somner salvador | four | fin

You are a businessman, but see that's the thing. People seem to hear that, or recognize it, and make some assumptions. The broadest stroke being this: You are a man about business. Fair enough. But you don't think people really bother delving much further, because they don't think they need to. They figured out everything they could about you long ago and when all you fed them were the crumbs of your own feast, they learned to live with it. Learned to accept it. Maybe that is what truly gives a businessman his success: that stubborn need to never show your cards until you're unbeatable.

Never show a weakness that could be exploited. Only make deals you can follow through on, or ones you don't fear the repercussions of failing at. Make it so that all of them, even the ones who hate you the most, have no choice but to smile at you and offer a hand to shake. Be that much of a force. Be fear itself to them. Be what could save them and let it be at the front of their heads. But only because the fact that it means you could ruin them will have plenty of space at the back end.

Lie. Lie your god damn ass off. Is the vase really from the collection or is it a fake? If you sigh and come up with a number ridiculously big enough, they'd believe a child's crayon drawing on a bedroom wall to be a stroke of genius, a masterful play on dimension and a modern take on shape, redefining color theory itself. They believe you, because then you're obliged to believe them. Its all surface, it's all a bluff. Because that's what it takes to win without showing your hand: you don't win the big games by having the best cards, you win them by convincing everyone else you do.

If you can get it in writing, get it in writing. Everything. The teen who mows your lawn once a week is on a payroll. You have a storage unit at the end of Four furthest from the coast that contains every receipt of every purchase you've made since the age of eighteen, when you started working at SalTech. As it happened, the drama surrounding Lancelot Black's death left a huge hole in the market for premier industrial fishing equipment. Suddenly SalTech wasn't second fiddle, and suddenly you had a very, very secure future. But you learned your lessons along the way, and it took making the mistakes over and over before you understood sometimes.

Contracts drafted, NDA's signed, pay-offs and cash orders, college tuitions paid- you have taken great care to ensure the continuance of your good name, even if it has meant doing bad things. And one thing about you, Somner Salvador, is that you have done a lot of bad things. Horrible things. Things that would have you executed. Things that would take down a lot of powerful people in Four with you. You've made people disappear. You've collected money that was not yours- four or five zeroes' worth- multiple times. You've broken marriage vows that you really only made because there were witnesses, to a woman you once loved, and who once loved you too, you think. You've cheated. You've lied. You've maintained the silence in the aftermath. You've hidden the proof of your involvement. Because that's what it takes to be like you. That's what it takes to be the man you strive to be: everything.

You are a man about business. The best businesses own it all when they're through, and so that's what you want. And nothing, and no one will ever be enough to keep you from it.