Chapter 46
“ H ey buddy,” I said as I entered, finally able to drop the facade of being drunk. After all, what the hell could Morgan say if he had been an even greater mess just a few days before?
“I guess you had a good time with Layla, huh?” he said with a much-welcomed smirk. If he was back to providing playful jabs… he still looked like shit, but to say he had improved from where he was before was a very true statement that brought me gratification.
Even if what he said was… well, not wrong, per se, but not what I would have said.
“Something like that,” I said.
“Well, what did you learn from her?”
Oh, right, that’s the whole reason I went out in the first place.
I didn’t really learn much of anything. Layla seemed to dismiss the question and it just would have led to a bigger can of worms. Probably for the best that I didn’t press on, now that I think about it.
“Biggest thing she emphasized was that we can’t count on it to end,” I said, which was kind of true.
“Usually, what stops people from pursuing such vengeance plots is a lack of time, money, or interest. Unfortunately, Edwin has no lack of money, we know that. Most people’s interest would fade when they realized they’re still fine as individuals, but I think you can attest to the vengeful nature of your father. ”
“Yup,” Morgan said.
“And time, well, yes, he’s got to run a company, but he has an entire set of henchmen who can get things done for him to free up time.
So, in short, we can’t passively wait for this to dissipate unless we have the patience.
We have four options—get him out of power, wait for him to die, accept the status quo, or just surrender. ”
I smiled as I contemplated the insanity of all but one of those options—well, OK, all of them were insane, but the alcohol in me was making me believe some of the ideas had more possibility to them than they actually did.
“Well, all respect, your father sucks, but I’m not killing anyone or waiting for him to die.”
“I would hope so,” Morgan said as he lowered the volume on the TV. “I’d somehow have to find myself siding with him in that case!”
I shuddered at that thought, no pretense given.
“And I’m sure as hell not quitting or accepting the status quo,” I said. “I can’t speak for you, but I refuse to lose this fight. You and I can build so much with MCH and we won’t have to rely on any inheritance to get by.”
I chose to not mention the $50 million personal fund Morgan had command of at that moment. Some things were best left out of the narrative, especially when I was drunk and didn’t have to overly think things through.
“So that leaves pretty much one option. We have to get him out of power.”
“Out as CEO of Hunt Industries,” Morgan said. “That’s…”
“Insane?” I said, leading us to both laugh. “I know. But if we want to emerge victorious here, it’s something we’ve got to do. So, how do we get him out of his position?”
For such a simple question, all of the answers seemed ridiculous or circling back on what I had said I would not do, such as waiting for him to die.
“We could buy him out,” Morgan said, causing me to laugh hysterically.
“Yes, because two boys worth, at most, a few million dollars can buy out a man worth billions of dollars, nice one Morgan.”
“Oh fuck off,” Morgan said with an added smirk. “What if Virtual Realty turns into a unicorn in the next two to three years? Not so crazy then, huh?”
“No, but do you really want to wait that long to end this?”
The look on Morgan’s face and the contrast to the smirk he had had moments before said it all.
No, none of us wanted to wait that long.
Frankly, none of us wanted to wait more than a couple of weeks if we could, although that seemed like wishful thinking at best. This would take time, but the idea that we’d spent a third of our 20’s under the Big Brother surveillance of Edwin Hunt was a repulsive one.
“Let’s at least keep it in mind as possibility,” Morgan said. “It’s a long shot, but wealth has been built and destroyed faster than people can ever realize.”
“Especially destroyed,” I said, thinking about how it wouldn’t be hard for Edwin to burn through his money quickly with the wrong vices and pursuits.
At least, that’s what I wanted to believe—I was certainly prone to my own biases, but it was not a stretch, I felt sure, to imagine that wealth was more easily destroyed than it was built.
“OK, so we have that. You don’t think it’s an idea worth pursuing? It’ll produce the least amount of damage around.”
“But it’ll take the longest.”
Nevertheless, I was realizing I had to take a more diplomatic approach with Morgan when it came to this problem.
To just blurt out all of the ills that Edwin brought to us would only chase Morgan away; like telling a girl the truth about how I felt about her too much, I had to know when to apply my conversational magic and when I had to manipulate the setting with some feigns and slights of hand a bit.
“It is an idea worth keeping, though,” I said as a sort of olive branch to Morgan. “But for the sake of brainstorming, let’s consider all the possibilities. What else? We could plant something that forces him to get fired.”
“What do you mean?” Morgan said.
Again, I had to treat carefully here. The ideas that came to mind immediately entailed having someone make a false allegation or even just a slightly exaggerated one, but not only would that push Morgan away, it was even starting to impinge on my own sense of ethics.
Of course, more time with Edwin would likely mean less concern for that, but at least for the moment, I had boundaries, even if barely visible.
“Well, let’s be honest, your father pushes boundaries in business to get his way.”
“Don’t they all?”
“Of course, but we’re not worried about a VC in San Francisco or a banker in New Yorker, we’re concerned about Edwin Hunt and Edwin Hunt alone,” I said.
“Given this, we have to say your father pushes boundaries. Surely, in his time, he’s done some things that were unethical at best, illegal at worst.”
