Chapter 1

My car broke down on the road, so I took off my jacket, popped the hood, and started checking the problem right there at the curb.

A brand new convertible swung in and stopped in front of me, close enough to make a point.

My ex-wife Sarah got out on the arm of a man in a tailored suit, one hand clamped over her nose in disgust.

"Leo, all these years since the divorce and you're still a bottom-rung mechanic who reeks of motor oil."

I wiped the grease off my hands. I could not be bothered to explain that this limited-edition supercar was one I had picked up brand new.

When I stayed quiet, Sarah shoved a screenshot of her trading profits in my face.

"See that? David got me into a tech stock. One day of gains beats everything you'll make fixing cars in a lifetime!"

David Ashford looked down at me, his voice thick with contempt.

"Sarah, what's the point of talking investing with a mechanic? He can't even read a price chart.

"A mystery fund is buying this stock in batches. I'm already in at four-to-one leverage. I'm about to be set for life."

Sarah laughed and threw a few bills onto my open hood.

"Here's a tip. Buy yourself a decent coffee and stop cluttering up the view."

I looked at the scattered bills, then at the ticker symbol on the screenshot. I knew that one well, and I smiled.

That tech company's rally was nothing but a bull trap staged by a fund looking for cover while it unloaded its shares.

Anyone still in it would be wiped out.

I took out my phone and calmly sent a message to my trader.

"We're up thirty percent. Sell it all."

Chapter 1

I watched the delivery confirmation flash on my screen, put the phone to sleep, and slid it back into my pocket.

The hood was hot enough to sting, so I pulled on my gloves and went back to the loose harness connector near the ignition coil.

Sarah did not notice any of it.

She was holding her phone high, showing off that soaring profit chart to everyone around us.

"You see this? That's what having vision looks like.

"My ex-husband is out here breathing exhaust fumes at an intersection, and my fiance makes more in the time it takes to drink a coffee than he'll touch in decades."

A few people drifted over, drawn by her voice.

A young man holding a paper cup leaned in for a look at the screen and sucked in a breath.

"A tech stock? The whole market is down today and this thing is up almost ten percent!"

He dug out his own phone and fumbled his way into his trading app.

"No way I'm missing this. I'm buying in too."

More people crowded in, eyes locked on Sarah's screen.

A middle-aged man with a briefcase pushed his glasses up his nose.

"I saw it on the financial news this morning. This company locked up an exclusive license on some new AI technology.

"The story is still fresh, so I'll take a small position. Mr. Ashford, is it still early enough to get in?"

I tossed my oil-soaked rag into the toolbox at my feet.

"This company's cash flow doesn't match its order book, and that so-called exclusive license has never been confirmed by the company itself. The price is being shoved up by rumors and money chasing the move. Buy in now and you can be wiped out at any moment."

The crowd went quiet for a beat.

Sarah rolled her eyes and let out a cold snort.

"You fix junk cars for a living. What would you know about financial statements?"

David stepped forward, laid a hand on Sarah's waist, and looked at me the way people look at garbage.

"Leo, is it really that hard to admit someone else is better? That's how it goes at the bottom. You can't make money, so you can't stand watching anyone else make it."

David pointed at my box of rusted old tools, chin high.

"Do you even know how to read the tape? Do you know what money flow is?

"Large orders keep coming through, and buyers are absorbing every wave of selling.

"That's textbook accumulation. A much bigger push is coming any minute."

As he spoke, he opened up what he called an internal email.

The email claimed the company would announce a merger that afternoon.

One glance was enough. The footer used a format the company had retired years ago, and the sending domain carried one extra letter that was very easy to miss.

The email was a forgery.

But David clearly hadn't spotted any of it. Instead, he was treating the email as justification for taking on so much leverage.

He pulled a wallet from his suit pocket, peeled off a large bill, and flicked it onto my hood.

"Go buy yourself a decent coffee and stop stinking up the place with your poverty."

Sarah took out her own phone and opened Facebook.

She found her angle, framed the profit screenshot together with my back as I bent over the engine, then pasted the personal referral link David had sent her into the comments.

"Teaching my roadside ex-husband what moving up in the world actually looks like."

