Chapter One: The Scarlet Bow Tie
The shadows of the Brooklyn Bridge loomed over Lucas Wilson's sixteenth shift, and the aroma of bouillabaisse filled the back of the three-Michelin-starred Le Cygne restaurant. He adjusts his stiffly sized bow tie, a symbol of "elite service" that's wrapped around the knot of his throat like a noose.
"Table 12 needs a fork refill." Foreman Maggie's shrill voice cut through the steam, and the redhead loved to tap her diamond-encrusted nails on his shoulder blades, "And keep your eyes to yourself-Eleanor Rothschild is dining in the main dining room."
Lucas paused as he polished his silverware. The queen who controlled a third of the hedge funds on the East Coast was currently sitting at the mahogany dining table he'd been scrubbing for three months. He remembered the Financial Alchemy he'd flipped through at the used bookstore last night, with the algorithmic formulas written in ketchup sandwiched between the pages.
"Are you deaf?" Maggie's heels crushed his shadow, "If the champagne tower in the VIP section spills one more drop, I'm going to stuff you in the trash compactor."
Lucas was holding twelve Burgundy glasses when the gilt doors to the ballroom opened. In the halo of the crystal chandelier, he saw Demian Crawford lazily shaking her glass of red wine, the Wolf of Wall Street whose cufflinks were still stained with the morning's profits from shorting medical device stocks. As Queen Eleanor's silver-gray pupils swept across the dining table, Lucas suddenly realized that the rate of his breathing was in some eerie resonance with the volatile curve of the Dow Jones.
Disaster struck during the dessert session. Demian purposely spills the chocolate truffle and the dark brown stain blooms with evil on Lucas' white shirt." See, waiters these days can't even calculate the acceleration of gravity." The tips of his alligator leather shoes crushed the tumbled raspberries, "Maybe you should go back to the Bronx shelter and relearn Newton's laws?"
In the back kitchen's surveillance blind spot, Lucas clutched his tattered bow tie, knuckles resting against the cold cooking table. Demian's private jet was standing by at JFK, and he needed the $12-an-hour job to pay for his mother's dialysis. As the spreadsheet jumped toward 2 a.m., the calculus equations he'd listed on the back of the purchase order suddenly strung together into some kind of revelation-that the third-quarter research and development expenditures as a function of revenue growth rate for the health care company Demian had shorted simply didn't fit into the short-sale report's data model.
"Interesting." The dark female voice startled him into dropping his pen, and Eleanor leaned against the cooler door at some point. She picked up the piece of vellum filled with arithmetic, her diamond brooch reflecting the ice-ribbed light under the CFL, "The Wall Street Journal should hire you as a proofreader."
Chapter 2: The Velvet Trap
Lucas was staring at his own reflection in the leather seat as Eleanor's Rolls-Royce Phantom ran through the shadow of the bronze bull statue on Wall Street. Three hours earlier, the woman who controlled the Rothschild Trust had surveyed his oil-stained uniform with the eyes of an auction house appraiser." Tomorrow at nine o'clock, bring your stolen copy of Securities Analysis to the Crawford Building."
At the moment the elevator numbers were beating like an EKG, and beyond the 46th-floor sightseeing glass, the Hudson River was meandering beneath the billionaires' feet. Demian's office smelled of cedar aromatherapy, and he was using a solid gold paper cutter to unseal an acquisition agreement for a startup.
"Surprise." Eleanor's red lips grazed between Lucas's ears, "This is Demian Crawford, your workplace mentor for the next three months." Her Prada handbag slid out a sheaf of papers, "Sign it and your mother's medical bills will be covered in full by the Crawford Charitable Foundation."
Demian's blue eyes narrowed into two venomous arrows as he flung out the employment contract that slid with a stinging clang on the mahogany desktop." Welcome to the top of the food chain, little mouse." The liquidated damages figure at the end of the parchment was enough to buy an entire Brooklyn neighborhood, "But may I remind you that this is no place for you to play Sudoku."
Lucas spent his first week in the staff training room learning to tell the factions of investment bankers by their tie patterns. When he pointed out a regulatory loophole in a short position on an energy stock at the morning meeting, Demian's golf club smashed the projection screen." You think those junk mathematical models can shake real capital?" His alligator-skin money clip flung out ten hundred-dollar bills, "Go get me a proper French coffee-remember the beans are from St. Helena."
Late at night as a rainstorm battered Manhattan, Lucas huddled in the maintenance room of a ventilation duct. His cell phone screen lit up with photos of his mother's chemotherapy treatments, and Demian drifted into the conference room next door for a confidential conversation with an oil tycoon: "The... Short precious metals ahead of next week's Fed meeting... Yeah, that pension fund capital injection proposal can be delayed for another three months..."
His trembling fingers flew over the calculator, a perfect set of arbitrage formulas taking shape as lightning split the clouds outside the window. When the scent of Eleanor's perfume suddenly filled the small space, Lucas realized he'd worked out the chain of commodities trading that the Crawford Group was manipulating.
"Faster than I thought." Her sable shawl brushed his frosted lashes, "But remember, Wall Street doesn't believe in tears, only..." Fingers painted with scarlet nail polish traced the throbbing arteries of his neck, "... Chips."
Chapter 3: Prisoner of Glass
Lucas's fingers traced white marks on the bulletproof glass on the 37th floor of the Crawford Building, where in the reflection Demian Crawford was cutting cigars with a solid gold paper cutter." Know why dogs aren't allowed on the board?" He spits smoke rings in Lucas's face, "Because they never learn to shut up."
