Chapter 3: A Price-Tag on Justice

Two weeks passed.

Two weeks of agonizing silence.

For fourteen days, Leo lived in a state of suspended animation, a constant, low-grade hum of anticipation under his skin. Every shift at The Circuit Shack was a vigil. He’d watch the door, expecting Dave Davenport to burst in at any moment, face purple with rage, waving a phone bill like a declaration of war. Every time the bell chimed, his heart would leap into his throat, only to sink when it was just another customer wanting a cheap charger.

He and his crew had meticulously covered their tracks. The OmniPhone had been factory reset, wiped clean of every byte of their activity, and discreetly left in a lost-and-found bin at a bus station two towns over. It would have been found and returned by now. The trap was set, the fuse was lit, and all they could do was wait for the explosion.

But there was nothing. A deafening, frustrating void.

“Maybe it didn’t work,” Mike had fretted during one of their hushed conversations by the lockers. “Maybe his dad’s corporate plan really is unlimited.”

“Nothing is unlimited,” Jenna had countered, her voice tight. She’d been a coiled spring for two weeks, her anger simmering just below a carefully maintained surface of calm. “There’s always a fine print. We just have to wait for the billing cycle.”

Leo was starting to doubt. Maybe Mike was right. Maybe they’d underestimated the sheer scale of the Davenport fortune. Maybe their digital sledgehammer was just a toy mallet against a mountain of cash. The thought soured in his gut, a bitter mix of failure and impotence. All that risk for nothing.

He was restocking a shelf of network switches, the repetitive task a welcome distraction, when the bell above the shop door didn't just chime—it slammed open, rattling in its frame.

And there he was.

Dave Davenport stood silhouetted against the bright afternoon light, his letterman jacket stretched tight across his shoulders. His handsome face was contorted into a mask of pure, unadulterated fury. He wasn't drunk or slurring now. He was cold sober and radiating a palpable sense of rage. In his hand, he clutched a crumpled piece of paper.

This was it. The explosion.

“You,” Dave snarled, his eyes locking onto Leo. He stormed past Stan, who yelped in surprise at the counter, and marched directly to the back of the store. He was a predator who had found his prey.

Leo felt a surge of pure, glorious triumph. He carefully placed a network switch on the shelf and turned, schooling his features into a mask of polite, retail-worker neutrality. “Can I help you, sir?”

Dave shoved the crumpled paper into Leo’s chest. It was a phone bill. “Does this look right to you, you little grease monkey?”

Leo took the bill, his eyes scanning the page with feigned concentration. He saw the name—Davenport, Marcus—and then he saw the number. It was even better than he’d hoped. The data overage charge was a beautiful, obscene figure: $3,548.22.

“Three and a half grand!” Dave hissed, his voice low and venomous so Stan couldn’t overhear. “For one month. I called the provider. They said it was a massive data download. Terabytes or something. Two weeks ago. The same night you shoved me at the party.”

Leo raised an eyebrow, affecting mild confusion. “That’s a lot of data. Were you streaming movies on the go? 4K content really eats up your data plan.” He injected a hint of faux-helpful condescension into his tone, the same kind the Davenport Digital employees used on his customers.

“I was at a party!” Dave spat. “My phone was in my pocket! Then you broke it!”

“I didn’t break your phone, Dave. You dropped it,” Leo corrected him calmly. He handed the bill back. “Look, there’s nothing I can do. You’re alleging some kind of technical malfunction. You’d need to file a claim with the manufacturer. This is just a retail store.”

Every word of his customer service script was a twist of the knife, and he savored it. He was using the system, the infuriating, bureaucratic system, against the one person who had never had to deal with it. Dave’s power, his father’s name, meant nothing here. He was just another angry customer in a dead-end electronics shop.

Dave’s face went from red to a blotchy purple. He was so used to people snapping to attention, to getting what he wanted with a single command, that this polite stonewalling was driving him insane. “You did something. I know you did.”

“That’s a serious accusation,” Leo said, his voice dropping. “If you have proof, you should go to the police. Otherwise, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. You’re disturbing the other customers.” He gestured vaguely towards the front of the store, where Stan was nervously pretending to organize a display of batteries.

For a second, Leo thought Dave might actually swing at him. His hands were clenched into fists, his whole body trembling with impotent rage. But he didn't. He just stared at Leo, his eyes promising retribution. Then, with a guttural growl of frustration, he spun on his heel and stormed out of the store, the bell clanging violently in his wake.

Leo watched him go, a slow, triumphant smile spreading across his face. He leaned against the shelf, the adrenaline leaving him weak-kneed. It had worked. It had worked perfectly. They had landed a direct hit, a $3,500 punch to the gut. It might not fix Jenna’s scholarship, but it was the sweetest, most expensive taste of payback he could have imagined.

---

The sweet taste turned to ash the next day.

The high school hallways buzzed with their usual chaotic energy. Leo was looking for Jenna, eager to recount every glorious detail of Dave’s meltdown. He felt a foot taller, a swagger in his step he hadn’t had in years.

He was cut off by Sarah, who grabbed his arm and pulled him into an empty alcove.

“You’re looking way too happy,” she said, her expression grim. “You haven’t heard, have you?”

“Heard what? That Dave Davenport had a public aneurysm in The Circuit Shack yesterday? Yeah, I was there. Front row seats.”

“No,” Sarah said, shaking her head. “The fallout. I was behind him and his Neanderthal friends in the lunch line. He’s bragging about it, Leo.”

Leo’s triumphant smile faltered. “Bragging? About a massive bill?”

“He’s not telling people he got a massive bill. He’s telling them his dad was so impressed with his ‘power usage’ that he upgraded him. He’s showing everyone his new plan on his dad’s corporate account. He’s calling it the ‘Davenport Black’ plan. Literally unlimited everything, priority network access, no throttling, no caps. He’s turned our data bomb into a new status symbol.”

The floor seemed to drop out from under Leo. The entire triumphant scene in the store replayed in his head, but now it was a farce. Dave’s anger hadn’t been about the money itself. It had been about the inconvenience, the indignity of having to deal with a problem himself.

“And the bill?” Leo asked, his voice barely a whisper. “The three grand?”

Sarah let out a short, bitter laugh. “According to Dave, his dad saw the bill, laughed, and paid it from his phone before he’d even finished his morning coffee. Said it was ‘a rounding error’.”

A rounding error.

The words hit Leo like a physical blow. The money that would have been a catastrophe for his family, for Jenna’s, was less than pocket change to Marcus Davenport. It was nothing. A price tag on justice they could pay without a second thought.

Leo’s gaze drifted down the crowded hallway. He saw Dave holding court by the trophy case, phone in hand, laughing with his friends. He looked powerful. Untouchable. He saw Jenna by her locker, talking quietly with Mike. The fire he’d seen in her eyes two weeks ago had dimmed, replaced by a cold, hard resignation. She knew.

Their revenge hadn’t just failed. It had backfired. They hadn’t left a scar; they’d given Dave a new trophy to display. They had thrown their best punch, and the Davenports hadn’t even flinched. The humiliation was a cold, sick feeling in the pit of his stomach.

He looked from Jenna’s defeated posture to Dave’s arrogant laughter. He realized their mistake. They had targeted Dave's wallet, thinking it was his weakness. But it was his armor. Their first byte of revenge had been meaningless. They needed a new plan. They couldn't just scratch the surface. They had to go deeper.

They had to burn the whole thing to the ground.