Chapter 5 - The Test of the Fifty
The rain seemed to stop for a fraction of a second as the weight of Tristan's words settled over the gas station.
Vance, realizing that he was caught in the middle of a war between a billionaire military titan and the son of a murdered executive, began to inch backward toward his store. "I... I have nothing to do with this. I just manage the gas..."
"Stand still, Vance," Arthur said without looking at him. One of the tactical operatives immediately stepped into Vance's path, placing a heavy, gloved hand on his shoulder and pinning him to the spot.
Arthur looked down at the crumpled fifty-dollar bill in Tristan's hand, then up into the young man's eyes.
"And what did you conclude?" Arthur asked, his voice raw. "When you gave me this fifty-dollar bill... when you let yourself get fired by this pathetic cousin of mine... what was your verdict?"
"You came here to test Vance," Tristan said. "You wanted to see if your own blood had any mercy or honor left in him. He failed. He fired me for helping an old man."
Tristan stepped closer, stopping mere inches from the old billionaire.
"And I tested you," Tristan continued. "If you had taken my fifty dollars, gotten in your truck, and driven away without making that phone call, I would have uploaded the contents of this drive to the Federal Prosecutor’s office in Washington at midnight tonight. The drive contains the complete paper trail connecting your board of directors to my father's murder."
Arthur felt a cold sweat break out along the back of his neck. The power dynamic had flipped completely. He was surrounded by sixteen heavily armed men, backed by a empire worth billions, but standing in front of him was a twenty-year-old boy in a stained apron who held the absolute, destruction of his entire legacy in his palm.
"And if I made the call?" Arthur asked softly.
"You made the call," Tristan pointed out. "You revealed yourself to protect me from being fired. You used your authority not to destroy me, but to confront Vance for his lack of humanity."
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Tristan dropped the USB drive into Arthur’s hand, pressing the old man's fingers shut over the plastic casing just as he had done with the fifty-dollar bill ten minutes prior.
"The drive is yours, Mr. Vance," Tristan said quietly. "It doesn't contain a public leak. It contains the names of the four board members who signed the order on my father. I don't want your company destroyed. I want the men who killed Thomas Sterling."
