“Gordon Perry King, son of Gretchen Naomie King, maiden name Leota, and Johnathan Clarence King. John King was a giant of a man and a good man who had married a good woman. Gretchen, a full blooded Samoan, was a loving wife and mother who fought with everything she had against the cancer that was determined to take her life. The pain she endured was beyond imagining, but she told her many friends that it was worth it if she could just stay with you and your father even one more day. ‘My guys’, she called you.
“But the outcome was inevitable and, far too soon, she was gone, leaving behind her ashes in a plain gray urn on the table your father had set up for in a corner of the living room and a mountain of medical bills on the kitchen table. John King wanted neither the name of the woman he loved, nor the child she bore him, saddled with the debts left behind by such a cruel disease. He took every bit of work he could find to erase those debts while providing you a home, clean clothes and, eventually, brothers.”
“You'd asked him if he would take in a foster child from school who had become your friend. The foster parents he was currently with barely tolerated the boy for the money paid them by the state. Not only did he do as you wished, but he also took into his home the only other friend Chase had by then in his life. One Raphael Santiago. Do you think, Mister King, your father agreed, at least in part, because he wanted you to still have a family should he, too, be taken from you? If so, John King had vision because, as it happened, your father worked himself to death to clear any and all debts left by his wife’s illness and, every day, he proved to his,” she holds up three fingers, “three sons that he loved them more than his own life.”
Gordon, his face etched with pain, says nothing.
Raphael’s eyes bore straight through the woman, but she pays no heed as her voice maintains a steady pounding cadence that makes spark fly from the hammering of her words against the anvil of their truth. “Even in death, your father managed to surround the three of you with his love. He left what money he could for you to go to college, but it was not enough. So, Chase followed the example of the one man who had proven to him what a real father is. Driven by the love he had for that father and the brothers he had grown to cherish more than his next breath, his own life, he moved to Portland and worked every job he could find to help pay the tuition for you and Mister Santiago.
“And someone noticed. A very interesting someone.”
Sitting up slightly more straight in her chair, Erica Palmer continued. “Constance Morgan had made millions running one of the most expensive, and highly regarded, escort services on the West Coast. More important, she has a intimate knowledge of some very rich and powerful people that are always on the make to acquire more money and power. Those connections were going to prove themselves very useful.
“It developed one day, Mister King, that you called Chase from Corvallis shortly after getting your degree and told him of a Fortune 500 multinational company on the verge of dumping a small, but profitable, subsidy because it did not fit their business model. Chase’s brain went into overdrive. He saw it as the big opportunity where everything in your lives up to then, all the pain and suffering, the ups and downs, the dreams for a better day, had been fused into that one moment where the three of you would begin building your dreams together.
“Packaging your new business degree and Mister Santiago’s engineering degree with his own chutzpah, Chase sold Constance’s friends on a very crazy but intriguing idea. They chipped in millions for the scheme of this young man whose only experience with business, unbeknownst to them, had been stocking shelves and running a cash register in a large department store.
“With this backing, he bought a sizeable chunk of shares in the larger corporation. He was able to leverage those shares into loans that purchased more stock. He spread the shares around amongst a small group of trusted friends, including several MCI Consultants, if I me be permitted a laugh for using that term given their real occupation.” She cut her eyes to Sonia for a moment before looking back at Gordon.
“Then the entire group attended the annual stockholders meeting of the large corporation and created such an uproar about the plan to close the doors of the smaller company and take a loss rather than sell it, that the board dumped that little company at a fire sale price and washed their hands of the whole thing. Any guesses who, under layers of shell companies, bought it?”
After a pause during which the silence drenches everything, the woman continues.
“From there, the three of you and your other friends went on to build everything that surrounds us for city blocks and beyond. The best of everything but, most of all, the best of people. That little company became the best in one of the fastest growing high-tech fields. How many billions did you sell that company for, Chase?
“I didn’t sell it,” I say. “We sold it.”
“Oh,” the woman replies, “to be sure you made all of your friends very wealthy too. But they’ve always known and gladly accepted who drives things, who possesses the remarkable brain that makes everything else possible. They have no problem that you always have controlling interest, the largest piece of the pie of any business venture.
“And through it all,” she continues, “you have managed to stay off everyone’s radar. You’re like the hint of a storm just over the horizon. You’re always there, somehow sensed but never quite seen. But the effects are still so very real.”
Spreading her hands, palms upward, she says, “But that’s all changed because now you have landed on someone’s radar. Someone whose powers make your own pale by comparison. He’s had you in his sights ever since you bought that piece of land he wanted with that little shack of horrors where you lost your mother. You don’t see it this way, but he feels you beat him, and he hates to lose. He’s a petty man, Chase. Petty and mean and insanely powerful and intent on making you pay for a slight to his ego you were not even aware you were making just for the sick pleasure it will give him to see you and yours suffer.”
“So,” Sonia says, “just who is this all-powerful enemy so intent upon our destruction, Ms. Palmer? What’s his name?”
“I can tell you the name he gave me, but you’ll find it meaningless. He has built many identities over the years and can move in an out of any of them at will. He trusts no one. Ever. So, our arrangement was that none of us who worked for him would ever know his real name. The name he gave us was Timothy Howell Stevens. I took an image of his Arizona driver’s license before I left him. It’s included in one of the files I’ve now unencrypted and listed up there on the screen. You’re welcome to it but, I suspect, you’ll find it a dead end.”
“How convenient,” Sonia says, her mouth twisted as if tasting something bitterly sour. “Is there anymore to your little story?”
“There is,” replies the woman. “He’s assembled a team of the best people in every discipline who is untethered by any hint of conscience. His determination is to take you all down and, until 48 hours ago, I shared that goal. It was me that uncovered all this information about Chase that had been buried so deep he felt no one would ever find it.”
“Bullshit,” Gordon counters. “Anyone who cares enough can find everything you’ve told us in official public records.”
“Really?” the woman counters while turning to fix Gordon with a look of scorn as if addressing a simpleton. “So, then ask yourself, how is it possible that I know all that I’ve shared with you so far? With all the shell companies and offshore accounts you’ve hidden behind all these years, how could I know of even the existence of anyone in this room? The fact that I know even what I’ve shared so far, including intimate personal details, should be setting off very loud alarm bells.”
Gordon shifts his gaze from the woman to the top of the conference table and squirms in his chair.
“But,” the woman says, “let’s not stop there. Let me offer you one last piece of evidence that will prove beyond all doubt that you are in danger of something far worse than ruin.”
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