The Shadow Tycoon
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 112: The Land Beyond Sabine
The prison guard who watched Director Johnson leave with Young Michael and his mother finally pulled his gaze back from the departing car. As he closed the prison gate, he joked with his colleague, “See that? That’s the privilege of the moneyed men. He was barely inside before getting released, and his wife is so young she might be a little too young even to be his daughter...”
The colleague beside him chuckled and shook his head, saying nothing more. Men like them saw many things ordinary people would never get to see.
Some people entered prison with one foot and left with the other. It had practically become a convention.
Some people arrived in tremendous style, not looking as if they had come to serve time at all, but as if they had come to receive people’s admiration. Of course, they did accomplish that.
When those people left, they were just as grand. The motorcade waiting outside the prison to receive them alone could number at least a dozen cars, sometimes several dozen.
Here, one could sometimes see local celebrities being beaten by a gang of men they would never have bothered to look at outside, beaten until they cried for mercy.
One could also see people who had clearly been sentenced not only enter and leave the warden’s office as they pleased, but enter and leave the prison itself as they pleased.
Sometimes even the prison guards and staff would secretly bring women inside. There were always certain people capable of turning a prison into a hotel.
Once a man had seen enough, nothing felt strange anymore. Was there anything excessive about one old man after another in his fifties or sixties marrying a wife in her thirties and having a teenage son?
No. Not excessive at all. It was not even as bizarre as some of the things that happened inside prisons.
On the other side, after breakfast, William went with Ferraler to City Hall. Taking over a professional sports club and reviving Sabine City’s athletic spirit, if it had only been for the use of the municipal stadium, William absolutely would not have accepted that responsibility.
He knew very well how difficult it was to operate a professional sports enterprise and how large the investment could be. A poorer corporate group might not be able to afford the game, let alone someone who did not yet possess such resources.
But the rich had their way of playing, and the poor had theirs. William chose the poor man’s method. At the same time, his purpose was not entirely the right to use the gymnasium. He wanted to stake out territory.
He had drawn the mayor a large pie, so naturally, the mayor and City Hall had to provide a basket big enough to hold that pie.
It was the same as when he drew pies for Richard and the others. First, a person had to possess the ability to see the pie. Without even that ability, he naturally did not deserve the chance.
Drawing pies might look like a one-sided linguistic trick, something like fraud or inducement, but in reality it was a transaction: the sale of dreams.
Buying a dream required payment. Sometimes it was something as simple as personal effort. Sometimes it was a piece of land.
Not long after arriving at City Hall, the mayor met briefly with William and then hurried away. He had been very busy lately, with endless work to do.
William and Ferraler entered the mayor’s office together. Since the mayor had already spoken, and with Ferraler, a familiar face, present as well, no one was blind enough to stop them.
In the end, William stood before a huge map. An ordinary person might not have been able to understand it. It was not like the maps in certain popular geography books, where one could grasp the general picture at a glance.
This was a planning and development blueprint. Some areas had already been built, some were under construction, and others existed only in planning.
Large colored blocks and lines filled the drawing. Anyone unfamiliar with such things might not even be able to find where his own home was.
William stood before the map and studied it for a while. Then he reached out and tapped a vacant parcel bordering the city to the southeast. “How about here?”
Ferraler shook his head. “For the time being, we have no future development plan toward the southeast. The southwest would actually be better.”
Sabine City was located somewhat south of the central-southern region of the Baler Federation. With a population of eight hundred thousand, it was already the fourth-largest city in the state.
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