Chapter 3 - The Morning Bell
By 5:00 AM the next morning, I was sitting at the basement desk with a cup of black coffee, watching the digital clock tick toward the New York opening bell.
Upstairs, the house was completely silent. Rachel was still asleep in our bedroom; Noah wouldn't wake up for another hour for school.
My phone buzzed violently on the walnut desk.
It was a text message from Rachel, sent from her bedside table:
“Hey. Coffee is on. We need to talk about last night before Noah gets up. I’m sorry I lost my temper.”
I looked at the screen, then at the multi-monitor display before me.
On Bloomberg TV, a banner had already popped up across the bottom of the financial news broadcast, though the anchors were still speaking in hushed, speculative tones.
BREAKING NEWS: REGULATORY FILINGS REVEAL SHADOW HOLDINGS OF VOSS CAPITAL FOUNDER... ESTIMATED PRIVATE VALUATION EXCEEDS $400 BILLION.
Across the screen flashed a photograph of me—a blurry, five-year-old passport photo taken when I had renewed my credentials in Seattle, looking tired, wearing an old gray sweatshirt, my hair uncombed.
Beneath it was a number that defied comprehension.
NET WORTH: $405,281,000,000.
The basement door at the top of the stairs creaked open.
Footsteps padded softly down the concrete steps.
Rachel appeared at the bottom of the basement stairs, wearing her silk bathrobe, holding her coffee mug with both hands. She had clearly just woken up, her hair slightly tousled, her face tired.
“Ethan,” she began, stepping into the basement. “I wanted to apologize again about—what are you doing down here so early?”
She stopped dead in her tracks.
Her eyes moved from my face to the three massive monitors glowing with green financial data streams, then to the Bloomberg broadcast playing quietly in the corner of the primary screen.
“...confirming reports that the elusive American investor Ethan Voss, founder of Voss Capital, is indeed the sole beneficial owner of the global automation grid...”
Rachel stared at the screen, then down at the photograph of me displayed beside the staggering, astronomical nine-figure sum.
Her coffee mug slipped from her fingers.
It hit the concrete floor with a sharp crash, shattering into a dozen pieces, dark coffee splashing across her slippers and pooling around the base of the desk.
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She didn't look down at the mess.
She looked at me, her mouth slightly open, her face completely drained of color as the reality of what she had called a “freeloader” forty-eight hours ago crashed down upon her with the force of an avalanche.
