Neil Hargrove Novels & Stories

I folded my hands on the table and looked at Hargrove. "Now. Elder Hargrove. Would you like to repeat your recommendation? Or would you like to sit there quietly and thank whatever god you pray to that I haven't stripped you of your title tonight?" Hargrove swallowed. Hard. His eyes darted to Kael‚ then back to me‚ then down to the table. He picked up his glasses with trembling fingers and put them back on. "The council‚" he said‚ his voice barely above a whisper‚ "withdraws its recommendation."

Asher said closing in on his prey, his gait threatening. "Wai... wait! I can help you! just... let me live," Neil said in a hurry his back to the wall. "You want Hargreaves right? I can help you with that." "I don't see how you can, but I'll entertain you." Neil breathes a sigh of relief, he would have to expend some very precious cards. But he guessed they didn't matter if he could stay alive, "I have dirt on some people on the Hargreaves board, shareholders too. Bunch of corrupt files, it would come in handy for you, they are really juicy, I promise."

He knew it well enough that a portion of his attention was always available for other things, the particular and specific background processing of a man whose mind ran several operations simultaneously. Hargrove was speaking. He was not listening to Hargrove with full attention. He was listening with the particular and specific partial attention he deployed for Hargrove, which was sufficient to catch anything that required a response, and he was looking at the numbers on the page in front of him and considering the particular and specific problem of the Aldermere acquisition, which was not on today's agenda and which was therefore exactly what he was thinking about. His phone was face down o

Sienna whispered behind me, “That was suspiciously easy.” She then squeezed my arm. “I’ll be right here.” I followed the woman down the hall. Victor Hargrove stood when I walked in. He looked to be around his late sixties. Silver hair. Suit that fit well enough to be expensive. A watch worn loose on his wrist in the specific way of men who want you to notice it without seeming like they want you to notice it. And a smile, the kind that immediately made my skin itch. His eyes moved over me slowly. Too slowly. The full, unhurried sweep of a man who had decided he had the upper hand before I opened my mouth.

With his friends. Nelson Hargrove and Arnold Dane. His golden boys. His day-one circle. His “brothers.” They had built the playground with him. Dined in his penthouse. Celebrated victories with champagne on private yachts. And just like him, they had skeletons buried under designer suits. The first one to fall was Nelson. Nelson thought he was clever. A quiet little laundering operation through a subsidiary of his father’s logistics company. Rounded invoices. Fake vendor accounts. Padded expense reports. It wasn’t flashy—it was discreet. Boring, even. But to me, boring was beautiful.

“Please tell me you have something.” “I traced the shell company.” He didn’t waste time, and I appreciated that. “It’s owned by Vic Hargrove.” My eyes snapped open. “He’s opposition. “Yes.” “That doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Why would he send money to Alfred?” Vic Hargrove was a man I knew well enough from television and debates, someone who hated Alfred publicly, a man who had never once supported Alfred in the open. I listened quietly while Sam explained that Hargrove was likely trying to fund Alfred discreetly for his own reasons, maybe a future exchange or some political favor nothing suspicious on paper. Nothing we could use. Nothing that cracked open the story I needed.

A calculation ran behind Hargrove’s eyes, visible for a moment before his social manner reasserted itself. “A pleasure,” Hargrove said, extending his hand toward Dave with a smile that was warm and assessing in equal measure. “James Hargrove. I sit on the eastern development board with Ryan. Among other ventures.” He said the last three words with a particular weight that suggested the other ventures were the point. Dave shook his hand. “Dave Sun.” Something moved across Hargrove’s face at the name. Small and quickly contained, but present. Dave filed it without reacting. “Sun,” Hargrove repeated pleasantly. “Are you in business in Kings City, Mr Sun?”

I step off the plane into the kind of drizzle that doesn't commit to being rain, and the air hits my dulled senses like everything else—present but muted, a signal received through static. The car takes me to Hargrove's office. Forty-minute meeting that stretches to ninety because Douglas Hargrove is the kind of man who treats business negotiations like campfire storytelling. He circles, digresses, reminisces about supply routes his father ran in the seventies. I let him talk. The deal needs his trust more than his efficiency. Toward the end, he leans back. Looks at me the way old men look at young men they're deciding whether to respect. "You know what my father told me when I took over?"

"He got my darling Eli to shine his shoes for him, did he? I'll skin him alive!" Grandpa Toby slowly took off his gold-rimmed glasses and wiped the rain from the lenses. His voice came out ice-cold as he muttered, "The Hargroves? It's Felix Hargrove, isn't it? Some nerve they've got to lay hands on my baby Eli. Seems like those bastards don't know what's good for them."