Nicholas Harrington
There are too many damn people in this city
I sat all of five intersections away from Neptune Cybersecurity, which also did tech development for various other things, but most of it was secret, and Adrian wouldn't tell me, so there was a zero percent chance of him telling the public. The building was built in Lower Midtown making it stand out more since it was over a thousand feet tall and shaped like a three sides shard making it look taller then it was. Height architecture was supposed to be a key thing with WGI since if one could make the base take up a lot of space and have it taper to look visually taller. Spotting the glossy black Vantage next to the curb I rolled up to it and parked behind Adrian's car.
He told me he'd be here I just didn't expect him to have parked so clearly in the open. All black cars weren't uncommon in New York but there was a certain way that the feeling of power came from them especially since the presense of what he chose to drive was often from the appearance, or how he'd specced it. Pocketing the key I pushed open my door and climbed out before shutting the door and locking it. That was when I watched two dark suited men with their right hand on their hip holsters walk out with Adrian not far behind as usual in a turtleneck sweater, and a charcoal grey grid stitched jacket and pants with black stitching framing the squares and white running a secondary grid around them.
I'd asked for his tailor list once, and I ended up with a list that required me to go to London, and Italy to get suits made for me, which as a billionaire I was smart enough to know I wasn't willing to pay minimum fifty thousand dollars per suit, and six for shoes. He on the other hand wished for excellence in everything, and was willing to pay for it. I also had a feeling that he liked the look of British and Italian made suits.
I'd also never be able to tell him not too since he was like the older brother who made sure everyone was organized.
"Nico," he says calmly in only the way that a man who ran an empire could. I was proud to say that Harrington was the only competitor to WGI just because it meant that it had taken a quarter century for this company to get to the point that it was untouched. Yet it took Adrian all of a year to surpass everything that had happened before him.
"Adrian, did you know that if you're planning to hide the amount of influence you have, you probably shouldn't park a car that is clearly yours in front of a techbuilding," I say with mild teasing amusement and he smirks.\
"Who's to say that I was meeting you here, and I was just here before you because I took a less busy route, and drive faster then everyone else I know," he replies smoothing out the sleeve of his jacket, "this fucking thing is starting to not fit properly, I've lost sizing but I've gained weight again in my shoulders," he adds.
"You go to spar with Taz three times a week, and you can throw more then your body weight, of course you got bigger, and lost fat, you were seventeen one-eight-two and had oddly fast reflexes while playing polo. Now you're twenty with the same skills though probably more refined, and what one ninety-something," I comment pulling out my phone and turning on my private mainframe for connection so that I wouldn't have my phone try and connect to the servers here in this building.
"I'm eighty-eight kilo so likely. I also live in the US, and am from the UK," he says and someone goes to move but he gestures for them to stay where they were. I knew that he had security, and more then just a few but the fact that entire areas had eyes on everything when he or Olivia moved made it shocking that a stalker had even begun to get photos of him and her.
That was also why both him and I were here, was because despite his intellect and ability to make things, he wanted me to partake in this exchange because there were few problems him and I couldn't solve together. Except for how Hunter Ambrose was even still alive after the jokes he's made for fifteen years.
The two of us then got into an elevator and began to rise to the very top floor of the building which was also why I had a feeling wherever we were going didn't have a positive outcome for whoever we were going to be searching for based on context and the fact he'd specifically asked me to join him.
"Who are we destroying the reputation of?" I ask and he glanced to me.
"Grace Haskall, at least that's her actual name, I've been doing my research into the information that a particular person we know and who has interacted with us has as a history. There was a gap in their networth earnings, I learned that it was from lawsuits, though they were all silenced, and settled out of court, so the public doesn't know about it. Legal documentation however has all that information, and since I could go to jail for learning about if I had hacked into it, I learned of that by tracing the exchanges with all businesses I've had talks and negotiations with," he explains.
"I never guessed your paranoia would be a benefit in the business world," I say and Adrian looked almost uninterested, though that was his look of his own thoughts being caged, likely something sarcastic.
"Here we are with the results of me not trusting anyone, for good reason. We're going to put together a counter to what they are planning to do. See I don't think they had just any incident happen, I think that people didn't want the out of court settlement to be leaked so it was small enough amounts that it wasn't leaked by someone's financial advisor or accountant. I also think that the NDA's were the businesses ideas, which meant it was damning. I also learned from who sent me the pictures in the first place that they were in New York, and from server tracing I found who, and then deep dived into all of what they did. It's now included in my files if I ever need to use it," he continues and the elevator dings.
"Of course it is, so what did you get, access to everything, and I'm guessing details that you will use to counter what they are planning," I offer before my brain processed everything he'd said.
Damning, the only thing that could be damning that Adrian would keep would be information, business information, and practices.
