Becoming Tyler Kramer: The Hidden Billionaire Boss’ Revenge

Chapter 3

Days like today.

“Tyler? Ty! Don’t zone out on me, Inspector Varsen!” Raymond called out exasperatedly.

Tyler smiled lightly. He liked Raymond.

The boy was as spoiled as the others, but he had potential. He was also curious about things and had a penchant for asking very good questions.

But Tyler was not here to make friends.

He was here to win assets.

And if that failed, access.

For Tyler, Raymond was both.

“It’s a foggy day,” Tyler commented flatly, and Raymond immediately calmed down.

That was the other reason he liked the younger man.

Tyler Varsen didn’t need to pretend too much around Raymond. He wasn’t soft with the boy, yet there was no office gossip about Tyler’s stricter, confident side.

“You doing okay?” Raymond asked carefully.

At the office, only the two of them that Tyler sometimes fell sick when the fog came. Not always, but there was never any indication of which occurrence would cause an episode.

In one of the incidents, before Raymond had finally come to believe the fog was an issue, Tyler had slumped, falling to his knees in their office.

The supervisor had rushed to the wall-to-ceiling glass, glanced down, and seen the evidence that Tyler was not pretending.

There had been no fog earlier that day; it had come suddenly, as it usually did, and Tyler, who had been stuck at this desk since morning, had simply slid off his chair.

“Yeah, I’m inside. It was clear on my way in. Guess a new vein opened or something cracked –”

“Or someone is doing something without a permit,” Raymond cut in.

That’s my boy, Tyler mused, his smile widening.

Rogue mining by low-class, poor, and impoverished peoples; mine infiltrations by gem thieves; and unsanctioned mining by landowners were common occurrences in Salvena, and the wider Ashrone.

In their country, gems were life.

Licensed miners also did the wrong thing, occasionally, but such acts were few and far between; otherwise, they could lose their mining rights, or even the land they owned.

These and more were why mine inspectors were key members of the Ashrone workforce.

No mine work was done without proper inspection of the location, tools, and qualifications of those carrying out the actual job.

The government had its Ministry of Inspections.

The wealthiest mining companies had private inspectors.

Tyler Varsen was one of such in-house inspectors.

He, and everyone in his department and field, kept mining companies and investment houses honest about their activities.

They gave reports to owners and did investigations and random checks on mining operations.

When things were not done right, not only fogs, but also tunnel collapses, sinkholes, and environmental devastation could occur.

Not to mention the loss of lives for locals and workers, and loss of time and money for the owners.

“Brighton, tell me,” Raymond continued smoothly.

“A section caved in. The materials used to hold the ceiling were all up to standard. It looks like intentional tampering, but with something far away,” Tyler rattled off, switching from casual to work mode.

“A caster?” Raymond asked suspiciously; the supervisor, supervising.

“Must be. The tech showed no readings, so it has to be magic-based,” Tyler replied, slowing down his speech as his mind worked.

“Could it be some of the locals?” Raymond remarked, copying his subordinate’s steady pattern.

“Most likely. I couldn’t go into the town, Miss Belarnt recalled me,” Tyler replied evenly.

There was a weighty silence on the other end.

“Ray?” Tyler called evenly.

“Yeah, I’m here. Sorry,” Raymond replied distractedly.

“What happened? Did she…” Tyler lowered his voice, “Find out?”

Silence.

Tyler waited, moving to the window again after reconfirming that the office door was locked.

“She almost did, but mostly it was ‘cos you went with the old jet,” Raymond replied, part guiltily, part irritably.

Now it was Tyler’s turn to be quiet.

Raymond was saying two things at once.

Tyler waited to see which line his boss would follow.

“You sure you won't go to HR? I mean…,” Raymond’s voice drifted off.

Guess it’s the second one, huh, Tyler mused, stifling a snort.

Tyler’s supervisor had seen Ashley Belarnt’s handling of Tyler only once, and since then, the younger man made it a point to let Tyler leave the office as often as his subordinate wanted.

Tyler smiled again.

He aspirated into the phone.

Raymond picked up his cue to go on and on about limitations, boundaries, and equality.

Tyler let him run, pulling out three gems he was crafting.

He had work to do.

Personal work.

While Raymond went about impressing his girlfriends and getting his fill of attending private auctions outside Salvena, using company funds, and on company time, Tyler Esteil, the secret, elusive Master of the Miran Auction house, the largest, most prosperous black-market gem hall in the entire nation of Ashrone, created items for his clients or inspected properties brought to him by his clients.

If Raymond had been in the office, Tyler would have found some reason to take off and would have done his task elsewhere.

The two kept out of each other’s way.

But when it came to the job, they were a perfect team.

“Malorcent,” Tyler murmured at the first.

“Junster,” he mumbled at the second.

“Azayine,” he whispered at the third.

Each gem was about an inch in diameter. They were not round or oval; they were rough. Like stones picked off the ground.

These were not refined items. They were straight from the mines.

And they had not been logged in any register, as should be done under any legal mining process.

They were gems of the same grade and color.

Tyler had found them in different mines. Found. Not stolen.

What most people did not know was that Tyler Varsen – Tyler Esteil – was a miner.

Illegal, as he had no license, but, since he only mined abandoned areas, not prosecutable under Ashorne law.

In Ashrone, ‘abandoned’ meant the owner was done with the site. It was empty.

If anyone found something that the owners had not. It would not be considered a crime.

After all, everyone knew that no profitable mine would ever be abandoned.

On the other side of things, if anyone got injured, lost, or died while scavenging an abandoned mine, the owners were not liable.

A fair law.

A just law.

Ashrone’s law.

What Tyler did – either version of him – however, was nothing so simple as walking into a mine and picking up pieces of cast-off rock.

Not Tyler, son of Maid Linda Esteil. Not ‘mud-face,’ as he had been called by the Kramer heir and his boisterous friends.

What he did was dangerous.

Very dangerous.

The mines he foraged were all near collapsing.

In his ranging beneath the earth or into the belly of mountains, he had crawled, climbed, pulled, pushed, crushed rocks, cut tree roots, using his body as his number one tool.

More than once, from his youth to date, he had been buried alive.