Choking My Orders He Regretted After I Bought the Sole Supplier

Our summer sale cracked a hundred million in revenue, so I handed the whole company three months of year-end bonuses.

The next morning, my exclusive fabric supplier, Mr. Lambert, tagged me straight out in the business owners' group chat.

Mr. Dickerson, I hear the boss cleared a hundred million? Awful generous with those bonuses.

"If Mr. Rivera's eating meat, I figure I should get a little broth too. Tripling your purchase price next quarter isn't too much to ask, is it?"

"Don't gripe about the cost. Those five truckloads I just sent your factory? I already had them turned around on the road."

"When you can't cover the penalty fee and you're going bankrupt, bring your whole factory over to kneel and beg me, and we'll talk it through nice and slow."

The competitors in the chat who envied me piled on with reaction stickers, waiting to watch my cash flow snap.

The workshop was forced to shut down. My executives were frantic, eyes rimmed red.

Then Mr. Lambert's assistant kicked my office door open.

He slammed the tripled-price contract in my face and jabbed a finger at me.

"Sign it, now! Boss Lambert says if you don't sign today, tomorrow he shuts this dump of a factory down!"

I didn't offer him a cigarette and a smile the way I used to. I had security throw the assistant out, and locked the office door behind him.

I opened my computer and pulled up the files on Tyler Textiles Group, the acquisition I'd finished just last week.

Tyler Textiles was the one and only upstream raw-material plant that held Mr. Lambert's whole company by the throat.

I picked up the desk phone and dialed Tyler Textiles' new plant manager.

"Cut off every bit of his raw material. Then send someone to paste the supply-stop notice and the payment demand right on the doors of his workshop."

The second I hung up, there was a crash outside.

Rupert Whitney had found a fire axe and hacked a big hole through the door panel.

His face shoved in through the gap.

"Silas Rivera! You'd rather take a beating than take the drink offered nice, huh?"

"Boss Lambert says you sign today or I finish you off!"

Face cold, I pressed the internal alarm under my desk and turned to the security guards rushing in.

"Take whatever he's holding off him and drag him out!"

Three guards moved in, pinned him flat to the floor, and hauled him away.

Before I could catch my breath, my workshop supervisor, Egbert Finch, came scrambling up the stairs half-crawling, one shoe already gone.

"Mr. Dickerson, we've got big trouble! Laurence Lambert brought over thirty street thugs himself and blocked our whole front gate!"

Egbert was white as a sheet, pointing downstairs, shaking all over.

"They've got iron bars, and they forced two twelve-wheelers in and backed them right into our loading bay!"

I pushed past Egbert and strode down.

The loading bay was chaos, thick with smoke.

Thirty-odd punks were shoving our own dock workers aside.

They were throwing five thousand finished summer garments onto the trucks, the batch we'd worked through the night to make, the order that had to ship to our overseas client first thing in the morning.

Laurence Lambert stood there in a loud floral shirt, one foot planted on a freshly sealed woven sack, a cigarette hanging from his lips.

"Laurence Lambert, tell your men to stop!" I barked, striding straight at him.

He cut me a sideways look and spat a thick wad on the ground.

"Silas Rivera, you can't cover the tripled price, so I'm hauling this batch off as your penalty fee."

"You and me, we're settling this account today, properly."

"The contract says it in black and white. You're the one in breach. You've got no right to touch my goods!"

I lunged forward to grab the woven sack out from under his foot.

Laurence let out a cold laugh, and with all his people at his back, drove a kick into my chest.

I couldn't get out of the way and went down.

A few of the punks closed in at once, tapping their iron bars against the ground.

All several hundred workers in the factory had stopped what they were doing, watching in terror.

Laurence stood over me, pointing down, his eyes full of contempt.

"Silas Rivera, you're a nobody who only survived because I threw you a bone back in the day, and now you think you're fit to hand out year-end bonuses?"

"These goods are mine today. Anybody tries to stop me, I break their legs!"

I kept my eyes locked hard on him.

Laurence suddenly turned around and took a megaphone from one of his men.

He cleared his throat.

