The Love Of Money - S02 E177

Story 2 months ago

The Love Of Money - S02 E177

Read Story: SEASON 2 EPISODE 177

The moment European regulators flagged one of the shells for insolvency, a cascade of margin calls began. It hit Luxembourg and Amsterdam first. Within a few hours, liquidity vanished from half a dozen high-yield funds.”

Erin compressed her lips into a thin line as she snorted in frustration.

“And here’s the thing: he owned some of the exposure. Deliberately. He let a few of his own holdings take a dive so no one would suspect the pattern. Bet you can guess who the actual target was.”

“Us,” I said.

Erin nodded. “Three of our financial partners were exposed—one of them was underwriting a new line for the Dunbar expansion. The other two handled portfolio bundling for your private equity branches. Between market losses, margin calls, and contagion panic, market-wide fallout is already past $45 billion, and it’s still moving. Your personal exposure is about $17 billion, give or take. It might stabilize, but it could very well double.

She paused just long enough to make sure I understood.

“And that’s not counting secondary damage. Our name is all over the headlines—investors are pulling out like it’s 2008 again. Hiro didn’t just want to hurt us… he wanted to destabilize us. Ruin our reputations and shake the world’s confidence in our brands.”

Silence reigned for a full ten seconds as I let what Erin told me sink in.

“He did one hell of a job,” I finally said.

“I don’t understand,” Emily said, laying a hand on my shoulder. She’d approached my chair while Erin had been talking.

Fortunately, I knew enough to put it in simpler terms.

“He took out a few no-name companies, then let them default on purpose. But they were holding the equivalent of loaded guns—these contracts that only work as long as everyone else believes the system’s stable. Once the defaults hit, it spooked the market. Banks started calling in debts. Funds lost liquidity. My partners couldn’t move money fast enough, and we got dragged down with them. It’s like he poured gasoline into the global financial system a year ago… and just now lit the match.”

“Does that mean Marcus will lose everything?” Natashya asked, stepping up next to Emily.

“No,” Erin said. “He still has the majority of his wealth, but a lot of his liquidity is gone, so cash flow is tight at the moment.”

“Which means I’m limited on what I can personally do,” I concluded. “He’s crippled me.”

“I’m working to change that,” Erin said, “But it’s going to take some time… longer than usual. A lot of our influence is gone, right now.”

“That also means,” Chloe said, walking into the room, “that Marcus doesn’t leave the secured floors of this building until I give the all-clear. None of you do.”

“What?” Emily said.

“Why?” Natashya chimed in.

“Resources are stretched, and Tanaka knows it. I’d bet you a year’s salary that he has at least two dozen mercenaries within a few blocks just looking for a chance to acquire you, or take you out.”

Natashya gasped and took a couple of steps back. “I… no… I need to get out of here…”

“Afraid that’s not happening, Miss Larazev,” Chloe said.

Emily reached out to her girlfriend. “Natashya—”

“Emily! I can’t stay here!” The dancer’s eyes shone bright with tears as she clutched her girlfriend’s hand. “They will get me, again!”

Natashya collapsed in Emily’s arms—she wasn’t openly sobbing, but she looked like she was on the verge.

Alarmed, I started to rise from my seat, but Emily held up a hand, signifying that I should stay where I was.

“I’m going to take her to our room,” she mouthed, and the two of them walked out of my study. I could hear Natashya murmuring something about not going through that nightmare again as they exited.

Erin watched them leave, worry for the dancer painted on her face. Charity did the same, looking particularly pale, which was saying something considering her ethnicity.

“Will she be okay?” Charity asked.

“She’ll be fine,” Helen cut in, seemingly unaffected by the younger woman’s breakdown.

“Marcus, INTERPOL has reached out to us, and the SEC has already flagged two of your trades from last week. They won’t find any evidence of insider trading, but they were close enough to the flashpoint that they’re sniffing like bloodhounds.

Some of your partners are preparing suits for fiduciary negligence. Several companies have shuttered their doors in the space of hours. Yunger, Price & VanCamp has already engaged legal in four other countries. This was a nuclear bomb, and the fallout is going to last a long time.”

“Fucking Christ,” I said. “How many people lost jobs over this? Lost their businesses?”

“You can’t do that, Marcus,” Erin said on the heels of my questions.

“Why not!?” I said, popping out of my chair. “I fucked around and I found out, and now a ton of people I don’t know are paying the price.”

“You’ve already lost billions, Marcus,” Erin protested. “And you’ll lose more before we can stop this. I’d say that’s a hefty price.”

“At the end of the day, though, I’ll still have this,” I held up my hands, indicating the finery all around us. “While all those people will lose their livelihoods… their homes.”

“Worry about that, and you’ll go mad, Marcus,” Helen said.

“What? I’m supposed to just go on like nothing happened to… what… thousands of people? Tens of thousands?”

“When two people are fighting for their lives, they can’t be worried about the ants they step on,” Helen said.

I balked at her words—spoken like a privileged woman who hasn’t had to worry where her next meal came from in a long time.

“Fuck off, Helen,” I snapped. “That’s cold. Even for you.”

“I’m being pragmatic,” Helen said, her eyes flashing brilliant blue fire.

“You’re being a bitch,” I shot back.

The two of us simply stared at each other. Besides Bobbi, I’d never experienced the desire to simultaneously want to punch a woman and fuck her.

“I…”

Both of us looked at Charity, who seemed about ready to run away from us so fast that she’d leave a cloud of dust in her wake.

We waited expectantly for her to go on.

“I, um, just wanted to say that social media is on fire. It’s a global crash… it’s all anyone is talking about. There are a lot of people calling for your blood.”

I groaned and turned to kick my office chair, sending it rolling across the floor.

“But,” Charity went on, “There are a lot of people standing up for you! Some are talking about the charity work we’ve been involved with lately, and there are a lot of people who seem to resonate with the fact that you were just a normal guy who fell into a lot of money.”

“Also,” she continued, “the attack in Vegas still seems to be getting you a lot of favor. That got me thinking that maybe there was something to that, so I started floating the idea that the Vegas attack and this collapse are connected. My friends in the influencer space are running with it… hard.”

I looked back at Helen and Erin, who both looked mildly shocked.

“I mean… half the groundwork had already been laid.”

“You thought up a plausible conspiracy theory and spread it to try to buy Marcus the trust of the public?” Erin asked.

“Um…”

“Brilliant!” I said, happy to embrace a small ray of sunshine.

“I mean, I don’t know that it’s a conspiracy theory if it’s true.” She glanced between all of us. “It is true, isn’t it?”

“Maybe,” I said. Amber had been there to warn me of Hiro’s attack in exchange for most of the stuff Hiro wanted, but there had to be a connection between Hiro and her. Carla had implied that Amber’s visit to Hiro the night before the board meeting was what swayed him to vote against Chandler and me. Amber was probably there to get me to give up things on Hiro’s behalf before Hiro decided to go nuclear on me.

“Psalter’s here,” Chloe said.