Chapter 69 #2
It really didn’t help matters that probably less than five minutes later, I heard Layla moaning through her door—a deliberate tease, I knew, because she would have come out and grabbed me if she wanted to actually have sex.
It got me rock hard and tempted me to blast through that door and have my way with her, but that seemed just a bit on the border of acting on her without permission.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait much longer for a better distraction.
I saw a text from Andrew come through “check her email.” Immediately, I hurried over to Layla, knocked on her door, and begged to be let in.
“You missed your chance, Chance!” she said, giving a fake laugh.
“It’s related to Edwin,” I said. “Andrew sent something to your email.”
A few seconds later, I heard her footsteps coming to the door. She now had on a nightrobe, making it clear that the party in her pants was closed for the evening to any other visitors. A different night. It’s there whenever you want it.
She let me sit—though not lie—on her bed as she opened her laptop and her email. Sure enough, there was an email from Andrew with no text, just a single attachment.
An audio file.
“Play it,” I said, a mixture of trepidation and nervousness filling my ears.
Would it be nothing? Would it be something? Or could it be everything that I ever needed to take down Edwin Hunt? Please, Andrew, have shown some guts.
The file started with the boisterous sound of background noise in a restaurant, making me fear that the file would be all but impossible to hear. Fortunately—though not exactly pleasantly—Edwin’s country voice came through moments later.
“You can’t be serious,” he growled. “You’re gonna let that son of a bitch remain the primary investor in my company?”
“I, uh, just believe it’s best,” Andrew replied. The poor dude sounded so nervous that I imagined he was on the verge of a breakdown of some kind. “I have a, a strong relationship with him and I want that to continue.”
“That piece of shit is nothing more than human garbage. He’s no son of mine.”
I felt Layla’s hand go to mine, but this was nothing that I needed support on. It was no secret to me how Edwin felt about me—but boy would it be a bad look to the world if Edwin was caught on tape talking that way about me. Or… we could leave it up for interpretation and say it’s about Morgan.
Admittedly, this wasn’t the juice I had wanted for the Wall Street Journal. It still felt just a hair too personal and not business enough, but the clip was easily five minutes long. There was still room for hope.
“You spend your time with him, your business will go under, boy. And if you doubt me, just see what happens. If the market or he doesn’t make your business fail, I will.”
It wasn’t necessarily illegal to say that, but in conjunction with everything else…
“What do you mean, you’ll, uh, you’ll… you’ll make it fail?”
God bless you, Andrew. That was the perfect follow-up question.
“I have means, boy, and you don’t want to even know what those means are,” Edwin said. “I will go to any length, no matter what, to make sure those who don’t join me are defeated by me.”
He’s desperate. I’ve never heard him sound so angry in a business meeting like this. Maybe Hunt Industries isn’t doing as well as he thought. Or maybe he’s still bothered that I’m still around.
Either way, no complaints from me. More trouble for him means more opportunities for me.
“Mr. Hunt, I’m just—”
“I don’t care what you just are, boy. I only care that you realize you are being financially irresponsible for not taking this deal. Do I have to send you back to kindergarten so you can learn your goddamn ABCs so I don’t have to spell it out so much for you?”
A long silence came.
“All due respect, Mr. Hunt, this is not how I conduct my business.”
Yes! He’s finally standing up for himself! Hallelujah!
“Well then, we’ll just see how well the way you conduct your business goes,” Edwin said, sounding like he was standing up. “Ask Chance what happened to Rising Sun when he tried to fuck with me, boy. Think long and hard.”
Another pause came before Edwin’s voice could be heard, a bit more distant than before.
“Final offer. Fifty percent for twenty million. You have one hour to decide.”
And with that, the audio clip ended.
“Did he just admit to killing a business?” Layla asked.
“It’s a little bit vague and a lawyer could argue it doesn’t prove anything, but to the court of public opinion, it’s more than enough,” I said, smiling at my good fortune.
I reached into my phone, texted Andrew to say “Good man. Don’t take his offer,” and then let out a long, pleasant sigh.
“You need to end this quickly,” Layla said. “You know if Andrew doesn’t agree to this, he’s going to escalate the war.”
I knew that all too well.
“Can you do anything to make it go faster? Anyone you can talk to who can expedite this process?”
An answer actually came to mind. I didn’t like it, but if anyone had close access to Edwin and knew what his day to day was like, knew what troubles he was having, and what things he was doing…
“Goddamnit,” I said. “There is.”
But it’s not going to be a pleasant or fun conversation.