Chapter 251 The Meeting
Chapter 251 The Meeting
Chapter Two Hundred And Forty-Eight
Nathan sat alone with the laptop and the disconnected number on his phone and the inactive channel and the word “comprehensive” sitting in the middle of his thinking like a clock.
He sat for a long time.
Outside, Crestmont went about its morning.
Later that morning, he found another contact through a channel that was entirely separate from anything connected to Dray or Helix or the previous arrangement.
He was very careful about it.
In the weeks following the bar and the conversation with Monica and the discovery of Helix’s decommissioning, he had been very careful about everything.
He had to be careful.
The contact had come through a referral, the kind of chain that existed in certain professional circles where the services required were not advertised, and the connections were maintained through the kind of trust that was built on shared exposure rather than personal relationship.
He had made the first approach through an intermediary he had used for a different matter years ago, a property matter.
This was nothing connected to the current situation.
Nathan was glad he’d saved the number, and the intermediary had understood the general nature of what was needed without requiring specifics and had subsequently provided a contact.
The contact was a woman.
This had surprised him briefly and then not surprised him at all, because the kind of person who operated effectively in this space was the kind of person who was consistently underestimated, and being consistently underestimated was a professional asset.
He met with her once, in person, in a coffee shop in the western district that was busy enough to make two people at a table unremarkable.
She was mid-forties and looked like someone who managed a small business, which was what she was doing, in the legitimate layer of her professional existence.
He had given her everything she needed.
The company car.
The make and model and registration.
The route that Lucian and Aria took from Graves Tower to the residential district, which Nathan had been observing and documenting for two weeks.
The timing, which was predictable in the way of people who kept regular schedules.
She had listened and had asked precise, minimal questions and had not asked questions she did not need the answers to, which was the sign of someone who understood their work.
He told her the method he required.
The brakes. A truck to be placed on the route. The same structure as three years ago but with the specific modification Monica had specified, “more certain” which translated in practical terms to a larger vehicle and a point on the route where the road offered less margin for error.
The woman quoted him a figure.
Nathan had agreed immediately, and the woman smiled.
She told him the timeline, and Nathan quickly did the calculations.
The shareholder meeting was six weeks away.
The meeting was scheduled for a full day, beginning in the morning and running through the afternoon, and the return journey would occur in the early evening when the city’s traffic was at its thickest and the route’s predictability was at its highest.
The plan would execute on the day of the shareholder meeting.
Nathan made the full payment, “I wan an absolute clean work,” he uttered grimly, “Lucian Graves should never rise again.”
He went home, brimming with anticipation and told Monica everything.
Monica had been quiet for a moment when he told her, then she nodded once, with the movement of someone who has been waiting for a decision to be made and is receiving the confirmation that it has been.
She did not ask for details, and he did not provide them.
That was how it worked between them, and it was the same principle that had governed his relationship with Dray and with every other operational arrangement he had made across the years.
The details lived in the space of the person who was executing them.
What passed between himself and the people adjacent to him was confirmation, not content.
The plan was in place.
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The shareholder meeting came on a Thursday.
Nathan dressed for it with the particular care he brought to significant occasions, the care of a man who understood that presentation was itself a form of communication and that today’s presentation needed to communicate nothing out of the ordinary.
He wore his best suit.
He wore the tie Monica had given him on his last birthday.
He looked, when he left the house, exactly like what he was presenting himself as, the son of a major corporate family attending an important institutional event with appropriate gravitas.
Monica kissed him on the cheek at the door, then adjusted his tie. As she did, she tugged on it a bit longer, and stared directly into his eyes.
“Make sure you crush them!”
Nathan smiled, feeling puffed up from the conversation he had with the woman in the cafe the day before.
With that confidence, he drove to the Graves tower in the Graves Empire.
The meeting room was the large boardroom on the thirty-eighth floor, the one used for full shareholder assemblies and significant governance events.
It had been set up with the specific configuration of a room expecting an important announcement, the good table linen, the water carafes, the name cards, the particular atmosphere of institutional formality that the Graves Empire maintained for its significant occasions.
Nathan took his usual position, at the main table which was reserved for board members and family principals.
He had sat in this position at dozens of meetings over the years. He knew it as well as he knew any space.
He sat down, and looked at the room. His eyes fell on Lucian who sat across from him, adjacent to the Chairman.
His fists tightened in suppressed anger.
Lucian was leaving towards the chairman, and they spoke in low tones. When he looked up, he found Nathan staring at him with a sly smirk.
He frowned slightly, wondering what the hell was wrong with the little fool.