“Good. Ethan here will continue our discussion, and then he’ll release you. If you breathe a word of this to anyone, not only will they call you a liar, but I’ll make sure you end up dead. Understand?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Good.” I turned and left the room. Ethan followed.
“What should I do?” he asked.
“Make sure he’s going to follow orders. Then let him go.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure. He’s not a threat.”
“You’re the boss.” He turned and headed back into the room. I heard Myers say something muffled, and then scream.
Poor guy didn’t know what he was getting into with Ethan. I was a brute in comparison. Ethan was an artist with a knife.
I headed back through the factory, taking my time. Thousands of men just like my father moved through this place at one time, men that just wanted to make a living, men that had no ambition outside of their continued survival.
I hated those men. I loved them. They were a part of me in ways I’d never understand.
But I was going to be more than that. I couldn’t stop, I had to continue to press onward and upward. I had no other options, and I couldn’t live with myself if I settled.
Louisa Barone could be my ticket to the next level. I could continue to scrape together my empire, maybe move up in the world in another ten years, or I could skip the fucking climb completely and ascend to the summit in one fell swoop.
I got out my phone and sent Ethan a text as I left the warehouse grounds. “Investigate Louisa Barone further.”
I wasn’t the kind of man to wait around.
8
Louisa
I felt like I was most at my element in front of a whole array of computer screens. The entire internet was at my fingertips, and nothing could be kept from me.
I got into a flow, working and typing, moving through my usual spots. I broke into my father’s network and checked on his plans, but there was nothing new there. I figured they realized that I was easily coming and going, and probably were keeping their important plans off their network. Next, I checked out the Russians, but they typically never updated their stuff, and besides, my Russian was a little rusty.
Which brought me to the reason for this whole thing. I began with the easy stuff, a simple Google search for Wyatt Carter, and skimmed the articles I found. I read the same story over and over: a working class boy with a down-home attitude becomes a bigwig lawyer. He wanted to save the world and all the working class people of Illinois. He was a golden boy, a prodigy, the state’s native son come back to save everyone.
It was all crap. I knew the real Wyatt. He didn’t care about saving the state, or at least not in the way that they thought. He wanted to control the state in order to bring about his will.
What I couldn’t figure was what that will was. I didn’t know what he wanted to do with all that power. He said he cared about people and the poor, but I couldn’t tell if that was because he genuinely believed it or if it sounded good in an interview.
I began to dig deeper. I broke into his email account, his social media accounts, and anything else remotely related to him, but there was nothing. Sure, there was some chatter about some potentially shady stuff, but nothing out of the ordinary for an attorney general.
By the third hour, I was getting frustrated. There was nothing on him. It was almost as if this image he created for himself as a good old boy was real, and he genuinely was the nice guy next door.
There were some rumors, but they were all unsubstantiated. He was known to be very ruthless in the courtroom, and there were whispers of some intimidation going on. None of it had any real basis, though, and I couldn’t use any of it.
As I continued researching, I began to try to imagine the world that this man lived in. I tried to picture his friends, his enemies, his wants and his desires. I tried to get into his head as much as I could, and as I did that, I realized that I was interested in him for more than just his political connections.
I was interested in him, as a person. I realized pretty early on that I wasn’t going to find anything on him, and yet I continued researching. I couldn’t help myself.
There was a lot to do around the house, and yet I had this man on my mind.
As I began to wind down, something suddenly pinged my console. I opened it up and realized that he was currently on the internet, or at least someone was on his computer.
Smiling to myself, I decided to take his laptop over. I took control of it and made his screen blank. I typed him a message.
“Hello, stranger.”
It took almost five minutes for him to respond.
“Who are you and what do you want?”
“I’m me, and I want someone to protect me from muggers.”