The Shadow Tycoon
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 16
The boss’s chat with William did not last very long before it ended. William had filled his head with a great many interesting ideas, and now the man was itching to act.
He felt every word William had said was right. Nothing was more important than dignity. Once a man bent his back in this life, he would never truly stand straight again. That was exactly what had happened to him, and he was going to take his dignity back.
Watching the boss’s retreating figure, seeing that faint sense of resolve hanging around his back, William sincerely hoped he would carry his thoughts through to the end.
That afternoon, taking advantage of some free time, William went to the Sabine City Department of Social Services and registered a business company under the name Great Empire, with an operating scope broad enough to cover almost every line of work.
In truth, the Department of Social Services did not care much what a newly registered company claimed it would do. The reason there was a business-category selection at all was simply to build a searchable index.
When some companies needed to cooperate with others, they could pay the Department of Social Services to access certain files. If a company had only one stated line of business, that was treated as its primary trade. If it listed many lines, then any one of them was considered a sideline.
Whenever one company cooperated with another, it naturally preferred its partner to look professional. That was why most firms registered under only one business category.
Registering all of this cost William one hundred dollars. City halls everywhere had long encouraged entrepreneurship, and they offered a great many favorable policies to new founders.
New businesses created jobs. That eased tensions between the unemployed and society itself. In taxation especially, newly established companies could receive tax reductions, even full exemptions, so long as they hired enough workers according to regulations.
A broad-based service company like the one William had registered had a laughably low registered capital of only one hundred dollars, but as long as he hired three employees, he could apply for tax-exempt status.
City Hall, and the IRS along with it, never expected tiny firms like this to become the main artery of the city’s finances. Their taxes would never be enough to launch major civic projects, and their absence would never affect the progress of the city’s construction plans. So the government simply offered generous incentives. At the very least, it reduced the number of potentially troublesome unemployed men by three.
Once the registration was finished, William did not immediately hire people and begin operating. Instead, he found a print shop and had a batch of small cards made.
Printed on them were the major services his company would offer, especially coin exchange, which was the core of the business. After that, he bought an account book and a manual on standardized tax filing.
After an afternoon of careful reading and study, he more or less figured out how the system worked, and also came to understand that even backward things were not necessarily easy to master.
He found himself envying those people who could build a flawless set of books from nothing more than a few vague notions, and then turn around and find faults in someone else’s accounting without even consulting a textbook.
That was when he realized he needed a professional accountant.
The truth was, if Michael had not come after him so quickly, he might not have established a company this early.
In his previous world, during lunch and the occasional break, he had spoken with a number of interesting men in that small room. In a place as dreary as that, everyone had a story, but most people had little interest in hearing anyone else’s.
On the one hand, most of the people locked up there had gone through broadly similar things. They did not necessarily think another man’s story was more interesting than their own, and they had no real urge to probe someone else’s past.
On the other hand, the guards could always just pull the files. Those records were more objective, more impartial, and usually closer to the truth than anything told aloud. So they did not bother chatting directly with prisoners either.
William was different. The moment he entered that place, he was like a sea sponge full of curiosity, tirelessly absorbing knowledge. Those who had already been locked up for a long time, or still had a long time left to serve, were more than happy to tell their stories, if only to revisit the brightest version of themselves they had once been.
From those men’s experiences, he learned one thing above all else: do not let your trail appear too clearly in the government’s line of sight.
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