Page 174 of Broken Brothers

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.

70

When my alarm went off the next morning, if not for the time on my phone, I wouldn’t have known if it was 11 p.m. or 5 a.m.

The early morning hour fucked with my head, as I had not gotten to sleep until about midnight the night before. Too much tension and adrenaline coursing through me had it all but impossible for me to fall asleep. Layla had tried to coax me into having sex, telling me that doing so would relieve things, but when she started kissing me and I could not think of anything other than Andrew’s recording and my meeting this morning, I gently pushed off her, telling her it wouldn’t be right to have that kind of sex.

Groggily, I kicked off the sheets of the bed, nearly kicking Layla in the process. I found my jeans and the nearest thick clothing I could find, which included a t-shirt and a hoodie—a far cry from the professional clothes the person across from me would probably have, but I was well past the point of caring how I looked. If anything, the hood over my head gave me some measure of anonymity.