An Ultimatum

Fredric sat down and placed his grocery bags between his legs.

“Ok, lets get it over with, you wished to tell me something.”

“My employer is a bit disgruntled by having their plans interrupted by your investments that you were not supposed to make. They wish you to transfer the share ownership to them and pay a reparations fee for their wasted time.” The man said calmly, while reclined on the bench looking at the sky.

“What?! You can’t be ser...” Fredric started to protest but the man held up a finger in the air.

“I am not finished with my message. They wished to inform you that they understand that this can not be done over night, but they expect it at the end of the month, if not they will start making life difficult for you.” The man rose and straightened his suit.

“You will receive a mail with the details, I advice you to comply as my employer holds notable power and it goes without saying that the police will only complicate it for you. And if it delays to much, I am certain they will employ others who do more than just deliver messages” he finished and walked away.

Fredric sat there staring at the man as he left and ended up just staring out at nothing with the grip tightening of his groceries whitening his hands. He eventually rose after a few minutes of nothing and walked with a blank mind home. Not long after Fredric started to slouch down on the sofa, a mail arrived that under most other circumstances he would have ignored and deleted.

It was simple, an account on the service he used for trading assigned to a holding company called ‘Turtle investment’ the reparations fee was 2% of the value of his shares times the days until transfer. One day was already all of his savings and an ownership transfer would takes a week if there was no complications. And the tax agency would find it incredibly suspicious not only of his gains but more so if it got immediately transferred whole sale.

They expected this transfer at the end of the month, that was about two weeks from now.

He spent the afternoon trying to search after information on how to transfer his ownership and investigating on how much his investments to give in order to pay for the fee. His search history was nothing he ever thought he would have regarding tax evasion, shell companies and shady practices he never heard of before. But he found little on how he, a small timer could afford do do anything in such a short time frame.

He eventually ended up laying in bed as the night arrived, mind filled with the problem and its implications. Something he snapped out of as he got a text. Fredric picked up the phone from the nightstand and saw Madeline had given him a short message:

‘Been thinking of you and me and what you said this morning, so I will have a surprise for you next time. I’ll see you on Friday after work!” the rest of the message was covered in hearts. Fredric mind did not have the attention to try a process what she could mean and before he could put the phone down, he saw that it had gotten an update on the affection multiplier some time during the day.

He swiped the notification away in disgust, it was something about Jane getting something she wanted fulfilled and he got some gems for it, he couldn’t bare checking what that bitch had gotten, she who no doubt had gained a lot from the market manipulations around her company.

“She did say she would take care of my problems, that we sit in the same boat” he said out loud for himself, but quickly shuddered at the thought, he did not wish to involve her ever again.

He tried his best to put his mind to ease, to get some sort of sleep, but it took him well into the night before he eventually got it.