The brokerage office was housed within one of Aurelia City's newest architectural statements—a financial tower that seemed to exist solely to intimidate the street below. Its glass skin reflected the morning sun so sharply that the facade appeared as a blinding, bleached white, framed by massive steel pillars that anchored the structure like the ribs of a titan.
Near the entrance, a colossal digital display pulsed with the rhythmic heartbeat of the world's markets, scrolling through currency movements and index updates. It was a silent, luminous reminder that inside these walls, numbers were the only language that mattered.
Jake stood on the opposite sidewalk for a long moment, his silhouette lost against the morning rush. He wasn't struggling with the frantic nerves of a man who had just lost a fortune; instead, his mind hummed with the cold, rhythmic logic of a tactician.
Thirty-seven million didn't simply vanish by accident.
