Friday, September 20th, 2:31 pm

The global economy was on fire, and it was my fault.

And I stood next to the window, surrounded by possessions and collectibles that could have fed and housed a family of four for at least a year, sipping coffee that probably cost as much as a high-priced meal. All while feeling sorry for myself.

“Is there anything you can do?” Emily asked.

“I don’t know,” I said into my coffee cup as I took a sip.

“Perhaps you can buy all the banks and—”

The sound of shattering glass cut Natashya’s words off as I sent the mug hurling across the room, where it crashed into one of the bookcases lining the walls. Coffee splattered across books that cost more than some vehicles. “I said, ‘I don’t know!’”

Whirling around, I glared at the dancer, who appeared to be in complete shock at my tone. She glanced at Emily, who also looked equally troubled.

It was understandable. I never acted this way… not around them.

I sighed and pressed my fingers to my eyelids.

“Marcus…” Emily’s voice was full of cautious concern.

“Fuck,” I said. “I’m sorry, guys. That was uncalled for.”

“It is okay,” Natashya said in her light accent. “Is it really that bad?”

“Yeah,” I said, my throat thick with emotion. I finally looked back up at them and leaned against the window. Part of me wanted the bulletproof glass to just shatter and introduce me to death by defenestration.

“The stock market hit a historical low today. Basically, all of Europe can’t use money right now.”

“And this is your fault?”

I shrugged at Natashya’s question, not really wanting to answer that question.

“You can’t know that,” Emily said, full of conviction.

“Em,” I sighed.

“You can’t know that!” my sister insisted. “No one person can be at fault for something like this.”

“This is Hiro,” I said. “He did this in retaliation for what I just did to him.”

My phone buzzed on the desk. I ignored it, assuming it was yet another call to check up on me, ask me questions, or… anything else. My phone number was kept extremely private—Erin made sure of that, but in this day and age, nothing stayed that way for long. Journalists had begun trying to call me directly. I would need to get a new number soon.

Emily scowled at the phone, then said, “You couldn’t know what they would do!”

I hit the back of my head against the glass several times and groaned in frustration. “I was warned! Amber was in here earlier, telling me that she could give me the information to get a jump on whatever Hiro was planning!”

“Amber?” Natashya, who was looking at her nails, snapped her gaze up to me. “As in that bitch who kidnapped us?”

“Yeah.” I winced, temporarily forgetting that she had shared my fate. No… something worse than my fate. Natashya bore some scars from that event that wouldn’t heal for a long time.

“She was in here!?” Natashya jumped to her feet. Emily did the same but grabbed her girlfriend by the wrist and pulled her in for a hug.

“No,” I sighed, shoving off the window and walking toward my office chair. “She was in one of the conference rooms downstairs.”

“You let her go?” Emily asked. It wasn’t meant to be accusatory, but I was so raw that it felt that way.

“Yeah. I did. Holding her against her will is called kidnapping.”

Natashya narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you have Ryo locked in a room?”

I paused mid-sit and instead planted my hands against the surface of the desk, staring at Natashya.

“Touche…”

The exotic entertainer opened her mouth to say something else, but I cut her off.

“Tash, if you’re about to give me shit about not taking the bitch who kidnapped us prisoner, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I’m not in the fucking mood.”

Despite looking like she wanted to say something, she shut her mouth.

“Thank you,” I said.

The doors opened and in walked Helen, followed by Erin and Charity—the three Weird Sisters who had stormed the kitchen a few hours ago to deliver terrifying news.

Judging by their faces, it looked like our day hadn’t improved since then.

Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and caldron bubble…

“Marcus,” Helen said. “We’ve got some updates.”

“Where’s the cauldron?”

All three of them stopped short and blinked.

“What?” Helen said.

Emily tittered—trust the theater geek to get it.

“It’s not important,” I waved a hand dismissively as I plopped into my seat. “What is it?”

Erin stepped up to the front of my desk and tapped a handful of manila folders against the wood.

“It’s bad. It wasn’t just one company or one bank. Tanaka orchestrated a multi-layered derivatives collapse using a series of offshore shell corporations—each loaded with toxic, high-leverage instruments. It’s like he built a house of cards out of credit swaps and then yanked the bottom card.

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.