Page 166 of Broken Brothers

The list of names was at least twenty deep, if not more. I looked up at him in surprise.

“I can’t promise you all of these people are alive or willing to talk,” Mr. Burnson said. “But I can promise you all of them got screwed in some way. I have changed my life for the better, Chance, but I fear that your… that Edwin Hunt will not do the same. If he’s going to continue to hurt people as he has, then I am in agreement with you. For the sake of everyone, we need to pressure him to resign.”

“However we can get him out.”

“Just promise me one thing.”

“Hmm?”

If he was going to ask me to come back to him for a year… I’d do it. A year back as an employee, only running MCH or Chance Holdings on the side, was a trade I would gladly take to force Edwin Hunt out of the game.

“Stay true to what you told me,” Mr. Burnson said. “That this is truly a move to help society and that you’ll go back to what you were doing. I can promise you this, Chance. I’ve seenjust about every stage of life, from being so poor that you had to borrow money to pay rent to being so rich that you have millions of dollars after taxes and expenses every year. But if this heart attack taught me anything, it’s that unless I have the right attitude, it won’t matter how much money I have.”

“I don’t think you have to worry about that, sir,” I said. “I know exactly what I want.”

In business, at least.

In love… let’s come back to that later.

“Good man,” Mr. Burnson said. “You know, even when I fired you—or you quit—I was kind of impressed. People have definitely quit with flare before, but yours went above and beyond.”

“Thanks, I think,” I said with a snort.

“It shows the passion and fire you have,” he said. “I have nothing short of complete confidence you’ll succeed here.”

I smiled, extended my hand, and shook Mr. Burnson’s. But then he said hold on, came around the desk, and gave me a hug. Admittedly, this hippy-dippy version of John Burnson was a bit off-kilter, probably a bit more likely than he should be to make Fridays a Hawaiian dress down day now.

But, hey, he was an ally, and I would take allies however I could.

“Where are you headed now?” he said.

“Home.”

“You walking?”

“I—”

I thought of the people who had trailed me to here and from Layla’s place.

“Actually, would you mind giving me a ride or calling me one?”

68

Two days passed. Layla had come home that night I had met Mr. Burnson and asked for the date to happen a couple of days later, saying something about how she needed some time to plan a date worth planning for. I was happy to agree, and not because I was trying to push her away, but because it gave me an opportunity to work on that which I most valued right then.

The list.

I went through Mr. Burnson’s list one by one and started with looking up every person on LinkedIn. Of the twenty-six names that he had provided, about eighteen were still active in the business world, while three had died. That meant eighteen names who would have value as active business men and five who could at least corroborate everything that was said by the active members.

Of course, not all of them would have the willingness to speak so freely. Many of them would fear retribution, and I knew that if I played this poorly and didn’t knock Edwin off of his perch, not only was I basically a dead man, a whole lot of people were going to face some massive consequences for what they did.

I had to make my case bulletproof and foolproof. I had to make sure that when I went to the Wall Street Journal, not only would there be no doubt that my words were true, but that the words of everyone else were true. It was kind of funny and sad how Edwin had screwed over so many people that it was going to be hard to distinguish fact from fiction—the man who said that he got fired for simply voicing his opinion might not be as true as the person who lost his entire business because Edwin bribed someone else or created a de facto monopoly.

After two days and having placed a phone call and sent an email to everyone, of the twenty-three people who could have responded, a mere ten had. I had a less than fifty percent batting average. And yet, if I was looking at it in absolute terms, most news stories barely had three sources, let alone ten—not including me or Mr. Burnson. Any story that ran with a dozen sources was not going to be a story to be taken lightly.

But for at least one evening, starting around six when Layla returned home and she said “get dressed and let me get dressed, but do it somewhere else so I can surprise you,” I decided to put all of that to the side. For one night, I could pretend that the rest of my world was not a turbulent hot mess, that chaos was about to get even worse, and that I was striking at the Hunt patriarch.

No, instead, when Layla finally emerged from her bedroom wearing a sleek, tight black dress that conformed to her curves perfectly, had a bit of a sequin look to boot, and came up just short on her thighs, I could instead focus on the beautiful woman in front of me.