Page 165 of Broken Brothers

“I have never seen a man so compelled by money that he puts it ahead of his family on a permanent basis. We all have days when we have to sacrifice family dinners and nights with the lady for time in the office, but even in my worst days, I tried to minimize those. Edwin… he’s the only person I ever seen act that way. I suppose that’s why he’s so rich, but let me tell you, until you can inject money into your bloodstream to prevent heart attacks, it just ain’t worth it past a certain point.”

I nodded, trying to see if that would prod Mr. Burnson to continue speaking as he had.

“Bless that old man’s soul,” he said, which wasn’t exactly the words he was looking for. “Truth be told, Chance, I think a lot about what happened while you were here with the Taylors and such. I think about why Edwin Hunt went to all that trouble to hurt me. And it boggles the mind.”

There was my opening. Mr. Burnson wasn’t just going to give me the gospel of his newborn life—I had the opportunity that I needed to say more.

“What, exactly, happened a few years ago?” I said. “I always heard rumors about how you had screwed over Edwin in some business deal or something, and that’s why he shamed you as he did at that one meeting.”

I did not expect Mr. Burnson to laugh as heartily and outrageously as he did. It didn’t seem like he was mocking me, but there did seem to be something to the question I wasn’t aware of.

“Honestly? I just took a deal that was better than his. No public shaming, no calling out in the press, nothing like that. Just a better deal. But you know, with your father—”

“He’s not my father.”

The stunned look on Mr. Burnson’s face surprised me, but perhaps he was just looking at it through rose-colored glasses still.

“I mean, yes, he adopted me, but he never wanted me in the family. That was all Melanie’s doing. Mom’s doing. Edwin basically accepted me because he figured he’d never have to do much with me. He’s probably regretting that now.”

“Jesus. Anyways, yeah, nothing more to it. A simple business deal.”

“And he went back at you hard for just that?”

“Seems a bit much, don’t you think?”

I was never going to have a better point in the conversation, never going to have a better moment, never going to have a better opportunity than right there to say what I felt.

“Here’s the truth, Mr. Burnson,” I said. “I don’t like Edwin Hunt, but I haven’t liked him for a while now. However, the more I think about him and how he’s treated me and others, the more I realize he’s like a cancer on this world. He lies to everyone he works with, he betrays trust, and he does whatever he can to get a dollar. He has no ethics and no code, at least not in his heart, and he only acts in his own self-interest. I am working on collecting as much information and as many sources as I can to get an article in the Journal to publicly pressure him to resign as CEO of Hunt Industries. Are you in?”

Mr. Burnson hummed his lips like a horse, looked out the window for what seemed the longest time—so long that I wondered if… I don’t know, he was trying to telepathically link up with the old man or something—and then, finally, looked back at me.

“You know, so much of what I’ve done in the past couple of months has been about trying to move on. Trying to move on from that lifestyle that quite literally nearly killed me. Goingback into business with Mr. Hunt… that seems like I’m going back to the lifestyle.”

“No, I don’t mean interacting with him again,” I quickly corrected. “I don’t want you to do that. This has nothing to do with laying a trap. This is simply going back on the traps he has laid for you and exposing them to the world. It’s our chance to make society and the market better.”

Mr. Burnson leaned back and matched my body language, crossing his legs, placing his chin on his pointed fingers.

“And what’s your end game, Chance?”

Might as well be honest.

“There’s an element of revenge, I’ll admit. This started out as kind of a middle finger back to him. But the more I thought about it, the more I considered how many people he had hurt, I knew I couldn’t just stand to the side as I was. I knew I wasn’t the only person he’d burned. And so I decided that for the sake of helping everyone, I’d act. And when it all goes down? If it all goes down? I’ll go back to MCH and run that. If Morgan doesn’t want to go into it? Then it’ll just be Chance Holdings. I’ll work with that. It’ll be smaller than expected, but I’m getting pretty comfortable at being a one man show.”

Mostly because much of my life has felt like a one-man show in some ways.

“Alright,” Mr. Burnson said. I tried not to show too much reaction, fearful that Mr. Burnson might not actually be agreeing to what I wanted. “I see what you’re saying. And, sadly, I have to agree. Mr. Hunt’s behavior… it’s sad, really. I always knew he had an edge, but he was so talented he never did need to act so crassly and greedy. But, the allure of the dollar has ruined many a man before. What do you need?”

“Just any information you can give me about Edwin acting unethically—maybe any emails he’s ever sent you, anything like that. Any names of people you know—”

“Give me a second.”

With that, he turned to his computer and furiously typed away for about a minute. Then, with a dramatic stroke, he clicked his mouse and turned to me with a smile.

“Something I haven’t told you yet,” he said. “Part of the reason that I didn’t take Edwin’s deal all those years ago was absolutely because it wasn’t the best deal. But part of it was also because I had so many people come to me and say that if they had to do it all over again, they would never have done business with him. I just sent you a list of names off the top of my head. Take a look.”

Curious, I opened my phone and my email app. Sure enough, Mr. Burnson’s email had come to me.

I looked at it in stunned, pleasant disbelief.