The Shadow Tycoon
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 9
With a loud crack, the chair shattered in Michael’s hands. His partner quickly stepped in between him and the informant, doing his best to calm him down.
The operation had failed completely.
Neither the team that moved on William mid-delivery nor the one that searched his temporary residence had found anything unusual.
Forget the five thousand dollars in loose change mentioned by the informant, they had not even found a single dollar. Not on William, not in his room.
Failure meant humiliation.
Within the IRS, hierarchy and rank bred a level of internal competition outsiders could hardly imagine.
Michael had been one of the most promising candidates for promotion.
But if this failed operation alerted William and Fox, ruining everything that followed, then he would become a joke. For the next two or three years, he could forget about advancing.
Most people, when faced with trouble, looked for someone else to blame.
Michael blamed the informant.
So he had him brought into this room, and in a burst of rage, lifted a chair and smashed it down onto his back.
“Do you have any idea how much your bad intel has cost me?” he shouted, struggling against his partner’s restraint while pointing at the informant slumped over the table.
The informant was a boss.
In Sabine City and beyond, most intelligence channels were controlled by specialized collectors and these bosses.
Newsboys reported anything unusual to them. It was part of the arrangement, another layer of work.
There was no pay, no reward. The boys still obeyed, trading obedience for scraps of favor.
Some clever Special Agents and Agents cultivated informants like these. And no boss worked for just one handler.
Information was business. Not justice. Not morality. Just money.
Men like Michael existed, but they were rare. Taking out frustration on an informant was a foolish move.
The boss’s face twisted in pain from the blow. Hatred flickered in his eyes, then quickly softened into submission.
Michael held leverage over him.
There had been a young girl. Something had happened. Michael had found out.
He had taken the girl, and left behind evidence, a recorded confession, a written statement bearing fingerprints.
“I didn’t lie! One of my boys alone handed him nearly fifteen hundred dollars in coins. I swear I didn’t lie!”
He pleaded, praying for this nightmare to end.
Perhaps he had forgotten that once, there had been a girl praying the same way.
Michael shoved his partner aside, stepped forward, grabbed the boss by the hair, and drove a punch into his face.
This time, his partner did not intervene.
As long as Michael used only his fists, it was unlikely to turn fatal. That was the line.
Anything beyond that required stepping in.
Of course, even if someone did die, there were ways to deal with it. It just meant more effort, more connections to grease.
Sabine City was small. The FBI, the IRS, the courts, they all knew each other.
No one would destroy the career of a promising government man over someone living on the edge of legality.
With the right framing, it could all be explained away, an unfortunate incident during the pursuit of a suspect.
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