“But don’t think just because you agree to our terms that we’re done forever.
If I see people following me or trying to kill me, or if I think that you’re trying to hack my email or intimidate me, the deal is off and I’m going to the press. You got it?”
“Yeah,” Edwin said.
The part that I didn’t mention, just because it sadly would not have resonated with Edwin as much, was that his greatest loss was losing the love of his wife and his son.
It had been thought before but it could not be thought enough.
There was no greater counterexample of how to live than Edwin Hunt.
If I lived my life completely opposite of Edwin Hunt, then I think I’d have a pretty damn good life.
“Shake on it,” I said.
I stood over him, making sure the message was clear—I was the one in charge now, and so was Morgan. My brother came and stood by my side. Edwin looked up into my eyes, gave a long sigh, and gave the limpest handshake I had ever felt in my life.
“No wonder you’re so weak,” I said. “I’ve felt a harder handshake from dogs.”
“By end of day tomorrow, Dad,” Morgan said. “And remember the rest of the deal.”
With that, I headed out the door, cradling the recording close to me. Morgan followed me to the elevator, clasping a hand on my shoulder.
“Didn’t I tell you to believe me no matter what happens?”
I just laughed. What else could I say to that?
“You really stretched my belief in you, you know,” I said. “But I’ll be damned if I ever doubt you again.”