43: Chapter 43 The Rise of Legacy: A Rising Star on Wall Street

22nd floor, Lever House, 390 Park Avenue, Midtown Manhattan.

This place used to be the office of a bankrupt hedge fund; now, an inconspicuous brass plaque hangs by the door: [Legacy Investment].

In front of the floor-to-ceiling windows, Jack Martin wore a well-tailored dark gray bespoke suit, but the expensive attire could not hide the manic energy on the verge of collapse within him.

His eye sockets were sunken, his eyeballs were covered in bloodshot veins, and he gripped the encrypted phone tightly in his hand.

Just ten minutes ago, five million dollars—the startup capital Ava had injected in her private capacity—had arrived in the account.

"Is this your new doghouse?"

Ava sat on the leather sofa, her long legs crossed, swirling a glass of champagne.

She looked at Jack, her eyes filled with a touch of suspicion and scrutiny.

"Five million—this is the last of the cash flow I can mobilize. If you lose it, go feed the fish in the Hudson River; you won't need me to do it for you."

Jack did not turn back.

He stared at the trading terminal in front of him, composed of six screens, his fingers tapping rapidly on the keyboard, setting complex algorithmic parameters.

"Ms. Ava, if it were the old me, these five million would barely make a ripple in the pond."

Jack's voice was hoarse, carrying a texture like metal scraping against metal, "But things are different now."

"How so?"

"Because I have God's script."

Jack took a deep breath and looked at the time in the center of the screen.

9:29:50. Ten seconds to the opening of the US stock market.

The encrypted phone vibrated.

There was only a short message from the man with the code name [Legacy].

[Target: Raytheon Technologies (RTX). Operation: Buy call options, strike price 95, expiration date: next Friday. All-in.]

There was no explanation, no stop-loss level, only cold instructions.

Jack's heart pounded wildly.

Raytheon Technologies was a military giant; its stock price had crawled like a turtle for years, and there was no news of any geopolitical conflicts recently, so the volatility was extremely low.

Buying short-term call options on such a behemoth was no different from throwing money into a furnace.

But he did not hesitate.

9:30:00. The opening bell rang.

"Execute."

Jack's finger slammed down on the Enter key.

Five million dollars, split into hundreds of small orders, surged into the options market like a school of hungry piranhas, sweeping up everything in sight.

Ava put down her glass and walked behind Jack, her brows furrowed: "Are you crazy? All-in on Raytheon? Congress is in recess this week, there are no military procurement orders..."

"Shut up." Jack did not turn his head, staring at the K-line chart.

Time ticked by, ten minutes, twenty minutes.

Raytheon's stock price remained unmoved, and the time value of the options was rapidly devouring their principal.

The floating loss in the account had already reached fifty thousand dollars.

Ava's expression turned ugly: "Jack Martin, you'd better give me an explanation..."

Suddenly, a red box popped up in the news feed of the trading terminal, and immediately after, the Bloomberg terminal emitted a shrill alarm.

[Breaking: The Pentagon announces the signing of an undisclosed procurement agreement with Raytheon Technologies for a "Next-Generation Hypersonic Missile Defense System," with a total value of 12 billion dollars.]

[Breaking: A drone attack occurred in a sensitive area in the Middle East, and the US military has announced an increase in its combat readiness level.]

Two pieces of news, less than three seconds apart.

The K-line chart on the screen seemed to have been violently pulled upward by an invisible hand.

A massive green bullish candle pierced directly through the upper Bollinger Band.

Raytheon's stock price jumped 3%... 5%... 8%!

And the options, with their high-leverage attributes, saw even more astonishing gains.

+200%... +500%... +1200%!

The office was deathly silent, with only the buzzing of the server fans and Jack's heavy breathing.

The champagne glass in Ava's hand tilted, spilling liquid onto the expensive carpet, but she didn't even notice.

She stared at the frantically jumping account balance on the screen, her pupils contracting violently.

Five million had turned into sixty million.

It had taken only forty-five minutes.

"This... this is impossible..." Ava muttered to herself.

She was an illegitimate daughter of the Rockefeller Family and had seen her fair share of money games, but this kind of precise hunting, bordering on sorcery, still exceeded her range of cognition.

Jack Martin slumped in his chair, drenched in cold sweat.

He looked at that red bullish candle; it was the color of blood, and also the color of money.

He finally understood what the man meant by "Legacy."

It was a secret left behind by the dead; it was a loophole in this world.

The phone vibrated again.

[Close positions. Short the Nasdaq index. Reason: The Federal Reserve Chair will deliver a hawkish speech in half an hour.]

Jack sat up straight abruptly, the fear in his eyes replaced by a fanatical, believer-like piety.

He wiped the sweat from his face, his fingers hovering over the keyboard once again.

"Ms. Ava." Jack turned his head, a ferocious and twisted smile on his face, like a mad dog that had just tasted flesh.

"Are the new accounts ready? This amount of money isn't enough to hold it all."

...

Brooklyn, safe house.

Chen Mo closed his laptop, severing the remote desktop connection with Jack Martin.

On the screen, the astronomical earnings did not cause a single ripple in his expression.

To him, this was nothing more than the inevitable result of information scraps extracted from the brains of those dead congressmen, generals, and lobbyists, amplified through financial leverage.

"The harvest has begun." George was wiping down a disassembled HK416 assault rifle, speaking without looking up.

"But I'm worried that mad dog will lose control. The way he looks at you now is like he's looking at God."

"That is exactly what we want." Chen Mo walked to the liquor cabinet and poured a glass of ice water.

"Only blind believers will execute seemingly suicidal orders without hesitation."

"And," Chen Mo took a sip of water, the icy liquid sliding down his throat,

"He is not looking at God; he is looking at the Devil. God won't make him rich, but I will."

George installed the recoil spring, which made a crisp "click" sound: "That female agent has been investigating the explosion recently. She has been to the ruins three times and even brought experts specializing in collecting chemical residues."

"I know." Chen Mo put down the glass, walked to the window, and looked at the gloomy sky in the distance.

"She is a hound with a keen sense of smell. Since she wants to find a bone so badly, we shall give her one."

Chen Mo's phone rang; it was a voice message from Jack Martin, his tone so manic it was slightly distorted:

"Boss! The funds have multiplied twelvefold! The old guys on Wall Street are going crazy with anger; Goldman Sachs even called just now to ask if I wanted to go back as a partner! Can we play something bigger next?"

Chen Mo pressed the voice key, his tone as calm as if he were discussing the weather:

"Bigger? Of course. But before that, first help me acquire an abandoned chemical plant in New Jersey. Use a shell company, and don't leave any traces."

Putting down the phone, a cold sneer flashed across Chen Mo's face.

Wall Street is just an ATM; the real battlefield has never been on those electronic screens.