The day after

Wu Kuan-Ting shifted uncomfortable in the hard plastic seat. He'd already been locked up for ten hours, and really needed to talk to his lawyer before the magistrate set bail. He looked up as his 'lawyer' entered the room, and stared. He recognized the man "Luke Bail. Posing as my lawyer. I suppose I should apologize for trying to have you kidnapped. Why are you here?"

Luke let out a sigh. "I know Wilkerson told you I'm associated with the criminal organization that has targeted you."

"Ah, so it was your people who attacked my men at his place."

"Yes, it was the organization targeting you. But not 'my people', just friends. And I've asked them to…cut you a deal. They've already ruined you, but maybe, if you help me, you can escape."

Wu frowned. "How am I ruined-"

Luke interrupted. "You probably have put together that the supposed CIA agent was with them. She got you to change your passwords. All your accounts are empty. Which is why your actual lawyer isn't coming, you have no money and they were made aware of it."

Wu tilted back in this seat in shock.

"Also this." Luke slide a printout of a newspaper article to Wu. "I'll leave that with you, but let me summarize. You know how the local authorities got tipped off about that human trafficking stash house? That happened everywhere, with everything. Your whole organization. Drugs, human trafficking, art smuggling. In one case, about eight million dollars worth of stacks of cash. Authorities in every country got tipped off about what was happening. Every single shipping container in their jurisdiction. The one sitting in docks, the ones on trucks and ships, all their movement. Individually. And every transfer location. Hundreds of tips, all at once. It took them about an hours to realize that this was happening everywhere. They connected the dots late last night, the media got wind of it this morning." Luke chuckled and tapped the newspaper. "Apex stock cratered."

Wu's eyes opened in horror.

"And apparently you have some sort of insurance deal with the people who pay you? If you lose a shipment, they're compensated for it? A bunch of very bad people are going to hold you personally responsible for everything seized, right?"

"I'm…this can't-" Wu managed to recover his composure. "So what's the offer?"

"You may have figured out that the case against you can be wiggled out of, in the short term. You got caught going to a house with some human trafficking going on, and you'll get charged with involvement with that, but it seems unlikely that anyone will assume you were in charge of the entire operation. After all, you have no overt association with Apex International or that stash house. They're much more likely to assume that you, as a wealthy businessman were…shopping." Luke said carefully. "You own a house here, you've lived here for years, you can probably be released on bail with your passport seized. Eventually more arrests will be made, fingers will be pointed upward, people will flip, but you'll be out of the country by then."

"Again, what's the deal?"

"I make sure that my friends don't present evidence that you were in charge of any of this before your bail hearing. And in return, you just answer some questions."

"The deal is just blackmail?"

Luke chuckled. "You can call it that. Just answer some simple questions."

"Fine. Deal." Wu stared at Luke. "I already know what one of your questions are going to be, don't I? The same question Wilkerson had."

"First question is: How did you find me? So quickly?"

Wu nodded. "That was the one." He let out a sigh. "I don't suppose I can convince you that you'd rather not know." Luke shook his head, so Wu continued. "Indira told me. She was part of all this, at the start, and we were…not friends, exactly, but in a joint business venture. We did occasionally talk about personal things."

"And she told you what exactly?"

"She told me things she had been told in confidence, like your dreams of attending a specific school. She talked about how you both had been held back in life by your father, and she was going to help you fulfill your dream, pay for your college. The Savannah College of Art and Design, if I recall correctly. It had mostly faded from memory, but I did manage to figure it out. And then it was simple enough to find you attending there, with an assumed starting year, a first name of Luke, and an ethnicity. I tracked down pictures from your first year at college, compared them to existing pictures, and it was clearly you. A few calls to the college and a look at LinkedIn, not hard to track you down."

"And you planned all this together? This thing inside Apex?"

Wu shook his head. "Indira planned it. All of it. Even before we met, although she changed some when she realize that Taiwan Marine Transport was a triad front. This was shortly after Apex bought it. She contacted us, tried to…recruit us into her plans to take over Apex. I can show you those plans, they're in a computer in my house, although her name isn't on them. My father did not like her idea. I did. I…arranged my exit from the family business. And I joined forces with her."

"Did you have anything to do with her dying? Did you kill her?"

Wu let out a sigh. "No. I get why you'd ask, but no. Her death was a complete disaster for me, took me years to get things back in order, and I ended up having to bastardize her work just to siphon profit off the side. If she'd been alive and we'd been able to follow her plan, we would have controlled the company a decade ago, wrestled it away from her father. She would have been running the above-board part, and I would have been her partner running the criminal side. That was the plan. Then she had a fucking heart attack. And I was left with no legitimate face, having to work in the shadows." He let out a long breath. "Your sister was the smartest person I ever met."

"My sister would not have put up with human trafficking." Luke said. "She might have been many things, be okay with many things, but not that."

