The Outsider (Outsider #1) ✔️

Chapter 41 : New Investor

Daniel Warren stood up as the commercial airplane came to a halt and powered down its engines. A pair of walkways extended from the passenger terminal building and joined the side of the plane, one in the front and another at the back. The doorways sealed and the doors to the airplane opened. A mechanical AI voice announced that they had reached their destination, the Regis Domestic Airport Terminal 4. It asked the First Class & Business-Class passengers to disembark from the front the other passengers to leave from the back.

One of the attendants in the Business-Class compartment handed Daniel his coat and helped him put it on. He walked off the plane and went into the terminal building. As soon as he got into the building, his communicator beeped. There was a message from his 'host'.

Daniel got irritated every time the word 'Host' was used in this context. All he got was a single line from Princess Rosemary that he needed to be in Regis the next morning to meet someone from the Imperial Auditor General's Office who needed to talk to him. She could give no other answer, of what problem he was having. Every department of the government was scared of the Auditor General!

That man was definitely not hosting him. He had only given the meeting time and place. Daniel was making all arrangements on his own. And he was to return the same day. At best, the man would be paying for his lunch.

Daniel had better use of his time, business leads to follow up with, Dusk and team to be inspired to complete the VR Projects, for example. But instead, he was voluntarily going to the Auditor's Office. He hoped it was not an audit of tax matters, which he had kept meticulously clean, unlike many other businesses, which found cheating on tax to be an additional source of profits.

The message asked him to take a taxi from Bay 5 asking the taxi to take him to "LJ Tower, Camac Street, in the Central Business District." That is all there was in the message. So they were not meeting in the Secretariate or CGO Complex where most of the government offices were located... Unfortunately, the building was located at the other end of the city meaning he would have to cross all the way in morning rush traffic. He decided to just take a mag-lev pod instead of taxi.

15 minutes later, he was sitting in a conference room on 29th floor of LJ Tower. Obviously his host was not expecting him so early. He was really cursing himself for wasting his time. He should have sent his accountant instead of panicking at the name of the Auditor General. At least in these few days, he had finished a lot of work. He had to finished Techredulous lease rent negotiation for the office. The capital budget had been made. A board meeting was scheduled for the next day to approve it. Purchase of equipment would happen only after that, but he had to keep Contracts with suppliers ready to execute. Recruitment of the team was on.

Micro-Mega board was over the moon on getting news of the contract with Techredulous for marketing their products. He was awarded a bonus for his 'amazing business acumen'. He almost laughed, considering he had actually been out manoeuvred almost every step of the process.

Suddenly the door opened, and an old man walked in. One look at him indicated that he was an accountant and a typical government employee without any sense of humour. Daniel stood up and shook his hands. The man sat down opposite to Daniel and opened some files on his communicator.

"Mr. Warren, I am from the office of the Imperial Auditor General. I understand that you are in the business of running two tech companies. I have got the accounts of it from the Ministry of Commerce. I want to know if you have anything to add. Anything that changes the way I would look at the accounts, any event after Balance Sheet that has material impact... or anything you wish to disclose to us." The man said in a flat tone, as if he didn't care for the answer.

Daniel felt his blood freeze. They were accessing his company's annual reports. That was how tax investigations started. He had insisted with the board when he brought in his investors that they will always be on the correct side of law all of the time...