For every person who opened a leveraged account through that link, Sarah and David collected a commission.

She held the phone up for David to see.

"Hundreds of likes already and I only just posted it. Everyone is laughing at him for being a hick who doesn't even understand leverage."

A middle-aged woman in the crowd chimed in.

"Exactly. If you don't have the brains, just do your manual labor and keep quiet. Mr. Ashford is a professional. What are you butting in for?"

I looked at the bill lying on my hood, put out one greasy finger, and flicked it away.

It spun through the air and dropped into the storm drain at the curb.

I looked down at the small metal plate on the side of the engine bay.

It bore the car's unique factory serial number, its one-of-a-kind proof of identity.

Unfortunately, nobody standing in front of me knew what they were looking at.

I did not feel like explaining again.

I had given my warning. What happened to these people after that was not my problem.

David suddenly stared at his screen, his eyes lighting up.

"Large buy orders are coming in again, batch by batch. The bid is getting deeper and deeper!"

He raised his voice.

"I'm using every bit of intraday buying power I have left!"

Chapter 2

With the extra position on, David gripped his phone and fanned the air in front of his nose in disgust.

"That cheap motor oil smell is genuinely nauseating."

He looked around, his gaze sweeping over the spotless street and the planted median beside it.

"Fixing a leaking wreck like this in a neighborhood like this is a blight on the community."

David turned toward the corner, where a municipal patrol officer stood in uniform.

He raised a hand and snapped his fingers.

The officer had been making his rounds. One look at David and the brand-new convertible behind him, and he came over at a jog.

"Sir, is there something I can help you with?"

David pointed at me.

"Get this mechanic out of here. He's blocking the road illegally, there's oil all over the ground, and he's ruining the quality of life for taxpayers like us."

The officer's face went stiff and official. He turned and marched over to me.

"Sir, this is an upscale business district. Private roadside repairs are prohibited. I need your license, registration, and proof of insurance right now."

He pulled a citation pad and pen off his belt, all business.

I fished out a black leather wallet and slid out my license, registration, and insurance card.

As the documents came free, the corner of a stiff card came with them.

It bore the supercar maker's gold-foil emblem and, in small type, the words Owner Certification.

I handed the documents over.

"The car had a temporary fault. It will start in a minute."

Sarah took a step forward on her stiletto heels and let out a shrill laugh.

"Still putting on an act to dodge a fine? That heap was probably cobbled together from junkyard parts, and you expect us to believe it'll be running any minute. If you ask me, he deserves the maximum fine on the books!"

The officer took the documents, glanced at the name on the license, Leo Carter, and started scribbling on the citation pad.

He tore off a copy and slapped it against my windshield.

"Illegal obstruction and damage to the public environment. Six hundred dollars. You have ten minutes to move this car or I'm calling the city tow truck."

The bystanders who had been busy in their trading apps burst out laughing.

The middle-aged woman covered her mouth, delighted. "Six hundred? Is everything he's wearing even worth sixty?"

A young man in a suit shook his head.

"Just move it already. Don't jinx the rest of us standing here.

"Mr. Ashford moves hundreds of thousands in a minute. Can you afford to hold him up?"

I reached over, pulled the citation off the windshield, glanced at the amount, then folded it and slipped it into my pocket without expression.

I lifted my wrist and checked the time.

My scheduled unwind had less than ten minutes left to run.

David watched me and let out a cold laugh.

"Checking the time won't help. The tow company isn't going to waive the fee because you're poor. Whatever pitiful savings you have are getting zeroed out today."

Sarah hooked her arm through David's.

"Darling, don't waste your time on some bottom-feeder. Our lawyer should be here any minute."

A black executive van came down the street and pulled smoothly to the curb.

The side of it carried the logo of a well-known law firm in the city.

The door slid open and a man in a dark suit stepped out with a black briefcase.

He straightened his tie and walked straight toward Sarah and David.

Chapter 3

The man in the suit crossed quickly to David and dipped his head in greeting.

"Mr. Ashford, Ms. Lane, my apologies. Traffic was bad."

David waved a hand, clearly impatient.

"Is the paperwork ready?"