"Everybody hold up a second and listen while I drop some big dirt on you!"

The few older workers who'd been about to step in and help me up stopped dead, the color draining from their faces.

"This good boss of yours, Silas Rivera, has been quietly siphoning company funds to keep a young, pretty mistress on the side!"

Laurence Lambert's voice rang out across the empty yard.

"There's nothing left in his accounts. He's about to grab the money and run!"

"These five thousand garments? I held them back out of the goodness of my heart, to protect your wages. Otherwise you'd all be starving by tomorrow!"

An uproar went through the workers.

I was just getting to my feet to answer him when Egbert Finch suddenly leapt out of the crowd.

He pointed at me, his face full of righteous indignation.

"Mr. Lambert's right! I checked the books myself yesterday. Every bit of the factory's cash is gone!"

"Silas can't even make next month's payroll!"

Stabbed in the back by the supervisor I trusted most, I looked at the expression on Egbert's face, and something in my chest twisted.

Dozens of workers who didn't know the truth were whipped up on the spot.

They grabbed the wrenches within reach and closed in around me.

"Rivera, cough up our hard-earned money!"

"You settle six months of wages today, or we'll haul every machine out of the workshop and sell it!"

A few of the hotter-tempered ones had already grabbed me by the collar.

I drew a breath and fished the phone out of my pocket, ready to call the police.

Then, out at the gate, tires screeched to a stop.

Rupert Whitney came in, supporting an old woman with a head of white hair.

It was my mother. She was blind.

"Mom! What are you doing here?" I stopped caring about the grime on me and shoved through the crowd to reach her.

Before I could touch her, Laurence Lambert dropped with a heavy thud, down on his knees at her feet.

"Cousin Rivera, you're family, you have to hear me out and set this straight!"

He was a mess of snot and tears, wailing like the most pitiful man alive.

"Back when your family was so poor you couldn't put food on the table, it was me who fed Silas from my own bowl and kept him alive."

"Now that he's struck it rich, he's ready to hound my whole family to death over a few pennies of profit!"

My mother had already been frightened just by not being able to see, and hearing her husband's cousin sob out those words, her whole body began to shake.

"Silas, did you really do a thing so heartless?" She turned her head, groping toward the sound of me.

"Mom, don't listen to his lies. He's the one who rigged the contract, they"

Crack.

She swung the cane in her hand and brought it down hard across my back.

"You shut your mouth! The Lamberts saved this family. Even if you lose the whole factory today, you will pay them back!"

She was shaking with fury, jabbing a finger at me, cursing me out.

"If you don't sign Boss Lambert's contract today, I'll smash my own head against this iron gate right here and die!"

She lunged for the big iron gate as if she really meant to slam her head into it, and Rupert made a show of holding her back, gripping her tight.

Laurence stayed on his knees, quickly shoving the extortion contract with its tripled prices under my nose, even forcing the pen into my hand.

"Silas, listen to your mother. Just sign it."

I looked at my mother, completely taken in by them, then at Laurence, pressing in on me.

I gripped the pen hard and didn't bring it down.

Right in the middle of that standoff, a court enforcement vehicle plastered with seals pulled up at the factory gate, its warning lights flashing.

Several uniformed officials climbed out and pushed through the crowd.

They hadn't come to deal with Laurence and the scene he was making.

Laurence scrambled up off the ground, slapped the dust off his knees, and smugly pulled a slip of paper from inside his coat.

"Officers, you're finally here. This kid owes me two million in high-interest loans and won't pay it back."

"I've already applied for pre-litigation asset seizure. His factory gets sealed today, on the spot!"

He handed the paper over.

One glance at it and my hands wouldn't stop shaking.

There on the paper was my dead father's fingerprint, pressed in bright red.

That was from back when my father wasn't in his right mind.

Laurence had come around all fake concern, saying he'd help our family sign up for low-income assistance, and tricked my father into pressing his print onto a blank receipt.

Now that same paper was covered in loan amounts and sky-high interest.

"Laurence, you animal! Forging an IOU off my father's blank receipt. Aren't you afraid the sky will strike you dead!"

