"I nearly walked into a wall I couldn’t see," Kyle muttered to himself, shaking his head slowly.
The elevator reached the lobby. The doors opened.
He stepped out into the cool marble foyer and kept walking, hands in his pockets, mind still turning over the sa thought.
Stan Harrison was deliberately invisible.
A man with that kind of connection, keeping himself that quiet, that wasn’t modesty.
That was sothing else entirely.
Sothing Kyle didn’t yet have a word for, but recognized instinctively as the kind of thing that should be left well alone.
Just as he was about to head for the exit, two hotel guards stepped into his path, the sa ones who had ignored him earlier, dismissing him as just another custor.
Kyle’s expression shifted slightly. ’Of course... I wouldn’t get off that easily...’
One of the guards spoke, his tone flat and cold, completely different from before.
"Sir, you caused structural damage to a private suite door and disrupted an ongoing eting."
The second guard continued without pause, as if reciting a prepared line.
"The total compensation required is ten tis the assessed damage cost, in addition to a fifty-thousand-dollar penalty for interfering with a reserved executive eting."
A brief silence followed.
Then the first guard added, almost as an afterthought.
"You should consider yourself fortunate. Mr. Davies recognized you. Otherwise, the consequences would have been... less negotiable."
Kyle’s jaw tightened.
For a mont, it looked like he might say sothing.
But he didn’t.
He simply took out his phone, completed the transfer, and lowered his hand slowly.
"...Understood."
The guards stepped aside imdiately, as if nothing had happened.
Kyle walked past them without another word, the n in black with him followed without a word.
He stepped through the hotel’s front doors and into the night air, he let out a long exasperated sigh, his heart in pain... He had suffered much losses the past few days that he can count...
But still, he shook his head.
"I got lucky tonight," he said quietly, to no one in particular. "Luckier than I deserved."
’It’s a good thing I got away with only paying this much...’
....
anwhile back then when the door clicked shut behind Kyle Jennings, and a brief silence settled over the room.
Grayson Davies lifted his tea, took a asured sip, and set it down. Then he looked across the table at Stan Harrison with an expression that was carefully composed, the face of a man about to ask sothing that mattered a great deal to him while pretending that it didn’t.
"Young Master Harrison," he began, "you now hold forty percent of the company’s shares." A pause. "I’ve been wondering, what are your intentions going forward?"
It was a reasonable question. It was also, for Grayson Davies, an extrely loaded one. Forty percent was not a passive stake. In the wrong hands, or with the wrong ambitions behind it, it was enough to make his life very complicated.
He kept his expression neutral. He kept his hands still. But beneath the table, his fingers were pressed flat against his knee.
Stan Harrison glanced up from the last of his food, looking faintly puzzled by the gravity in the older man’s tone.
"Intentions?" He set down his chopsticks and reached for his glass. "I don’t really have any. I saw an opportunity and bought in. Honestly, I wasn’t thinking much further than that."
He said it the way soone might describe impulse-buying a book they hadn’t yet read.
Grayson Davies blinked.
The breath he released was slow and controlled, but the relief behind it was imnse. A weight he had been carrying since the mont he’d first learned about the share transfer quietly dissolved from his shoulders.
’Bought it for fun.’
He turned the phrase over once in his mind. Forty percent of the Wanhai Group, one of the most coveted equity positions in the entire Inksea region, acquired on a whim, the way a person might pick up sothing interesting at a market stall.
’Who is this young man?’
Grayson had spent decades in the business world. He knew wealth, and he knew power, and he knew how to read people who possessed both. But Stan Harrison was sothing he couldn’t quite place, no entourage, no performance of status, no apparent interest in leverage. Just a young man eating dinner and occasionally upending the natural order of things without seeming to notice.
Whatever the answer was, Grayson decided, it was not his business to dig for it. What mattered was that they were, as far as he could tell, not in conflict.
And that made Stan Harrison soone worth keeping close.
"In that case," Grayson said, his tone warming noticeably, "we’re on the sa side, Young Master Harrison. Whatever you need while you’re in Inksea, don’t hesitate. I an that."
Stan Harrison nodded, and for a mont seed to genuinely consider the offer rather than dismiss it politely.
"Actually," he said, "there is sothing."
Grayson straightened slightly. "Na it."
"Four Seasons Garden. I’m looking to buy a place there." Stan leaned back in his chair, relaxed as ever. "Is it difficult to get into?"
Grayson Davies nearly smiled.
Four Seasons Garden was the most sought-after residential developnt in the city, a rare convergence of pri location, exceptional design, and ruthlessly limited supply. Demand had outpaced availability from the day the sales office opened its doors. Getting a good unit wasn’t simply a matter of money, it was a matter of who you knew, and how well they were willing to pick up the phone on your behalf.
It was, in short, exactly the kind of problem that Grayson Davies was positioned to solve.
"Leave it with ," he said, already reaching for his phone.
The call lasted less than five minutes. Grayson spoke in the asured, familiar tone of two n who had done business together long enough to skip the pleasantries. By the ti he set the phone down, it was done.
"Go to the Four Seasons Garden sales office whenever you’re ready," Grayson said. "ntion my na at the front desk. They’ll take care of everything from there."
"Appreciated." Stan Harrison rose from the table, unhurried.
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