The lawyer opened his black briefcase and drew out a neatly bound document.

He turned to me and held it out.

"Mr. Carter, I'm Ms. Lane's private attorney. Regarding the property in the old district whose disposition was left unresolved when you divorced two years ago, Ms. Lane now requires you to sign this waiver of ownership."

The cover page read Transfer of Jointly Held Interest in bold type.

Sarah folded her arms, chin lifted.

"You can barely afford to keep fixing cars anyway. That dump sitting in your name is a waste.

"In that neighborhood, you can't even cover the annual maintenance fees, can you?"

David pulled a checkbook from his expensive suit, uncapped a pen, and scrawled a number across it.

"Sign right now and I'll throw in six thousand dollars on top. You can buy yourself a new set of wrenches, or pay off that fine."

I looked at the check without lifting a hand.

"That property is legally mine. I'm not signing."

The lawyer pushed his gold-rimmed glasses up his nose, his tone carrying a practiced edge of intimidation.

"Mr. Carter, I'd like you to be realistic. If you refuse to sign, we'll proceed with litigation without your cooperation."

He drew a draft complaint out of the briefcase.

"A drawn-out legal process means heavy attorney fees, appraisal fees, and other procedural costs. Given your financial situation, I doubt you can afford them."

An old man watching from the side sighed and tried to talk sense into me.

"Just sign it. You can't fight rich people and their lawyers. Take the six thousand and go. It beats walking away with nothing."

David had no interest in what any bystander thought. He was staring at the trading screen on his phone.

"No time to drag this out. The bid keeps building."

David looked up, greed shining in his eyes. "I'm using every bit of intraday buying power left in the account!"

His fingers flew across the screen and pulled up the margin trading page.

I stared at the phone in his hand and snorted. "Pour everything you own into a hole that deep and you'll regret it."

David looked like he had just heard the joke of the century.

"Regret? You've scraped by at subsistence level your whole life. You think you're qualified to tell me how to do anything?"

With that, he put up every asset he could as collateral and pushed the platform's approved intraday buying power to its limit.

A high-risk confirmation warning popped up.

He tapped confirm without hesitating.

The status on the screen changed to Filled.

The remaining buying power in his account fell to nearly zero, and his margin usage maxed out on the spot.

Chapter 4

David held his phone up high and turned the screen toward the crowd.

It showed the order completely filled and almost no buying power left.

"Nearly four times my capital in intraday buying power, every dollar of it bet long!

"Today this grease-soaked mechanic is going to understand that being under my heel is all he'll ever be good for!"

The crowd sucked in a collective breath, then broke into enthusiastic applause.

The middle-aged woman's eyes were full of envy.

"What guts! Now that is a real market shark!"

Sarah laughed so hard in the middle of the applause that she shook.

She snatched the pen out of the lawyer's hand and clicked across the pavement to me in her heels.

She slammed the pen against my chest with a dull thud.

"Don't push your luck. Sign it, right now! Stop holding up our money!"

The lawyer moved in helpfully, flipped the document open to the signature line, and held it out under my hand.

"Mr. Carter, Mr. Ashford has committed most of his buying power. If we don't get the property documents today, raising funds afterward will be very difficult for him."

I lifted my hand and closed it around the pen pressed to my chest.

But I neither touched the page nor looked at the agreement.

My eyes went cold as they moved across Sarah, David, and the lawyer.

"You're that certain? You think you can bet everything you own on one stock and come out ahead?"

David adjusted his suit cuff, arrogance all over his face.

"What, are you scared? Or are you just about out of your mind with envy because we're about to make tens of millions?"

Sarah let out a shrill laugh.

"Of course we'll win! You can't even read a price chart, you useless loser. Sign and get lost!

"That dump you're clinging to is about to be pocket change in our account."

I raised my head, looked past their smug faces, and fixed on the giant financial screen above the plaza at the corner.

Normally it ran bullish ads for major companies on a loop.

"Then let's see who gets lost."

Sarah sneered and slapped the pen against my chest again. "Sign it, you broke loser."

Right then, the financial screen on the plaza cut to a red breaking news banner.

The rising line on that tech stock plunged without warning, carving a sheer drop into the chart.