“Chance, are you trying to send my father to jail?”
I wouldn’t mind.
“No, that’s not my goal,” I said, which was about as far as I could stretch the truth without it turning into a lie.
“My goal is to get him out of a position of power so that he stops bothering us. Plain and simple. The very threat of something like jail makes it easy to negotiate. No, I have no intentions of putting anyone in jail. Just… putting him in a place where he can’t hurt us. ”
Morgan grimaced, leaned into the couch, and said nothing. This was a bad sign—Morgan only clammed up when he felt like the argument was unwinnable, but rather than concede, he had a tendency to simply withdraw.
So I had to do the only thing I could think of to ensure full participation from Morgan. I had to throw him back into the middle of it.
“Look, Morgan, here’s an honest truth—I will never get an audience with your father solo,” I said, sitting next to him. “Because of this, there are limits to what I can do and I have to resort to drastic measures. I don’t want that, you don’t want that, and no one else wants that. But you can.”
He looked over to me. Back in the game. Excellent.
“You can get an audience with your father. You can pry more information out of him. You can get something out of him that gives us a position of leverage.”
“True,” Morgan said, going silent for a few seconds as he pondered what I had said. “But what am I supposed to do, take notes during our meeting? That’s going to look too overt.”
“You do have a brain that remembers things, you know,” I said with a laugh, but he raised a great point.
What Morgan considered important may not be the things I counted as important, and if I didn’t account for a way to record or listen to the conversation, it would be a waste of a golden opportunity.
The idea coming to mind seemed drastic and stupid—illegal, possibly. But all of the crime shows I had ever seen and the mystery books I had ever come across gave me an idea that seemed cliche, but cliches existed for a reason. They spoke the truth.
“You could also wear a wire,” I said.
Morgan laughed as if I was trying to supply a moment of levity. And in some respects, I was, but the end goal was serious and the same—I had to know the truth, and if it took a fucking wire, it took a goddamn fucking wire.
“You’re actually serious,” Morgan said.
“Of course I’m serious, what part of tonight has given you anything to make you think I’m not serious?”
Morgan shook his head.
“That’s got to be illegal in some sense,” he said.
“Even if it’s not, it might not be admissible in arbitration or legal settings.
Even if that’s not the case, you’re pushing boundaries pretty damn far, Chance.
I want peace and quiet, but I don’t want to lose my father.
If he catches me recording him in any fashion, we’re as good as fucked. Sorry, I’m as good as fucked.”
“At least you acknowledge the imbalance in outcome,” I said, a statement that seemed like a throwaway but was anything but given our history of both of us failing to realize the life of the other.
In any case, I had played polite and politics for too long.
It was time to throw down the gauntlet. “Look at how stressed you are though, Morgan. You had a meltdown in my apartment and drank like a fish two seconds from dying in the air. You killed half a bottle of whiskey. Your father isn’t going to stop.
If you don’t want to see this as fighting him, then see it as a chance to speak to him and provide some temporary protection.
I can’t promise that he’ll let up, but maybe if you sit with him one on one and give the appearance of listening to him, he’ll lighten up some. ”
Finally, I saw what I was looking for—agreement from Morgan. He nodded his head, aware that what I had said made some modicum of sense. It might not be permanent relief, but it sure would feel good to have temporary relief from his current state.
“I still don’t know about the wire, though,” Morgan said. He forced a laugh, but he truly seemed uncomfortable with the idea. “That seems a little too CSI-y. And you know, lots of people die when they have to wear those things.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Morgan, be a little realistic.”
“Says the guy who wants to fight a billionaire.”
“Says the guy who wants to buy out the billionaire.”
We both had a laugh at that. Had to admit, we could both be stubborn, stupid assholes at times. Just a little less stupid and a little less of an asshole with age.
The stubborn part, though? That is never changing.
“Just wear the wire as a favor to me,” I said. “I’ll listen in, I’ll transcribe what is said, and I’ll leave it at that. I’m not going to confront Edwin with the recording, at least not directly. Just think of it as a chance for me to get some information. OK?”
Nothing I said would make Morgan comfortable with the idea.
I was beginning to think it wasn’t just that Edwin was his father; I think it had something to do with the idea that so much of who Morgan was and what he stood for came from his father.
In that regard, he wasn’t just fighting the present incarnation of his father, but everything within him that resembled his dad.
I had some sympathy for him when I saw it through that lens.
Some.
Not much.
“You get me a goddamn wire and dress me up like a narc, I’ll wear one,” Morgan said. “But I’m not putting myself in a position to get one, no matter how much you beg. I do agree, though, that regardless, going to see Dad for a meeting might provide some temporary relief.”
“And,” I added. “You make sure that if you get anything out of him, you get me some relief too. I don’t want to have you completely off the hook but have me being harassed by his goons.”
“I know,” he said. “I’ll make sure of it. You’re family, remember?”
That brought a faint smile to my face, even if it made things weird. Could Morgan be family to both me and his father?
I had never really envied Morgan, especially since he never quite seemed to get things the way I got them, but I really didn’t envy him now. He was nothing more than a man on a bridge, with two people pulling his arms apart and him trying to pull those two people together.
Something would break. It was just a matter of what would go first.