Between the accumulated profits from trading, mission bonuses, and the freshly unlocked system access, I was sitting on roughly $932,800 in total net worth. Not system points. Real, spendable, "buy-an-island-and-retire" kind of money.
Holy!
Less than a week ago, I was debating whether I could stretch a five-dollar bill across three days. I used to count quarters for lunch. Now I could fund a congressional campaign—or start my own black-ops tech startup.
But no—I wasn't here to blow this windfall on luxury or sink into the fantasy of silk sheets and champagne nights. Not yet. That wasn't the move.
That wasn't the plan.
Peter Carter wasn't interested in playing rich. I was interested in building something untouchable.
Something generational.
And standing right in front of me, glittering like a capitalist cathedral, was La Cherie—the most prestigious shopping center on this side of the country. Think marble floors polished to a mirror shine, boutiques that looked like fashion temples, escalators that climbed like stairways to a designer heaven.
Every square inch reeked of wealth, indulgence, and taste.
The kind of place where even the breathable air had a price tag.
Mom, Sarah, Emma, and Madison were already drifting ahead of me, swept into the current of perfume clouds and high-end window displays like kids set loose in a billionaire's candy store. It was cute—adorable, even.
But I had other priorities.
I wasn't just here to spend.
I was here to invest.
While the girls disappeared into the crowd of designer heels and flashing cameras, I slipped away with calculated subtlety. My boots barely made a sound on the floor. Not because I was stealthy, but because I moved with purpose.
Every second counted now.
Charlotte Thompson—CEO of Quantum Tech, financial enigma, and the woman who, according to my system, would be dead within the next week—was due here any minute for her standing Sunday spa ritual. I wasn't going to wait for some glorified cattle call interview with twenty desperate tryhards.
No. I was going to walk straight into her life and make her remember the name Peter Carter forever.
I checked my appearance in the black-glass storefront as I passed. Madison had forced me into high-end designer jeans that actually fit like they were sewn for me, a tailored black shirt that hugged my torso like I belonged in a magazine, and matte leather shoes that whispered wealth without screaming it.
No flashy watches. No chains. Just clean, calculated wealth.
Understated power.
I moved like I belonged.
"Hey, I'll catch up with you guys later!" I called casually to Madison. She looked over her shoulder with that glint in her eye—curious, amused, suspicious—but didn't say a word. She didn't have to.
She knew.
Time to get to work.
The plan wasn't to win some talent competition Charlotte had set up like a reality show episode. Fuck that. I wasn't here to impress her in a room full of Ivy League morons with savior complexes. I wasn't here to compete.
I was here to take the whole goddamn board off the table.
Because that's what monopolists do.
And I wasn't just trying to be rich anymore. I was trying to be inevitable.
Peter Carter wasn't just going to meet Charlotte Thompson.
He was going to ambush her with an offer so dangerous, so exquisitely calculated, that it would bypass logic, fear, and skepticism alike. The others—the twenty eager minds she'd summoned to her innovation gauntlet—were nothing but noise.
Grad students, tech enthusiasts, failed prodigies praying for a lifeline.
Most of them probably spies, licking boots for crumbs of corporate relevance.
But not me.
I was going to sell her a future no one else could build. A dream sculpted by supernatural intellect and system-borne insight. A vision only I had access to. No flashy proposals. No dog-and-pony show. Just precision, presence, and power.
The shadow genius approach—skip the crowd, own the outcome.
I'd once thought about going public. Becoming the media darling, the 16-year-old messiah of Silicon Valley. Letting the world fawn over the genius who came from nothing and reshaped everything.
But fame is a bullet magnet. A spotlight that burns.
And I had too many people I loved standing in the glow.
But fuck that glory. I didn't need recognition when what I really wanted was a peaceful, clean life for Peter Carter and complete safety for my family.
Fame is dangerous. Anonymity is power.
Let Charlotte take the credit. Let her be the billionaire boss with the golden touch. I didn't need recognition—I needed legitimacy.
A corporate shell to wrap around the monster mind inside Peter Carter. A reason why a teenage nobody suddenly knew how to rewrite codebases, build quantum logic chains in his sleep, and predict market collapses like weather patterns.
She could have the glory. I'd keep the control.
Because the game I was playing wasn't about headlines—it was about leverage.
Even as I made my way around La Cherie's immense outer wall, the memory of that brunette from earlier still lingered—highlighted curves, warm pressure points, stress zones pulsing like soft alarms.
My upgraded vision didn't just see beauty; it diagnosed it, mapped it, seduced it by understanding it. Another aspect of my dual life: Carter the Builder, and Carter the Dark Lord of Pleasure. One built legacies; the other shattered restraints.
Two identities. One perfect existence.
By the time I reached the private service corridor at the rear of La Cherie, my breath came slightly heavier. The place was a monolith of consumer fantasy—glittering towers of steel and glass, echoing with the laughter of people spending other people's money.
I slipped the Dark Mask from my inner jacket pocket.
$20,000 worth of stealth tech—woven nano-mesh and active camouflage that could erase me from facial recognition and blur me from memory. I placed it over my face, felt it seal with an electric shiver, molding itself to me until the mirror wouldn't even remember what I looked like.
From this point on, I wasn't Peter Carter. I was absence.
I adjusted the fit, checked the nearby mirror, clean, and secure. And just then, the hum of wealth rolled around the corner like a promise from Olympus.
Three Maybachs.
Two black ones like obsidian daggers guarding a pearl-white chariot in the center. The vehicles moved with glacial certainty—no wasted speed, no aggressive posture. Just absolute confidence. The kind of confidence that said: we belong everywhere, and nothing touches us unless we allow it.
Charlotte Thompson had arrived.
And she had no idea that today, she wasn't about to attend a spa treatment.
She was about to meet a ghost with a dream and a key to her dreams and fears.