The crude oil futures chart shown at the morning meeting suddenly jams, and Lucas smells data fakery. When he pointed out the unusual parameters in the arbitrage model, Demian's golf club smashed the projector." You think these numbers games change anything?" The tips of his alligator leather shoes crushed the scattered flash drives, "On Wall Street, the truth is the cigar ash that comes out of my mouth."
The locker room at lunch break became a torture chamber. Jason led the traders in pinning Lucas to an LV trunk and dousing his rented Zegna suit with '82 Lafite." 'Look at this puddle,' someone says, filming the liquor hanging from his eyelashes with his cell phone, 'a Brooklyn dingo deserves to wear high fashion?"
But what really shattered him was Eleanor's betrayal. When he hacks into the core database late at night with janitorial privileges, the security footage shows the woman spying on him back in his restaurant days-an encrypted folder in her office holds every moment he polishes his silverware.
The vibration of the ventilation ducts came at two in the morning. Lucas huddled in the distribution room, listening to Demian's deal with the pharmaceutical rep: "... Get the mortality numbers for Phase III down to less than five percent... Yeah, test with ghetto junkies first..." He trembled as he fumbled for the empty vial of his mother's chemotherapy drug, the manufacturing lot number was exactly the same as the one mentioned in the conversation.
The computer suddenly auto-played the encrypted video. The footage showed the hospital where his mother was being injected with a blue agent, and Eleanor's voice came through the anonymous e-mail, "For every hour you hesitate, your mother will be subjected to three times as many doses of the experimental drug."
The moment SWAT crashes through the apartment door, Lucas swallows the capsule containing the blockchain key. Demian laughed softly over the phone, "Now run away, little mouse, and see if you can figure out the bullet trajectory with your math equations."
Chapter 4: The Dark Chip
The roar of a Bitcoin mining machine shatters the stained windows of an abandoned Brooklyn church. Victor Stone's mechanical prosthetic tapped sparks on the keyboard, and 127 offshore accounts of the Crawford Group floated in holographic projection." It's going to take zero proof of knowledge to brand this dirty money on the blockchain," his e-cigarette exhaled skeletal smoke, "but the price is your name will be etched at the top of the darknet manhunt list forever."
Lucas ripped open his bloodstained shirt, the barcode on his chest an "initiation gift" from Demian." Any idea what they do with scrapped financial derivatives?" He pulls up the security camera in his mother's hospital room, where the nurse is filling an IV bag with blue liquid, "Just like the rest of us, straight to zero."
Lucas is pumping epinephrine into an IV as Eleanor's Rolls-Royce Phantom runs over the churchyard." How touching," she stepped over Victor's robotic arm on her Jimmy Choo heels, "the Romeo and Juliet of the ghetto." Small arms with pinholes peeked out from under the mink coat, "Sign this plea and your mother's genetic potion will receive special FDA approval."
The deal was struck at three in the morning. As Lucas uploaded the Crawford Group's encrypted ledger to the blockchain, Victor detonated the mining unit's cooling system." Run!" His titanium fingers broke open the escape route, "Get to Hudson River Pier 12 for..."
The moment the bullet pierced Victor's temple, Lucas saw the lights of Demian's yacht. He leapt into the murky river water, evidence of the crime being activated by the nano-chip recording in his mouth. Eleanor's text flashed on the waterproof cell phone screen, "Time for the game to end, my dear Prometheus."
When the mother is found in the cryo warehouse, her medical records show that all the treatments were lies. Those expensive chemo treatments were nothing more than genetic weapons to clear the ghetto population. Lucas smashes the potion freezer and a video invitation from Demian is reflected in the glass slag, "Now get on your knees or your mother will turn into scrap metal like Viktor."
Chapter 5: The Bronze Horseman
Lucas ripped open his Armani suit as the security screen at the New York Financial Summit beeped ear-splittingly. The bitcoin mining card sewn into the lining was still hot, and the bullet hole in his chest was covered with a silicone prosthesis to hide the smell of blood." Ladies and gentlemen," he jumped up to the lectern and ripped the microphone cord, "welcome to the financial slaughterhouse of doom!"
The big screen suddenly plays a video of Demian's confession on his yacht as the politicians behind him count the gold bars sent by the Crawford Group." ... Those pension fund dollars are like milking a cow..." The video's sardonic laughter is interrupted by a sudden cut to a blockchain transaction log as the global cryptocurrency market begins a synchronized sell-off of Crawford stock.
As Eleanor's diamond brooch stabbed him in the back of the neck, Lucas chewed on a signal transmitter hidden in a decaying tooth. The dome of the U.N. headquarters instantly turned into a holographic projection screen, and darknet transaction data poured down like a waterfall of blood." You think I'm here to beg for justice?" He backhanded the brooch into the Queen's wrist, "I'm here to redefine the rules!"
As the Secret Service stormed the venue, Lucas held up Victor's blasted smartwatch. The AI inside is broadcasting the results of the trial using the blockchain, "Based on the cryptocurrency votes of the global netizens, the Financial Butchers are sentenced to..." Before the words left her mouth, Demian's gold paper cutter had been plunged into her own heart, and two different blood types blotted out the devil's totem on the financial report.
Three months later, on the rebuilt Brooklyn Bridge, Lucas looked at a picture of his mother's recovery on his cell phone. Victor's AI voice came from the Bitcoin wallet, "Go change the fucking world with the math equations you made me lose all my coffin money on."
In the distance the bronze Wall Street bull statue is being melted down and recast, with a line of blockchain address etched into the new pedestal. As the first rays of sunlight pierced the dark clouds, Lucas tossed his bloodstained bowtie into the Hudson River, and countless Bronze Horsemen in the process of awakening emerged from the water's reflection.