Steven looked at the young man sitting in the back seat, watching as he pulled a pistol from his pocket, but he showed no expression or emotion of fear.
“Listen, young man, I don’t care what your name is, put your weapon away.”
“I know the boss of the Black Blood Gang, and the bosses of many gangs in this city. If you hurt me, I guarantee, every one of them will find a way to find you, and then make you pay the price!”
The young man behind him did not put his weapon away, nor did he speak, just looked at him.
Steven was silent for a few seconds. He glanced back at the still-congested street and picked up the clothes he had thrown on the passenger seat.
The corner of his eye saw that the young man seemed a little nervous. The muzzle was aimed at him, whereas before it had only been roughly in his direction.
He said casually, nonchalantly, “Relax, I’m getting you some money.”
He took a wallet out of his pocket. It was full of $20 bills, at least twenty or thirty of them.
He took them all out, then counted out one bill. Of course, he wasn’t giving the young man one bill, but keeping one for himself and handing the rest to the young man. “Take it, there’s at least three or four hundred here.”
“Take this money, your weapon, and get out of my car. This matter ends here!”
Steven was not a top-ranking director on the board, but he was a very important one.
He was like… the dark side of the company. When the company needed someone to do the dirty work, he was the one who got his hands dirty.
There was no way around it. This was his job, and he couldn’t change the nature of his work.
Compared to the chairman of the board, the executive president, the vice president, the heads of various departments, the supervisors, and those shareholders…
They all had various backgrounds. Some were from the company’s founding family, some represented intervening investment capital. Everyone had value and was valued and respected.
Only he had none.
He was just an ordinary person. The reason he could become a director was only because he was relatively familiar with the gangs in this city, and at the same time, he himself had some gang background.
Before he became a director of the company, he thought that gangs were a big deal, just like this young man he was facing now.
As long as he had a gun in his hand, then he was the king of this world!
But after entering the company, he gradually understood that a gang was just one link in the entire social operation, and a not-so-important one at that.
So he actually… looked down on the young people who were in gangs from the bottom of his heart, even though he had been in a gang before.
He wasn’t afraid of these people. Just as he had said, a smart person wouldn’t mess with him. It wasn’t worth it.
This young man had gotten into his car with a gun, for no other reason than to get some money from him. He had given the other party money, and the matter was over.
He would remember this young man’s face and then have someone find him.
Not only would he get back the lost money, but he would also make this young man learn to respect him.
After the two’s gazes met without flinching for about ten seconds, the young man spoke, “Drive.”
This sentence made Steven vaguely sense that something was wrong. He was a little uneasy and wanted to turn his body more.
“You’d better not do that,” with the sound of the mechanical gears being cocked, he knew that the hammer had been pulled back.
It was a revolver. He didn’t pay much attention to what model it was, but even a small-caliber defense revolver could easily kill him at such a close distance.
After considering for a dozen seconds, Steven stopped his action of continuing to turn around, threw the money on the passenger seat, and sat up straight.
“Whose man are you?”
The two drivers who had been arguing in front suddenly stopped arguing. They got back in their cars. Steven found that when they went back, they all looked over at him.
The person behind did not speak, just ordered him, “Drive forward, follow that blue car in front.”
“Are you from the Atav family?”
Steven drove the vehicle carefully, following behind the blue car. He noticed that the other car, which had just been arguing with the blue car’s driver, suddenly slowed down and followed behind him.
The three cars formed a line and drove forward. His heart began to race. He realized that he might have been kidnapped.
Many gang leaders appeared in his mind. He thought about the businesses they ran, and whether he had recently done anything to offend them.
But he had no clue.
The Liji Group was too big. Who knew if anyone was doing bad things outside under his name?
After he had said the names of several families or gangs, the young man behind still did not admit it, which made him wonder if this young man was from out of town.
“Can you tell me where I have offended you, or your boss?”
“Tell me your boss’s name. Maybe the misunderstanding between us can be resolved.”
He glanced in the rearview mirror at the young man sitting in the back seat and only saw a mocking smile on the corner of the other’s mouth.
“You want to know?”
He suddenly spoke. Steven swallowed. “Of course, I like to make friends. If I have offended you in any way, I apologize to you. You name a condition, and I will accept it all.”