"You think that Grace was going to leak the information about the businesses to the public, and they didn't want that so they paid to keep her silent, and she got away with millions," I conclude and he nods.
"Yes I do, and now it's time you and I make it so miss Haskall, gets to taste her own ambitions for going after the wealthiest members of society who worked harder and smarter then her in one day then she has in her life by blackmail," he says.
Ironic.
"You blackmail people regularly," I point out and he turns to me looking about as placid as a canvas.
"I also pick the shitty people of society to blackmail and destroy. I don't do business with people who are immoral, at least if I ever get charged for blackmail, I won't deny it, and will have hundreds of cases where my actions were a benefit to society. I'm in the grey Nico, always will be," Adrian remarks before we slid into the black out office cubicle that I knew would be separate from the building, and was occupied by a large curving desk with a printer, a stack of unopened paper, shades of grey files, and organizers that were barely filled. The space also smelled of the single three wood wicked candle in the room.
"What have you made in here?" I ask and he takes a seat in the main chair behind the desk with three monitors and a pair of towers that I guessed were top of the line.
"I have a set up to be able to either black out a south central Manhattan, or hack into the mainframe of someone's personal servers, or a public one though those aren't hard to disrupt or even access, they have the most boring passwords I've ever seen," he grumbles as if the lack of a challenge was an annoyance to him.
"So you're about to get all particulars out of the way so you can create a file on Grace Haskall, and then put it against her to have her ruined, and her reputation," I say sitting down in another office chair next to him, before I realized both of us were in gaming chairs. "How often are you here that you need Omega gaming chairs?".
"I'm the CEO of the largest MNE on the planet, would you like to guess why I have gaming chairs," he says glancing at me before the monitors lit up and then streams of information appeared. There was thousands of pages of documents, and I could see that even Adrian was shocked at the length of the information, before he got to work and put in a mainframe trace of all new information, before coding in rerouting programs to provide him with information on the subject.
Though the fact there was a high three digit number wasn't consoling.
"Adrian, why is there over seven hundred subject traces?" I ask and he glanced to me.
"That's the number of traces that I have in places most people I've done business with get five, one for each part of their life, and all of their electronic and personal interactions. That only covers a hundred and fifteen people," Adrian exhales as highlighted portions were coded onto the secondary monitor to the left while the right one was an active following of how fast the data was being brought in and filtered through.
"And I thought I was good at computer sciences and coding," I breathe, leaning back into the chair I was nestled in while the program ran off of what I guessed was several thousand lines of code that had Adrian's VPN, and cyber security programs running through a private server, since he was the CEO, and I knew that he had private codes for everything that he did, held, or operated in terms of the digital world.
"You're better then me Nico, I'm just dedicated enough to destroy my brain. You would be sane after coding this shit, I had to go get my seventh coffee, and take two robax for my tension headache," Adrian admitted and I let out a low scoff.
"That's why you hire second top graduates, and I run a company that only hires from prestigious institutions that can be tested like I expect," I comment and his eyebrows rose in amusement.
"I like to make people feel competitive, it drives them to excellence, it's also why I don't hire anyone with a sense of self rightous pride. I want my staff to want to out perform everyone who ever doubted them, and when the same people that made them feel tiny and insignificant roll up beside them in their fucking Kia Soul because they made eighty grand a year with a sold soul, my staff can look over at them in their brand new 911 Carrera. It's like the speech from the movie The Wolf Of Wall Street, though I did prefer the book, it went in more detail of the lifestyle portion," Adrian mutters and I let out a laugh.
"You never will not force excellence from someone. I think only you could squeeze something out of even the IRS, and they can squeeze more from anyone".
"That's why my assets aren't liquid, I don't pay for them, not directly at least, some shell company that doesn't actually exist does though. Speaking of shell companies, I shut down the one that this subject uses to hide her money, I found that she's never paid a fucking cent in taxes yet she has a two million dollar car collection, and a fifteen million dollar penthouse," he says as the scan completes, and the printer began to run with the corners printing coloured, and badged.
"I'm glad you're never going to be my enemy Adrian," I say and he smiles warmly that was a rare sight but something, Olivia, Kate, and I got.
"You could never be my enemy Nico, you're like a brother to me, and you and I, along with the idiots are men who honour what they say. None of us will ever be against the other," Adrian says as he slid the information sheets into a file and wrote in neat unpersonalized lettering the name of the Subject, and their associated number.
"Now, lets get out of here, I'll by you lunch," Adrian offers and I follow while the computer did a system log wipe which must have been part of the program since it returned to the preload coded log, and then blacked out the screens leaving us in darkness, as we left the cubicle and made out way from the building.
That was a long one that I didn't expect to be that length so I hope you all enjoy it. leave your comments below, vote, and share. Also have a fantastic rest of your day. Anyways
Peace✌️