Success, Opulence and Power by Hebru Young (best novel books to read .TXT) 📗

Where: Edom Group, The United Nations of Europe and Americas, Milwaukee, Wisconsin

When: 0935 hours, Monday, November 11, 2041

Currency: UNEA credits

Monday morning, the CSOs and I met at the office to go over business matters, and Joe was present to go over other trial preparations. There were a few things I wanted to go over business-wise. In terms of the first shipment of erratanite, we needed to draw up a business strategy that mapped out product design, production, testing, marketing, and distribution. As far as trial preparation, we still needed to come up with a plan to deal with the conspiracy charge.

“So, after all the drama in the AU, I can gladly say that the erratanite deal has been finalized, and we will get our shipment soon. As it stands, we know that we can use erratanite in a new line of body armour and perhaps in vehicular armoury as well. The light-weight nature of erratanite makes it the perfect solution, not to mention that it is not currently on the market. This puts us in a perfect position, we will be the first company to roll this out, and we can charge premium prices for all products. So, I need you guys to liaise with your teams to start researching other solutions where erratanite can be implemented and to create an initial draft for design and implementation. Joe, I need you to get someone to look at the legal side of things to see if there are any other regulatory or safety issues we may not have considered,” I said.

“Alex and I will brief the directors in the armoury department on both sides of the Nations. As soon as we get the first draft in place, we’ll bring that back to you for sign-off,” Chris said.

“As far as I’m concerned, the only issue I think might come up is pricing. There are already a few products out there that are almost capable of doing what erratanite can do. How do we convince people to buy our product if we’re charging more?” Alex asked.

“Simple, Alex, marketing. This stuff will pretty much sell itself once people know what they are getting. We know it won’t be street-level goons who will be buying this stuff. It’ll be high-profile individuals, private security firms, and wholesale armoury distributors. So, where are we with the conspiracy charge, Joe?” I asked.

“I’ve gone over this one over and over again, but I haven’t been able to come up with anything yet. They’ve got a recording and they’ve got a witness, and I don’t have a legal strategy for now. With that said, if something was to happen to the audio file and Jonah Balenciaga was to mysteriously go missing, it would be very advantageous. Seriously though, Fredric and I haven’t stopped working on it, we will keep trying to find a way,” Joe said.

“Nah, you might have a point there. While you look into the legal side of dealing with this, the CSOs and I will see what we can do regarding the file and Balenciaga,” I said.

I could always count on Joe to be straight with me. The audio file is probably out of reach and might have been copied across a few secured storage devices. This wouldn’t stop us from trying to find someone who has access to all copies of the file. Jonah Balenciaga had disappeared immediately after he posted bail, so killing him is proving a bit difficult. People were saying he’d been staying out of the public eye in an effort to avoid the media and paparazzi. However, it would have been obvious to anyone with a brain that Jonah would be fully aware that his life was in danger and my men would be coming after him. There was also the possibility that he’d struck a deal with the enforcers and turned Nation’s evidence. The fact that the evidence was so strong meant that Jonah’s options were limited: it was either prison, death, or chirping. The more I thought about it, the more I leaned towards the notion that he might be in witness protection.

“Does anyone have a line on Jonah yet?” I asked.

“Not yet, Dom,” said Alex.

“Well, what are we waiting for? Please get a move on this, guys. Do I need to remind you of what’s at stake here?” I said raising my voice.

“We are on it, Dom,” said Chris.

“Please get hold of the tech kid, see if there’s anything he can do about that audio file,” I said.

“No worries, Dom, I’ll sort that out,” said Alex.

Wisconsin Governor Dave Easterman was as shady as they come. He and his colleagues were blocking several contract applications from Edom Group. I recently made a proposal to take over some of the abandoned inner-city buildings for development. My plan was to refurbish the old buildings and rent them out as apartments and offices. Other applications included restaurant and alcohol licenses, but these were declined as well. He was hell-bent on making sure that none of my innovation plans would see the light of day. All it took was one call from Easterman, and his friends would shut down proposals I made to their offices as well. This was frustrating to say the least, and this was why I had initially plotted to kill him. I later decided to hold off on killing Easterman. It would bring a lot of heat on me, so a more subtle approach was required.

Prior to my decision, I held a meeting with Jonah, and offered him a huge number of credits to provide intel on his boss. In exchange for the credits, he provided me with the governor’s daily itinerary for an entire month. This included the governor’s exact whereabouts at any given moment.

It was during this meeting that I let Jonah know I was going to kill his boss. For some reason he didn’t seem to