The Shadow Tycoon
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 53
Human beings are, in the end, creatures drawn by profit. So long as they are animals, they can scarcely escape the pull of instinct. No one in this world is capable of absolute reason. When forced to choose, most people will choose the option most advantageous to themselves.
Letting one man take the fall would save himself, save the Sabine City IRS’s dignity, and recover a measure of face for the entire law enforcement apparatus. How this ought to be chosen, Johnson had known in his heart from the very beginning. He was simply unwilling to say it aloud.
The more ugliness and darkness people carry in their hearts, the more they yearn for purity. Yet the more they yearn for purity, the more they wish to destroy it, by whatever means they can.
Perhaps the reason it is called “human nature” is because man’s essence is sufficiently complex, sufficiently fallen, that only then can the phrase itself carry such depth.
Director Johnson dabbed the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. William’s calm gaze made him feel as though needle points were pressing into his skin, leaving him deeply unsettled, profoundly uncomfortable.
He rarely encountered a gaze so well disguised, yet so aggressively invasive. It was the gaze of a man above him, as if the other had handed him a condition, already knew he had no true freedom to choose, and still had the generosity to let him “decide,” when in truth only a single answer existed.
It stung. More sweat spread across his face, across his neck. Perhaps it really was too hot inside. Or perhaps sitting face-to-face with William, alone, had placed too much pressure on him. Abruptly, he rose to his feet.
After standing, he made as if to pull out the chair and turn to leave, but the motion paused there. A strange guilt seized him. He muttered an explanation, “I need to think about it. Yes, think about it...”
He cast William a glance. After William made a casual gesture of please, go ahead, Johnson wiped at his sweat as he walked out of the grill shop. Standing on the sidewalk with his already soaked handkerchief in hand, he looked back once at William, who flickered in and out of sight among the crowd, and his hand trembled slightly.
His hand no longer felt entirely under his control. A sudden burst of humiliation and anger made him hurl the damp, slightly heavy handkerchief to the ground. He began gulping down breath in great heaves, and the strange looks from passing pedestrians quickly forced him back to his senses.
He slapped himself on the mouth, climbed into the car, fumbled out his key with shaking hands, jammed it into the ignition, started the engine, stamped on the accelerator, and soon vanished from the roadside.
After returning home, Johnson shut himself inside the study. For one of the rare times in his life, he took down a bottle of hard liquor that normally served as decoration on the wine rack. He drank only during social engagements. He did not actually like alcohol, which was probably related to the fact that his father, a hopeless drunk in Johnson’s childhood, used to beat both him and his mother after drinking.
More than forty years had passed. Some things, some people, had long since become part of the past. Yet there were other things that seemed still frozen in that moment more than forty years ago, unchanged to this day.
Glass after glass of liquor, the sharp stench of alcohol mingling with an equally intense sense of guilt, drove his emotions into violent swings. His decision would change the lives of three people, perhaps ruin all three of them, yet he had no other choice.
Director Johnson was a good man, at least that was what people in the IRS said. It was his mildness that had carried him to the Director’s seat, and it was that same mildness that had stopped him there. But now all of that was about to change.
The next day, the easygoing, accommodating Director people knew was gone. In his place stood a Director who was always frowning, whose voice carried a pale, cutting sharpness.
Over the following days, as public opinion continued to ferment, Sabine City, a second-tier Federal Reserve city, became for the first time the focus of the entire Federation, even the whole world. The sensation was ... peculiar.
Fresh faces began to appear on the streets in the city center. They always had microphones in their hands, and not far away there would be interview vans waiting.
The workers’ union even organized a one-day strike that weekend specifically over this matter. Sabine City’s union leadership also made a point of visiting William to express their outrage at the abuse of authority by the enforcement agencies.
All in all, it was a very strange time. Everyone found it novel.
Amid that novelty, Young Michael’s case came to trial. Because Michael himself was now drowning in troubles, and because Young Michael refused all visitation, the court appointed a lawyer to act as Young Michael’s defense counsel.
After more than half an hour of discussion between the lawyer and Young Michael, the defense counsel accepted Young Michael’s guilty plea and would do his utmost to secure as short a sentence as possible.
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.