Chapter 7 - The Cornered Rat
While Eleanor was being prepped for her transport to Chicago, Kevin Mitchell was sitting inside a twenty-four-hour diner on the outskirts of Grand Rapids, nursing a lukewarm cup of black coffee that he had paid for using the last handful of loose quarters from his glove compartment.
He hadn't shaved in four days. The designer stubble had turned into a scraggly, desperate beard. His eyes were wild, bloodshot, and darting constantly toward the entrance.
Across the laminate table sat a man named Greg Miller, a freelance tech blogger and opportunistic digital tabloid writer who ran a minor Midwest business scandal blog called *The Silicon Rustbelt.*
"Look, Kevin," Miller said, tapping a digital voice recorder on the table. "You’re giving me a lot of smoke, but I need fire. You’re telling me that Ryan Mitchell, the golden-boy founder of Stratix Systems, deliberately defunded his elderly parents during a historic blizzard and left his sick mother to freeze in a house with burst pipes?"
"Yes!" Kevin hissed, leaning across the table, his breath sour. "That's exactly what he did! He’s a ruthless, narcissistic sociopath! He cut off her health insurance on Christmas night because of a personal disagreement! She ended up in the emergency room with hypothermia! I have the hospital intake sheet right here!"
Kevin slid a crumpled piece of paper across the table. It was a photocopy of Eleanor's initial triage record, which Kevin had snapped a picture of while his father wasn't looking.
"And you have proof he cut the funding intentionally?" Miller asked, his eyes gleaming with the predatory excitement of a bottom-feeder sniffing blood in the water.
"I have the account deactivation notices," Kevin said, pulling out his cracked smartphone. "Look at the timestamps! December twenty-fifth, ten-fifteen PM! Right after he stormed out of Christmas dinner! The guy is worth fifty million dollars, and he couldn't spare a dime to keep his mother’s arthritis medication active! If you publish this before Stratix’s next enterprise funding round closes, their institutional investors will pull out! Their reputation will be incinerated!"
"And what do you want for this, Kevin?" Miller asked, leaning back, sizing him up.
"Twenty-five thousand dollars," Kevin demanded, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper. "Exclusive rights. You get the documents, you get my on-the-record interview, and you get exclusive photos of the flooded lake house. But I need ten thousand wired to my personal account today."
Miller smiled, a thin, oily smirk. "I don't pay upfront for unverified allegations, kid. I’ll run the background checks on the corporate filings. If the dates match, and if I can confirm Stratix controls the primary trust, we’ll talk terms. But if this is just a family spat where you got cut off from your allowance, I’m not getting sued into bankruptcy by Elena Howard."
"It's not an allowance!" Kevin snarled, slamming his fist on the table, drawing stares from the diner's waitress. "I was an executive consultant! I helped build that company!"
"Sure you did," Miller said dryly, sliding the paper into his satchel and sliding out of the booth. "Don't leave town, Kevin. I'll be in touch."
Kevin watched the journalist leave, his chest heaving. He felt a surge of dark, vindictive adrenaline. For four years, he had lived in Ryan’s towering shadow, smiling and nodding while Ryan handed him monthly checks like a master tossing scraps to a dog.
*If I’m going down,* Kevin thought, his teeth grinding together in venomous spite, *I’m taking Stratix down with me.*
He stood up, pulled his coat tight around his shoulders, and walked out into the freezing wind toward his leased BMW—a car that was already scheduled for repossession on Tuesday morning.
He got behind the wheel, turned the key, and was about to pull out of the diner's parking lot when a sleek, black Cadillac Escalade with tinted windows smoothly swung into the driveway, blocking his exit.
Kevin jammed on the brakes, cursing. "What the hell?!"
Before he could put the car in reverse, a second dark SUV pulled up behind him, boxing his vehicle in completely.
The passenger door of the front Escalade opened.
A tall, broad-shouldered man in a charcoal cashmere overcoat stepped out, flanked by two private corporate security operatives wearing discrete earpieces.
It wasn't Ryan.
May you like
It was Marcus Vance.
***
