When the topic turned to her ties with the Hekmatyars, Vela still vividly remembered those years of riding the wind and waves—
She was eighteen. A university student. Just stepping into the world.
At that time, though her past-life memories had long since awakened, she was only preparing to start a business. She did not yet know that she possessed a divine gift.
As for her original capital accumulation, it was, in truth, utterly ordinary. Much like her childhood.
Birth. Growth. Early maturity...
School enrollment. Hobby classes. Gradual independence...
SAT and ACT exams. University scholarships. Self-reliance...
A textbook middle-class American upbringing.
Yes.
In this life, Vela's biological parents were still alive and doing just fine.
Unfortunately, before she entered middle school, irreconcilable differences led them to divorce, and each soon formed a new family.
Of course, that didn't affect Vela much.
She wasn't some love-starved, withdrawn child.
Childhood only happens once. A second run is no longer childhood.
As for money—Vela's family was comfortably upper-middle-class. Her father was a manager at a maritime shipping company. Her mother was a news editor at a Los Angeles periodical. Not rich at the top, but certainly comfortable. Enough that she could graduate from an Ivy League without student loans.
And because someone was both likable and promising, when it came to custody—even though the terms were lenient enough that giving up custody meant exemption from child support—neither parent was willing to let go. Arguments persisted. Their lawyers developed headaches.
In the end, they asked the person involved.
Vela, well—cough—either way was fine. She loved them both.
Bullshit.
She was still in elementary school. Not even physically developed. No driver's license. No full civil capacity. No legal responsibility for independent investment.
Independence? What independence? Go be a child laborer?
The judge ruled for joint custody and alternating care.
For a time, Vela lived what she jokingly called a "wandering" life—becoming a master of time management. One month with her father. The next with her mother. Christmas with her maternal grandparents one year. Thanksgiving with her paternal grandparents the next.
Only after both parents remarried and had more children did she finally gain relief.
By then enrolled in a private middle school, she moved out. Her parents, feeling guilty, rented her a place in a good school district. Material support never lacked. On holidays, they visited with their spouses and her half-siblings.
By 1989, Vela was sixteen.
After continuously skipping grades and finishing high school early with straight A+, she took the SAT and ACT, was admitted to Stanford University, majored in computer science, and secured a full scholarship.
At last, she began living independently.
That period was also when she studied hardest.
Earning credits. Getting a driver's license. Roaming Silicon Valley. Building websites. Skipping grades. Making money. Speculating. Programming...
Of course, the most important parts were making money and speculating.
Credits and grade-skipping were to build the image of an exceptional student—better scholarships, easier to coax money from her parents.
The driver's license was for mobility and opening bank accounts.
Silicon Valley, websites, programming—those were tools for making money. As a senior-level programmer, she provided technical support to multiple Valley startups, earning compensation.
Everything was for making more money.
Legally, of course.
And making money was for speculating better.
After all, even prophetic advantage requires capital to eat the dividends of an era.
Conveniently, upheaval in Eastern Europe was already brewing. The wildest speculative feast of the late twentieth century was about to begin.
Two years remained before the red flag over the Kremlin would fall.
Vela knew that bloodstained history intimately.
Naturally, she prepared.
Why grind slowly through orderly entrepreneurship for small, hard-earned profits when flipping goods as a middleman brought money faster?
By 1990, Vela was seventeen.
Now a junior after skipping ahead, she temporarily slowed her studies and used the summer to intern at her father's shipping company under the guise of practical coursework.
Old Russell, who had already made preparations thanks to Vela's subtle prodding and had profited handsomely by shifting resources amid upheavals in Soviet-bloc states—earning promotions and raises—agreed readily.
During the internship, Vela observed the company's business cooperation and acquisitions with HCLI Group under global shipping magnate Floyd Hekmatyar.
As a senior executive's daughter, she attended multiple business banquets and collected a stack of business cards.
Until one banquet—
She met Koko Hekmatyar.
Naturally, Vela—beautiful, radiant, eloquent, polite, armed with a time traveler's foresight and knowledge of cutting-edge tech—left eleven- or twelve-year-old Koko utterly stunned.
The impression was profound.
Afterward, Koko latched onto her enthusiastically.
The goal was obvious. She wanted to recruit Vela into her team.
As their relationship stabilized, Koko first stayed aboard Vela's internship cargo ship, then invited Vela onto the Hekmatyars' vessel.
