The Shadow Tycoon
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 54
From the moment Young Michael was sentenced in open court, some media outlets had already begun reexamining the matter from the opposite direction. The conflict between Michael and William, had it really arisen from the clash between a law enforcer and a suspect, or had it come from private business?
If it was the former, then they had little need to concern themselves with anything else. But if it was the latter, then the direction public opinion had taken was wrong.
It was like a little red man fighting a little blue man. The little blue man was injured. If it was merely an isolated incident, then it would always remain just that, an isolated incident, and no one would care.
The problem now was that everyone was saying the little red man was a law enforcer, and the little blue man was an innocent citizen. Without evidence, the little red man had beaten and injured the little blue man, and the root of it all was that the little red man had been given too much enforcement power, which he was abusing to harm the public.
That was the current situation. But remove that layer from it, and the little red man beating the little blue man was simply a matter of private grievance. There was no law enforcer and innocent suspect, no question of whether enforcement power was appropriate. It became a single, isolated affair.
The moment William saw the latest edition of the newspapers, he realized that the upper ranks of the IRS, or at the very least administrative chiefs at the state level, had begun to exert themselves. He had not yet had time to arrange for Director Johnson to let certain information slip by accident, and already the newspapers had begun printing speculation first.
Some of the papers were not especially formal, mere gossip tabloids. Most people treated them as amusement, because they frequently printed sensational and shocking news.
But it had to be said, this time the coincidence was almost too perfect. One entertainment tabloid reported that Young Michael had been sentenced for burglary, and that the very house he burglarized belonged to the innocent suspect in Michael’s law enforcement case. Might there be some connection there?
Very often, certain people liked to say the masses had no brains, that they lived all day under the spell of collective consciousness. That was plainly a laughable notion.
At least under the tabloids’ reports, some people had already begun to wonder whether there was a deeper conspiracy hidden inside all this.
In truth, every person, every citizen of every nation, is by nature unwilling to believe that his country is already rotten to the core and beyond saving. They always believe there is still hope left in it, even if they spend their days in a room, pants around their ankles, cursing at the president on television and shouting ma re fa ke.
So when they realized the country could still be saved, and that what was unsalvageable was only one particular man, then somewhere in the subconscious they found an outlet for release without even realizing it themselves. The tide of public opinion began to shift, moving away from condemning the problems of the state system and toward attacking a single individual.
After reading through the entire paper, William casually set it down. At that moment he was sitting in Mr. Fox’s office. A great deal of his money had already been washed clean and moved up out of the basement into daylight, into a bright, street-facing, detached two-story building, complete with a Gatnau sign and a telephone line.
“This is good news...” William picked up another newspaper and glanced at Mr. Fox. “The IRS has also realized that staying tangled up with us is meaningless. Abandoning Michael may be a little cruel to him, but for the whole system it’s salvation. We’re safe now.”
“Only then did Mr. Fox finally let out a breath. These past few days he had been living in constant dread. Several of his colleagues had already been sent to the district prison on money laundering charges to await final sentencing, while several others had vanished overnight without a trace.”
At present, the entire Sabine City had only two or three operations left that could provide small-scale financial assistance services. For a time, the telephone outside the office had not stopped ringing.
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