Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 80829 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 404(@200wpm)___ 323(@250wpm)___ 269(@300wpm)
“I knew we would get a big bonus when we found the gold, and then the DeBRA came up with adamantite. I was so excited. I thought I could finally put a deposit on the house. My mom isn’t doing so well. I’ve got to get us out of the apartment, and I’m the only one working.”
Gold? What gold? “I’m sorry your mother is in bad health, and that you had to go through this trauma. You may want to see Dr. Choi. He has a room set up downstairs.”
“I’m okay. I didn’t see any of it,” Drishya said. “I’ve only been working for six months. I didn’t even know people that well…”
He’d seen this before. Some people grieved when faced with death, others got angry, and some tried to disconnect themselves from what happened.
“I understand,” he said. “Still, it might be a good idea. You’ve lost colleagues in a sudden traumatic way. Things like that can fester.”
“I’ll think about it,” she said.
“So how much gold was there?”
“A lot. It was everywhere in the water, like rocks. We weren’t even drilling; we were pulling it out by hand. Nuggets the size of walnuts. I ended up dumping like fifty pounds of it to make room for adamantite, and we’d been only gathering it for a few minutes.”
“I see. I appreciate your help, Ms. Chandran. The guild is grateful for your assistance. Please get some rest.”
She got up and paused. “You are a lot less scary than I thought you would be.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Just so you know, Wagner told me not to talk to you.”
Elias raised his eyebrows. “Oh?”
“He said that miners don’t go into the breaches with guildmasters. They go with escort captains. He said it was something to keep in mind.”
“Thank you for your honesty.”
She nodded and walked out.
Elias pulled up the interview notes on his tablet. Neither Melissa nor London said anything about the gold. Malcolm wouldn’t have seen the buried adamantite, but gold was an entirely different beast. It was just lying there in the stream.
Was it just gold? Was that it? He’d been wracking his brain, trying to find the reason for the lapse in procedure, having this back and forth with Leo, wondering what he was missing, and all this time, the answer was depressingly simple. Well, no shit, Sherlock, here it is. Greed.
He had put so many regulations and checks in place, and somehow greed always won. He was so fucking tired.
Leo appeared in the open doorway like a wraith manifesting, met his gaze, and stepped back.
“Come inside and shut the door,” Elias growled.
Leo came in and closed the door behind him.
“Sit.”
Leo sat.
“Why do baby miners think I’m scary?”
“Because you are, sir. Most people find a man who can cut a car in half with a single strike and then throw the pieces at you frightening.”
“Hmm.”
“Also, we offer the highest pay and the best benefits among the top-tier guilds, and you are their boss who holds their livelihood in his gauntleted fingers…”
Elias raised his hand. “Did you know there was gold at the mining site?”
Leo’s eyes flashed with white. “I did not.”
“Apparently it was in the water. Nuggets the size of walnuts. Finally, I know something before you do.”
“Congratulations, sir.”
Elias let that go, pulled up the map of the site on his tablet, and pointed at the three tunnels, each carrying a current of water that merged into a single stream. “Gold washes downstream.”
“Malcolm left the tunnels open because he wanted to maximize the profit from the site.” Leo’s face snapped into a hard flat mask. “He must’ve expected that once they cleared the site, they would gather more gold upstream.”
“Remind me, how much did Malcolm make last year?”
“Seven million.”
“I want to know why gold got him so excited that he risked twenty lives by leaving the tunnels unsecured.”
“Twenty?” Leo frowned. “The mining crew, the escort, the scout, the DeBRA…”
“And the dog.”
“Oh.”
“Malcolm took a significant risk. That’s not just greed. That’s desperation. How are his finances?”
“Squeaky clean as of the last audit, which was two months ago. Credit score of eight hundred and ten, low debt to assets, less than ten thousand owed on credit cards. I’m following up on a couple of things. We should know more in a few hours. Do you want me to get Wagner in to talk to you?”
“He won’t tell me anything. Wagner is forty-nine years old. He was a coal miner before the gates appeared, and we are his third guild. He’s used to getting screwed over by his bosses.”
“So, he developed an adversarial relationship with us despite fair treatment,” Leo said. “Seems counterintuitive.”
“It doesn’t matter what kind of treatment he gets. He’s cooked. He doesn’t trust us, he will never trust us, and he will always resent us no matter how many benefits he gets.”
“That’s not even logical.”