Chapter 83: A Strange Caller? [FIXED!]
The delivery arrived forty minutes after he placed the order, or was it longer? Liam had no idea as he wasn’t keeping track of time.
The knock at the door pulled him off the sofa and he opened it to find a delivery driver holding a box that was larger than he’d anticipated, which was always the way with these things — the product photo never adequately prepared you for the actual dimensions. But Liam found himself feeling a tad bit excited, he couldn’t wait to unbox whatever it was in them.
"Mr. Liam?" The delivery man made sure he had the right address and rightfully so.
"That’s me," Liam responded, he thought about a few clever jokes but knew this man must have a packed day ahead and the last thing he would want was to make his day worse.
He signed, took the box, and then reached for his wallet. The driver had navigated a busy road stacked with traffic without complaint and arrived eleven minutes ahead of the estimated window.
"Here." Liam handed him forty dollars. "I appreciate your professionalism."
The driver looked at it briefly. "Thank you, sir. Genuinely."
Liam nodded before closing the door and carried the box to the coffee table.
He’d ordered the same package he’d sent to Mateo. If he was going to be spending time gaming alongside a sixteen-year-old with reflexes built over years of consistent play, the least he could do was arrive at the same starting point. The game list sat in the order confirmation on his phone:
Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End
The Last of Us Part I
God of War Ragnarök
Spider-Man 2
Ghost of Tsushima
Hogwarts Legacy
Cyberpunk 2077
Red Dead Redemption 2
Batman: Arkham Knight
Horizon Forbidden West
Single player, story driven, the kind of games that rewarded patience and attention rather than the reflexes he didn’t have. He’d looked at the multiplayer options and dismissed them on principle — there was no version of online multiplayer that ended well for a man who had died nine times in six minutes on Mateo’s account. Besides, he had no one to play it with and playing with random people online wasn’t an enticing idea to him.
He unpacked everything with the quiet satisfaction of someone opening a Christmas present that cam early. Liam was a grown man but he was giddy.
The PS5 was smaller than he expected and more architecturally considered than any piece of electronics had a right to be. He connected it, ran the cables, powered it on.
It booted in seconds.
Liam stared at the screen.
His previous experience with consoles had involved load times measured in minutes and the ambient anxiety of not knowing whether the disc was going to cooperate. This was different entirely — the interface clean and immediate, games loading with a speed that felt slightly unreasonable.
Of course, this didn’t mean Liam didn’t game on his computer but these were less complex games.
He started with Spider-Man because the choice was obvious and the most popular title due to the numerous movies surrounding it.
The first twenty minutes were humbling.
The controls required adjustment — not difficult, just unfamiliar, the muscle memory he didn’t have yet causing him to swing into buildings and mistime combat sequences with a consistency that would have entertained Mateo enormously. He persisted without frustration, which was the advantage of playing alone with no audience. He could take his time and truly enjoy the experience.
By the forty-minute mark something had clicked without Liam taking any mental note of it, to him only ten minutes elapsed.
The movement system opened up. The combat began to flow rather than stutter. He cleared a sequence he’d failed four times in a row and leaned back with the specific satisfaction of a skill newly acquired.
He checked the time.
An hour and thirty-two minutes had passed.
He looked at the clock, looked at the screen, and looked at the clock again with the mild disbelief of a man who thought he had only been gaming for thirty minutes but the perception of time tend to be different when one is having fun.
His phone rang.
He picked it up and looked at the number. International prefix — long, unfamiliar, a country code he didn’t immediately place. His first instinct was spam. His second was that spam didn’t usually call from numbers that looked this specific.
He answered.
"Liam speaking."
A pause. Then a voice — measured, deep, the kind of English that had been educated at significant expense. Eloquent like someone who had spent decades in rooms where precision of language mattered more than anything.
["Good afternoon. I’m calling to introduce myself. My name is Richard Harlan."]
Liam set the controller down slowly because what the hell was even going on at this point. He had no idea what to do or how to approach this matter.
Richard Harlan. Mrs. Harriet’s husband. The name on the firm’s founding documents, the silent architecture behind everything Arthur managed in his absence. A man so perpetually elsewhere that the running joke at the office was that he had a second family in whichever city he was currently in.
And somehow, that man was on his phone.
Liam knew he had to be professional, this wasn’t Arthur who he could mouth off to either.
"Mr. Harlan," Liam said carefully. "What can I do for you?" Liam spoke without fear because truth be told, he was no longer an employee of his so there was no reason for him to fear a ghost he had never seen and potentially, will never see.
["I understand there may have been some difficulty surrounding your departure from the firm."] The voice was smooth, unhurried.
["I wanted to reach out personally to address any misunderstanding and to assure you that the firm values the contribution you made during your time with us."]
Liam listened to every word and heard what wasn’t in any of them.
No mention of the termination letter. No mention of Section 14, Paragraph B. No offer of reinstatement. No acknowledgment of the agreement he’d reached with Mrs. Harriet. Just carefully constructed goodwill with nothing attached to it. This felt empty, it didn’t look like the kind of message one would receive via call, it felt way too insignificant for such a thing truth be told.
His mind moved quickly because Arthur had also tried to confirm if he spoke to Mrs. Harriet, and the fact that this was her husband doing the same in a different way.
If Liam confirmed, he would give him an answer without him having to ask. Liam made senior associate at such a young age for a reason.
Mrs. Harriet hadn’t responded to his last message. Arthur had called fishing for information about her. And now a man who had never made direct contact with junior associates in three years of Liam working at his firm was calling from abroad with a smooth voice and nothing concrete to say.
This was a trap.
Or it wasn’t Richard Harlan at all, this was a possibility.
"I appreciate the call," Liam said. "Though I’ll be honest with you — the only person from the firm I’ve been in contact with recently is Arthur. Beyond that I’m not sure what misunderstanding you’re referring to."
A silence followed shortly after to which Liam smirked.
Not the silence of someone processing. The silence of someone recalibrating because the answer they received wasn’t the one the question was designed to produce. Liam let it sit without trying to break the silence.
Then: "Of course. I simply wanted to—"
"Actually," Liam said, "can I ask you something directly?"
"By all means."
"You aren’t her husband, are you?" Liam questioned with a chuckle.
The line went dead.
Liam held the phone and looked at it for a moment. Then he set it on the coffee table next to the controller and sat back against the sofa cushions.
He ran it through from the beginning. Arthur fishing about Mrs. Harriet. A fake husband calling to gauge what Liam knew and whether he’d confirmed contact with her. The whole sequence designed to extract information through social pressure rather than confrontation because confrontation had already failed — Arthur had tried that directly and Liam had hung up on him.
Someone was coordinating this.
And Mrs. Harriet needed to know before it got further than phone calls.
He picked up his phone and opened their message thread.
[Liam: We need to meet sooner than planned. Something has come up that you need to be aware of. Call me when you can.]
He read it back before sending it. He put the phone face up on the table and watched the screen. He had no idea what he had walked into but decided to be cautious because these people were vultures at the end of the day.
The delivered receipt appeared immediately beneath the message.
He waited.
Five minutes. ten and then twenty.
The screen stayed dark.
No response but Liam was beginning to wonder if there was a reason why Mrs. Harriet was being watched the way she was.
"Man, fuck it! That’s future Liam’s problem," Liam muttered under his breath as he returned to his game.