Wu nodded. "Probably not. I had hinted at the idea when she was alive, she shot it down. Although I think you're putting her on a pedestal she didn't belong…she was perfectly fine with me murdering my father. And others who got in our way. Her excuse was that they were bad people, other criminals, as opposed to the innocent people who would be trafficked. But you remember your sister how you remember her, I remember her differently. You were very different people, from what she said."

"I suppose."

"Although I think all of us have something in common. None of are fond of our fathers." shrugged Wu. "But she didn't want to kill yours, said she needed him alive. Although I wasn't ever sure if her plan truly required him to stay alive or if she was just sentimental. But she certainly understood having a hidebound father who refused to listened to their children. As do you."

Luke stared at him. "So that's why you made your second mistake." He eventually said.

"Second mistake?" Wu pursed his lips. "I guess my first mistake was trying to kidnap you, after Wilkerson told me what would happen. I'll admit it. What was the second?"

"You assumed my father couldn't change. My sister made the same mistake. And you assumed things were bad enough that I would have run away, would have cut off contact, and then never made back up. Instead of I did."

Wu blinked. "What does your father-"

Luke looked at Wu. "Families are complicated. I never stopped being in touch with him."

"What did…wait. You're in touch with your father?" Wu asked, shocked.

"Yeah. He would have come to gloat too, but he had to leave the country fifteen minutes ago." said Luke. "Because your third mistake was, you thought that he only cared about money." Typing on his phone, and then propping it up. "A press conference Victor called, this happened five minutes ago. I was waiting for it before I walked in."

The phone showed an empty podium in front of some reporters. Eventually, a confused looking man who is not Victor steps through a door at the side. He gets to the podium. "Um. Hello. I'm…not. He…" He stops and clears his throat. "I'm just the technician that runs the room. Mr. Palavi was here an hour ago, we did the sound check, and he left his presentation here on the podium. And just now he called me to come out here and read the first page and…distribute things. So I will." He opens a folder on the podium. "This is a confession." He says, and blinks. "Um, I mean, that's what it says. I'll just read."

He started again. "This is a confession. For the past 20 years, I and my partner have operated a criminal organization within Apex International. We have committed every sort of smuggling, and even occasionally murder." The man looks shocked but keeps reading. "I have a list of almost every crime we've done in the handouts, along with almost everyone who has worked for us." The man looks under the first page, and nods. "I attest that my partner and I, a man that lives under the name Wu Kuan but is actually Wu Kuan-Ting, a dangerous ex-member of the Penghu Alliance, a Taiwanese Triad, have done all these things. I have a picture of him in the handouts also." He flips through the pages, "Wow. I guess I'm supposed to distribute all these?"

Wu stared in shock.

Luke stopped the video. "So, yeah." he glanced at the door. "Any minute now someone in the government is going to realize they already have someone named 'Wu Kuan' in custody for going to one of those stash houses. That bail hearing is...probably not happening now."

"Your father just destroyed Apex." Wu pointed out. "They could have recovered from this otherwise, but this…this is the end. He'll be hunted the rest of his life, too. He lied to destroy everything he ever had, just to take down me. Why? Just because I attempted to kidnap you?"

"No." Said Luke. "And he didn't just now destroy everything. He destroyed everything he had decades ago. His family. Because of how he treated me and Indira. To the point I wanted almost nothing to do with him anymore, and she plotted to take over the company. Which I already learned before today. And then he tried to fix what he could. And we knew this entire mess was his fault, we already knew she had made the plan to take over Apex that you had hijacked, we just wanted to make sure you hadn't killed her, we needed to know how all that had played out. And I believe you, that you were her partner in this, and didn't kill her. That's all I needed."

"So you know I told the truth, but you still broke the deal." Wu said, without condemnation.

"I said my friends wouldn't do it, not that my father already had. But, yes, I certainly broke the spirit of the deal." Luke said, and shrugged.

"And I'm screwed. They'll refuse bail, and someone who I owe a ton of money will get someone in here to kill me."

"Yup." said Luke.

"I take it back, you are like your sister."

Luke shrugged and stood up.

"Wait." said Wu, suddenly. "At least tell me who your friends are? I think I deserve to know who ruined my life and probably got me killed. Some competing criminal group? Or private intelligence? Wilkerson hinted at something like that. Just, tell me what it is."

Luke smiled as he opened the door out. "They help people who need help. No cost. Just cause they want to. And my father wanted their help to do-" he waved his phone. "-that. And take down you, whoever you were, he didn't know."

Wu stared, and then managed to get out. "It's a charity?"

"Yeah. It's crazy, isn't it?" Luke said with a smile.

"A secret charity took down two decades of work? And a $63 billion dollar company?" Wu said as Luke closed the door behind him. "Get back here! Explain that!"