I rushed forward to grab the paper and two officials held me back.

"Mr. Rivera, please calm down. We're carrying out a pre-litigation seizure in accordance with the law."

I argued my case, explaining over and over that it was forged.

That was when Egbert stepped forward, raising his right hand and swearing to the officials.

"Officers, I'll testify. I was there when the loan was made."

"I saw the old boss press his print with my own eyes. Silas just wants to skip out on the debt."

Black and white on paper, plus Egbert's false testimony on the spot, and the officials threw the main power switch in the workshop.

A seal went up on the switch box door with a slap.

The roar of the machines cut off all at once, and the whole factory fell dead silent.

The factory was completely shut down.

That afternoon, overseas clients blew up my phone chasing their orders.

Penalties in the tens of millions hung over my head like a death warrant.

Egbert saw his opening and climbed onto a raised platform, working the crowd at the top of his voice.

"Brothers, this dump is finished! Boss Lambert's hiring at good pay. Anyone willing to come with me, go sign your contract now!"

Kicking a man when he was down, he took more than half the factory's skilled workers, packed up overnight, and jumped ship to Laurence's factory.

Late that night, I sat alone in my blacked-out office, staring at the wreckage across the floor by the light of the moon.

My phone screen lit up. Laurence had sent a voice message.

His laughter dripped with contempt.

"Sweet nephew, this doesn't feel good, does it?"

"You've got three days. If you can't come up with two million in cash and the signed contract, get ready to sleep under a bridge!"

"Oh, right. I hear your blind old mother still has a little pension coming in?"

"If that's not enough to cover the debt, I'll file with the court for forced enforcement, and the old woman won't even be able to afford her medicine!"

I didn't answer him. I just swiped the screen open and pulled up the encrypted letter the new plant manager at Tyler Textiles Group had just sent me.

It carried a bright red company seal. The legal public-notice period for the acquisition transfer had finally closed at midnight.

The moment the three-day deadline arrived, the factory gates were kicked open.

Laurence walked in wearing a designer suit.

Flushed and gloating, he strolled in with Egbert and more than a dozen fabric suppliers behind him.

They treated the place like their own home, setting up a long table right in my workshop.

A chilled bottle of top-shelf champagne popped open, and they'd actually started throwing themselves a victory party for the takeover ahead of time.

"Mr. Rivera, quit hiding up there playing dead. Come on down and have a drink with us!" Egbert bawled up the stairs.

I came down the steps and looked coldly at this pack of clowns.

Laurence pulled a document out of his briefcase and slapped it across my face.

"Silas Rivera. Transfer price, one dollar. Sign the factory over to me."

"Today, the only thing besides signing this is one road out, and that's taking your blind old mother out to pick through the trash on the street."

He blew out a smug ring of smoke.

Egbert chimed in from the side, snide and needling.

"Mr. Dickerson, those few thousand units of yours are all dead stock in your hands now."

"Oh, and I forgot to mention. On my way out, I took your core pattern blueprints for next quarter with me."

"Mr. Lambert's already taken over every one of your order channels."

"You're a stripped-bare nobody now, waiting to be carved up however anyone likes." Egbert laughed until his shoulders shook.

I watched them cackle in all their ugliness, then tore that one-dollar acquisition agreement to shreds and flung the pieces into the air.

"Silas Rivera, have you lost your damn mind? You want to die?" Laurence's face changed, and he cursed at me.

I straightened up and locked my eyes on him.

"Laurence, did you forget? Those exclusive core fabrics in your factory, which company has been supplying them to you all this time?"

Laurence froze for a second, then burst out laughing, like he'd heard the biggest joke in the world.

"Tyler Textiles Group? That's a listed corporation. What, a broke wretch about to go bankrupt like you actually knows the head of Tyler?"

"Then go ahead and call Tyler right now," I said calmly.

Laurence took out his phone and dialed. A few seconds later, the grin on his face froze solid.

"There's no way this won't connect!"

The words had barely left his mouth when sirens erupted outside.

Dozens of enforcement vehicles sealed off the workshop gates so tight there wasn't room to slip through.

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