Trifecta-Week One Hundred Eleven – Manipulate

Monday morning at 10 AM we get another prompt from Trifecta. You don’t know who Trifecta is? It is a group that provides two prompts each week, on Monday and Friday for your fiction writing pleasure. The Monday prompt is geared to fall between 33 and 333 words and based on a one word prompt. Using the third definition from the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary you will put together a fiction masterpiece. Along with the other nearly 100 writers taking the plunge you will create an exciting story for others to read.

Now onto this week’s one-word prompt.

MANIPULATE (transitive verb)

1: to treat or operate with or as if with the hands or by mechanical means especially in a skillful manner
2a : to manage or utilize skillfully
b : to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one’s own advantage
3: to change by artful or unfair means so as to serve one’s purpose : to doctor

– See more at: http://www.trifectawritingchallenge.com/#sthash.VZu2MvBn.dpuf

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Perry Winters was incensed. Throughout his career as the CEO of 21^st Century Investments he went to great lengths to make sure everything was done by the laws and standards of the Securities and Exchange Commission. He was a student of history and knew about the worst examples of those who thought they could skirt the rules of the industry to sock away some undue profits. He knew people from his industry that at the least had lost their license trying to do it and at worst occupied a cell for what would be the balance of their adult lives.

He would not be one of those if he had full control. But today he was learning that full control was not his. No, today he was responding to an attack from someone who he considered a rival, and they were doing their damnedest to cast him in a bad light. Their attack involved accusations of insider trading, which he knew was untrue, but as always had the burden to prove.

His IT department was in an “all hands on deck” mode to collect information to prove his involvement was a fabrication of information by his rival. What he had to do was to prove the other company had to manipulate the data to make him look guilty. Manipulate they had and the SEC was descending like a plague of locusts on his office.

Perry was thankful this was twenty years into his tenure, rather than in the beginning when he would not have the board of director’s full support. They knew how he conducted business and about ASG Holdings way of competing. This was the third time ASG had pulled a similar trick to attack one of their competitors that they could not out muscle in the business arena. The cheap trick was their only hope.

“Mr. Winters,” the intercom announced. “We have what you requested.”

Perry smiled as he thought about how he would enjoy seeing Asa Butterfiled, ASG’s CEO cringe. 

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