Chapter 7 The Williams Family

Mu Xin raised an eyebrow at this, stuffed the last bite of his burger into his mouth, wiped his fingers with a napkin, and casually tossed the crumpled ball of paper into the trash can beside him.

He picked up his iced cola and took a large gulp, the cold bubbles sliding down his throat before he let out a satisfied burp.

Oxford Town is very small, so it was no surprise that the locals knew about his donation.

"A family that runs a bank? Never heard of them." His tone was as flat as if he were talking about some insignificant passerby.

"The people around me use either JPMorgan Chase or Citibank, or maybe Bank of America at most."

"As for the one you mentioned, I've never even heard of it."

"Of course you haven't." Jessica sneered, her tone filled with undisguised disdain as she tossed the remaining half of her french fry onto her tray with a soft clatter.

"The influence of the Williams Family is limited to Oxford Town and three other tiny towns nearby."

"Once you leave Oxford Town, nobody knows who they are. Never mind New York or Wall Street; even if they went to the neighboring city of Hamilton, they wouldn't even have the qualifications to hand a business card to a city councilor."

She leaned forward, elbows resting on the table, and lowered her voice as if sharing an open secret:

"Their family moved to Oxford Town in 1952, back when the town was full of logging camps and dairy farms."

"Old Williams brought his three younger brothers here from Kentucky as refugees, scraping by by working for local farmers."

"Later, after saving some money, they opened a gas station with only two pumps at the edge of town and set up a shed next to it to sell groceries."

"Back then, the town was dirt poor, and this was the only gas station for twenty miles, so nobody competed with them for business."

"They built their fortune bit by bit using low-down methods like withholding workers' wages and watering down the gasoline."

A flicker of disgust flashed in Jessica's eyes. "In 1976, when the town was set to build its first Water Plant, the federal government allocated a grant."

"Old Williams was already a town councilor at the time. He embezzled most of that money and forced every household in town to donate fifty dollars, effectively seizing the project, which became what is now the Water Purification Company."

"From that moment on, their family completely held Oxford Town by the throat." She tapped the table lightly with her finger.

"The entire town's livelihood depends on their water; anyone who dares to cross them will have their water cut off the very next day."

"Later, they opened that so-called 'Williams Bank,' which is actually just a loan shark company with a banking license."

"People in town have to go to them for deposits and loans. Their deposit interest rates are half the national average, while their loan interest rates are terrifyingly high."

"If you can't pay them back, they'll seize your house and your farm, leaving you with nothing."

"Now, the lending bank, the Water Purification Company, and even the funeral home and cemetery in Oxford Town belong to their family." Jessica gave a self-deprecating laugh.

"It's no exaggeration to call them the local despots of Oxford Town. Ask anyone in town, and you'll find everyone has suffered under the Williams Family."

"But no one dares to say anything because you simply can't survive in Oxford Town without them."

"The reason you don't know is that you are students and don't come into contact with these people."

"Besides, they know better than to mess with students, which is why you think Oxford Town is so peaceful!"

Mu Xin leaned back in his chair, his fingers unconsciously tracing the cold cola, his face expressionless.

He had thought they were some incredible, powerful family; it turned out they were just local rich tyrants who bullied people in a small town through monopolies and scams.

"So, how did those three people who wanted to buy the Water Purification Company fail?" Mu Xin asked.

"How else would they fail? They were all brought down by the Williams Family's underhanded, dirty tricks." Jessica curled her lip.

"The first was a small businessman from Philadelphia who had some spare cash and thought the Water Purification Company was a guaranteed money-maker."

"The Williams Family didn't do anything else; they just blocked him on environmental approvals for eight whole months."

"One day they'd say your water quality test didn't meet standards, the next they'd say your pipes were old and needed replacing, and the day after that, they'd claim you were damaging the town's groundwater layer."

"In the end, the businessman couldn't afford to wait, so he had to slink away, and the hundreds of thousands of dollars he'd invested initially went down the drain."

"The second was a real estate developer from New York who wanted to buy the Water Purification Company and build a resort on the adjacent vacant land."

"The Williams Family directly incited the town's elderly to cause trouble at the construction site, claiming that building a resort would contaminate the water source and give them cancer."

"Every day, a group of seventy or eighty-year-old men and women would sit at the construction site entrance, wailing and causing a scene, and the police wouldn't do anything when they arrived."

"Because the sheriff leading the team was Old Williams's own nephew. In the end, the real estate developer paid five million in breach of contract penalties and drove away overnight without ever looking back."

"The third was the worst off—a lawyer from Chicago who thought he understood the law and wouldn't get scammed."

"He signed a contract with the Williams Family that looked flawless, but he still fell into their trap."

A flicker of admiration, mixed with helplessness, flashed in Jessica's eyes. "The Williams Family buried a trap in the contract that no one could have anticipated."

"The contract stated that 'the Water Purification Company assumes the obligation to supply water to all residents of Oxford Town for the next fifty years,' but it didn't specify the price."

"The very next day after he took over the company, the Williams Family controlled a Town Council vote to lower water rates to one-third of what they had been."

"He was losing money every month, and after struggling for less than eleven months, he couldn't hold on any longer. He had to sell the company back to the Williams Family for a symbolic price of one dollar. I heard he went bankrupt after returning home, and his wife divorced him too."

Upon hearing this, Mu Xin chuckled softly. These tactics were indeed underhanded and nasty, but they were only effective against small businessmen with no backing.

In the face of real capital power, these little tricks were fragile.

"But you don't need to take them too seriously." Jessica added, as if she had seen through his thoughts.

"The Williams Family's greatest weakness is that their vision is too narrow and their perspective is too small."

"Old Williams is eighty-seven this year; his mind has long since gone fuzzy, and he just sits at home counting money every day. His two sons are complete and utter losers."

"The eldest son, Jimmy Williams, is fifty-four years old. He doesn't know how to do anything except drag racing and chasing women. Last year, he even killed someone while driving drunk and had to spend three million dollars to make it go away."

"The younger son is slightly better than his brother, but not by much."

"Every day he just guards the supermarket, haggling over a few cents with the cashiers."

"The biggest dream of their lives is to guard this little patch of land in Oxford Town and be their local despots."

"They have never seen real big capital, nor do they know how to deal with the outside world."

"They only know how to use these underhanded methods to deal with people who are just as inexperienced as they are."

"When they encounter a truly formidable character, they don't even have the strength to fight back."

Jessica looked up and stared straight into Mu Xin's eyes, her gaze filled with a kind of desperate determination:

"I know you're not an ordinary person. You bought an AMG worth over three hundred thousand dollars in cash without even blinking."

"You want to buy the Water Purification Company, and it's definitely not to earn that little bit of water fee."

"If you really want to take over this company, I can help you."

"I understand the laws of Oxford Town better than any out-of-town lawyer, and I understand the Williams Family's shady methods even better."

"I know where their weaknesses are, and I know how to hit them where it hurts most."

She took a deep breath and stated her conditions: "I don't want to be paid by the hour. Once it's done, you give me one hundred and fifty thousand dollars."

"That money is enough for my dad's rehabilitation treatment, and it's enough for me to hire a professional caregiver to look after my parents."

"With the remaining money, I want to take them away from this hellhole and go to Florida to settle down in a city with a better climate."

Sunlight shone through the McDonalds window, falling on her face, half in brightness and half in shadow.

Mu Xin looked at her clear, determined eyes, was silent for a few seconds, and then slowly reached out his hand.

"Deal," he said. "But I have one condition."