“If you or your boss wants to be friends with me, I am also very happy to be friends with you. I like people who have ways.”
Very nice words, but they couldn’t move the young man sitting in the back seat. The young man said, “Mr. Lance wants to see you, Mr. Johnson.”
“Lance?”
“Who is…” he didn’t react at first, but then his pupils slightly enlarged!
He remembered, Lance, Lance White. He couldn’t possibly forget this name.
This made his breathing even more rapid, and his heart began to beat violently without him wanting it to.
His palms were covered in sweat, which made the steering wheel feel watery.
“Mr. Lance… he came in person?”
The young man nodded and said with a smile, “You respect him so much, he also has to show you respect, Mr. Steven.”
Steven didn’t speak anymore, just silently followed the car. Now he knew that even if he wanted to say something, it wasn’t to be said to this young man behind him, but to the Lance he was about to meet.
The car soon entered a dilapidated old factory in the suburbs of New Golden City.
Even the most prosperous metropolis has such dilapidated places, but the dilapidation here is not because there is no value here.
On the contrary, this place is valuable. Every expansion of the city circle represents a new batch of land that will become expensive.
The developer did not develop this place, but built a bunch of empty factories here, just to hold onto this piece of land.
Perhaps in ten years, the land price and added value here will be several times or even more than what it is now, so premature development will only let the profit escape.
Supporting a group of people to watch the warehouses and gates can keep the land, waiting for the right time to develop.
The capitalists had long had a set of countermeasures.
Whenever a large-scale enclosure of land around the city appears, it means that the city circle is about to be expanded, and it also means that these people who can get the news in advance have started their new journey of wealth.
The three cars stopped in a dilapidated factory building. The empty factory building, overgrown with waist-high weeds, looked a bit gloomy. The sky was getting dark, and the winter days grew dark particularly early.
Steven saw Lance.
Lance was sitting in his car, smoking. When they arrived, the young men behind him shook their weapons and had him get out of the car.
After he got out of the car, a young man got out of a car that had been parked here for who knows how long.
This young man gave him a feeling like he was meeting a veteran leader of a gang family, but the difference was that he also had a touch of youthful vigor, and the audacity to challenge authority.
“Mr. Steven, it’s very presumptuous of me to invite you over. Because recently there have been some unpleasant things between us.”
Someone brought a chair and placed it behind Steven, signaling for him to sit down.
He had no choice but to sit down, because now it was not him who was calling the shots.
“You are so urgent, I had to come to New Golden City to see you.”
“But it seems that you are not so happy to see me.”
Countless thoughts flashed through Steven’s mind. He had already forgotten many things. He just wanted to actively save himself.
“Listen, Lance, or Mr. White, I am just an enforcer. All the instructions related to you were not issued by me. I am just responsible for helping them find an organization willing to accept.”
He was sweating. He was starting to feel scared.
Lance nodded and said, “I know, you are just an enforcer…” he paused, “Tell me about the people in charge on the board of directors, the people with power. How can I get them to solve the problem between us?”
Steven swallowed. He introduced the main members of the Liji Group’s board of directors one by one.
Lance listened very seriously, because since he had come this time, he was not just going to kill the chicken to warn the monkey, but also to solve the problem of his money.
Seeing Lance fall into deep thought, Steven quickly said, “Actually, there is a way for us to reconcile, Mr. White.”
Lance came back from his thoughts. He looked at Steven and signaled for him to continue.
“We are taking such a tough stance now just to prevent the emergence of the next ‘challenger’.”
“You know, the bigger the company, the more hungry wolves there are around us. We also have to be very careful.”
“If the company admits defeat, admits that it was successfully extorted by you, we will face many new challengers. Everyone will want to bite a piece of flesh off us.”
“If you can take the initiative to publicly announce that you will give up the claim for compensation, and give enough face to the company, I can guarantee that I will do my best to persuade the board of directors to transfer the money to you privately, but you cannot say anything about our transaction to the outside world.”
This was also a solution.
In fact, many people on the board of directors had had this idea, but they had not done so.
Because they felt that Lance White, such a character, was not yet worthy of them bowing their heads first.
Lance shook his head with a smile after listening. “Not very good, but I also have a solution. Perhaps you will be interested…”
(End of chapter)