BXBX NOVEL Chapter 52: The blackmail king
Tristan\'s research paused when he was researching the Golden Talent Group agency.
It was a young, but ambitious agency, which didn\'t have a lot of stars working for it yet, but spent plenty of money on their promotion and was steadily climbing up in charts.
It was hard to say yet whether its investments will pay off in the end, or the agency will go bankrupt first.
What attracted Tristan\'s attention was the name of the CEO. James Garstean. He remembered that unusual surname, despite only meeting the man once.
He was the businessman who made a deal with Leon Clavon!
The investments Garstean used to push forth his agency were—at least partially—gang money!
And Tristan actually got an invitation from his agency.
The irony made him laugh.
\'How perfect! This agency is small, but they still have money for promotions and such. And with the blackmail I have on their CEO, they will have no choice but to treat me like a king!\'
It was decided at this point—Tristan was going to join Golden Talent Group.
He didn\'t have any solid proof of GTG illicit deals, but just a hint could be terrifying. Especially when Tristan knew all the juiciest details, like the person Garstean signed his deal with.
An anonymous police report will if not doom Garstean, but definitely give him a lot of pain.
Smiling to himself, Tristan called the number of the talent agent from the business card of GTG agency, and arranged a meeting a few days later to talk in depth about signing the contract.
***
Later that evening.
The slow, relaxing melody was flowing from Tristan\'s fingers without his conscious thought. After so much time, playing the same songs people liked over and over, only occasionally adding new ones, became a boring routine.
It barely even increased Tristan\'s piano skill. And the money wasn\'t as relevant thanks to the cash he was getting from his criminal jobs.
People here didn\'t even hear about the Californian Young Star contest. Although it didn\'t air on TV yet, Tristan doubted they had watched this channel either way.
\'I should leave this job soon,\' Tristan thought. \'It was always temporary, anyway.\'
As if responding to his thoughts, his Hayes\' phone vibrated in his pocket.
Tristan huffed and continued to play the melody with one hand, pulling the phone out with another.
It was a text message from Pierce. Just an address and one word, "NOW".
\'Shit. Did they HAVE to choose such an inconvenient time again?\'
It was the middle of his shift!
Tristan put the phone away and glanced around. The administrator was giving him a narrow-eyed look.
Tristan swallowed and widened his eyes.
He was putting all his acting skills into this.
Ignoring the confused and alarmed looks of the patrons being thrown at his back, Tristan abandoned the piano and walked up to the bar counter.
There, he put on the most natural expression of desperation and pleading he could muster, generously spicing it up with worry. Tristan even forcefully breathed quickly and shallowly, imitating the breathing of someone anxious.
If he could sweat on command, he\'d do that.
"Listen, please, sir—I have to leave now! I just got a message—it\'s my grandma. She had a heart attack—I have to come to the hospital immediately! Please, I will help you close up forever after this!"
Truly, Tristan was a great actor. The administrator, shocked, couldn\'t find in himself to say "no" to this pleading expression.
In fact, he was so caught off-guard by Tristan\'s performance that he didn\'t even think that it was probably too late for hospital visits.
"Alright, alright! Go, I will cover for you… But you will owe me!"
Tristan nodded rapidly and almost ran outside.
Only in the parking lot, out of anyone\'s sight, he relaxed his body and shook off the theatrical anxiety.
Instead, he chuckled.
\'I should leave this job before I have to actually give the debt back, or explain anything about my grandma. Hah.\'
The thought stung Tristan with a bit of melancholy toward his real grandparents. He only knew the grandparents on his mother\'s side, and his grandmother had died from cancer when he was 12.
He didn\'t miss his parents as much as he missed his grandfather…
Tristan shook that thought from his head. He will see him again, but only after returning home with triumph that will make everybody cry with fear and awe.
He mounted his moped and drove to the nearest alleyway where he could switch identities in private. Then he drove onward toward the address Pierce texted.
It was a gang-owned massage parlor with "happy endings" on top of normal massages. And conveniently for Tristan, it was only a few minutes of driving away from the Good Lion Bar.
Long before Tristan approached it, he heard the gunshots and shouting.
Tristan wished he took a gun with him. But at least he always had a knife.
As he approached the massage parlor, Tristan saw the attackers covered their backs from reinforcements. A couple of Mexican thugs were standing near a stopped car, in a position where they could see both the parlor and the roads leading toward them.
They noticed Tristan too and immediately raised their handguns.
Did they even care if Tristan was an enemy or a bystander? Probably not.
"Shit," Tristan muttered, forcing a rapid turn to a side-road.
Bullets buzzed through the air behind him, but soon Tristan disappeared behind a corner.
There, he sharply stopped the moped with a screech of tires, and jumped off.
From behind the corner, he heard shouts in Spanish and footsteps.
The thugs weren\'t going to let him leave unchecked.
Tristan smirked, preparing to introduce them to his knife.