Back and forth, again and again.
They became close sisters.
The original recruitment goal was gradually forgotten.
Through Koko's connection, Vela met Floyd Hekmatyar.
After multiple long conversations—advice, debate, and strategic discussion—her vision and political sensitivity earned recognition.
Old Floyd expressed support for Vela's plan to profit as an intermediary.
By 1991, Vela was eighteen.
Amid regime changes and chaos in Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Albania, Yugoslavia, and other Eastern European states, she amassed enormous profits.
Capital and connections.
Information and channels are the seeds of wealth. Middlemen make them sprout.
The process required no production, no technical complexity, no massive capital investment.
Only leverage reputation and find ultra-low-cost suppliers in the Asia-Pacific region: long-shelf-life food and drinking water, medical and hygiene supplies, energy and lighting tools, protective and emergency gear.
Daily consumables.
Thus she completed her most critical original accumulation.
That December.
In the former Yugoslavia, collapsing and erupting into civil war.
After selling off scarce goods in exchange for large sums—gold, silver, jewels, antiques—Vela watched from a Belgrade hotel as one pole of the world collapsed.
At 19:38 Moscow time on the 25th, the red flag slowly descended from the Kremlin.
The world fell silent.
Some felt lost.
Though anyone with clear eyes could see the Soviet Union declining, few expected the Cold War superpower to collapse so suddenly. Only six months earlier, 76.4% of citizens had voted to preserve the Union. Even the day before its death, its military remained formidable.
Others rejoiced.
The Iron Curtain dissolved. The specter haunting Europe vanished.
For some, the true feast—
Was served.
Vela, long prepared, began bottom-fishing.
From materials to talent. From Vladivostok to Ukraine. From the Croatian War to the Bosnian War.
There were dangers.
But the path ultimately opened.
With first-mover advantage, she rose from a female student into President of VAR Company, shareholder of HCI, and angel investor in Silicon Valley.
...
"So you see," Vela concluded lightly, crossing her legs while pushing away the Koko leaning into her, "heroes are made by the times."
"Stand in the right wind, and even pigs can fly."
She omitted the matter of awakening her Divine Gift.
"Mm-hmm!" Koko nodded vigorously, practically draped across Vela's thigh, hands reaching for the DSLR containing the "Capybara-Riding Girl" photos.
In the frank exchange earlier, Koko had spoken openly of how she met Vela, even sharing parts of HCLI's Russian dealings. Sincere.
"Сука blyat!" Balalaika burst out, rubbing her forehead. "This is fucked. Don't tell me you two teamed up just to piss me off. I shouldn't have asked."
Using the chaos of the Cold War's end as a ladder, Vela rose from intern to shareholder.
One could imagine how much wealth had been drained from her homeland.
Scrape. The chair legs grated against hardwood as Balalaika leaned back.
Her fingers tightened on her cigar. Her usual listless eyes turned distant, staring through the bamboo-filtered light.
"Okay. Where were we?" she asked weakly.
"Your drunken emperor's shock therapy."
"Suka—I meant our cooperation! Though, 'drunken emperor'..." She paused, then let out a self-mocking chuckle. "Him, huh. Motherland fell into his hands. Bloody bad luck."
Seeing she had made her calculations, Vela stopped pressing the fortune topic.
The moment her hand loosened, Koko sprang like a husky and snatched the DSLR.
"Ugly. Vela, your photography's worse than your punching skills," she declared after reviewing her "idiot face" shots.
Smack! Vela swatted her lightly. "Enough fooling around. Time for business."
"Oh." Koko instantly straightened up, placing the camera down and smoothing her skirt, switching to professional mode in a second.
Tilting her head politely, she said, "Miss Balalaika, shall we begin?"
Balalaika studied the silver-haired girl carefully.
"I've heard your ideal is world peace," she said.
"Yes."
"Then why sell weapons?"
"Because—"
As the two began their open exchange, Vela rose and signaled Lehm and Valmet before leisurely excusing herself.
After serving as conversational wedge and warming the table, the rest was no longer her concern.
Whew.
On the terrace, she stretched lazily.
"They'll talk. We'll continue our barbecue party—hm?"
Her gaze shifted to the yacht's side.
Someone was placing floating targets in the water.
"Hey! Rock, playing with little pistols is boring! If you're a man, come try this big one!" a loud, wild female voice roared across the deck.