Adriano was looking at the market for sudden changes when he got interrupted by a rather wild Mike Ross. Mike didn't talk to him directly, but moved in and out of the bullpen speedily. Adriano noticed everything about his young 'collegue'. But he didn't care, so he continued what he was doing, focusing on something rather interesting that would make him a lot of money. Or at least his parents, he still used their account.
Yeah, he unofficially started trading with his father when he was 5. Giovanni, unlike Reina, was far more daring and allowed his genius son to do some trading. Perfectly normal stuff. They used his personal account, and Giovanni made sure to use very small amounts. Nothing more than 10'000 euros at the time... Yeah they are loaded.
Giovanni thought he would lose a few thousand and then give this a rest, showing his son that he needed more time. But he was wrong. And how wrong he was.
.
- Years ago -
"Alright. No leverage, no borrowing more, no clever tricks. You lose, you lose, capito?" Giovanni asked the five-year-old Adriano, who sat in his father's lap.
"Si."
"Then let's start."
Adriano's feet didn't even reach the floor. His eyes were fixed on the screen. He didn't look excited at the thought of being given ten grand. Giovanni expected... he wasn't sure what he expected. Something from the movies, chaos, random clicks, impulsive decisions, the numbers moving up and down. Stuff like that. Adriano liked numbers, he had told Giovanni himself.
Instead, Adriano did nothing. An hour passed, with Adraino looking at four screens at once. Giovanni played along, unwilling to ruin the moment for his son. However, enough was enough, he thought.
Giovanni cleared his throat, but Adriano didn't react. Another half hour went by, still nothing. Adriano wasn't staring blankly, though. His eyes tracked every change, price ladders, volume surges, and the way numbers seemed to move in specific ways before changing direction. All things that Giovanni had no idea about and couldn't comprehend the sheer amount of calculations running in Adriano's mind.
Giovanni checked the time.
"Adri," he said gently, already preparing to end this. "If you don't--"
"There," Adriano interrupted.
He placed a trade. 2,500, EUR. Against the microtrend.
Giovanni's eyebrow twitched. He wanted to say something, but stopped himself. This was Adriano's moment. However, the price spiked upward almost immediately.
"Now," Adriano said and closed the position after less than two minutes.
Profit: €310.
Giovanni frowned. Impressive, he thought, but beginner's luck. Most definitely.
"Again," Adriano said, already waiting.
The next trade came twenty minutes later, but a different entry. The same pair, but in a slightly larger size. This one he closed faster.
Profit: €420.
Adriano started focusing on one at first, then two, and then more and more trades at once. He was learning, Giovanni thought, but little did he know that Adriano knew his father would put a stop to this if he thought he was playing around. So he had to act like he was learning this gradually and take it slower than he would have liked.
By midday, Giovanni was no longer smiling. Adriano wasn't "trading" as he had expected; he seemed to be predicting the future and extracting money from the market. He sometimes waited absurd lengths of time for conditions to align, then entered without hesitation, exited without greed, and never once looked back at a chart after closing a position. Sometimes he waited only a minute before closing a position.
By early afternoon, Giovanni noticed something unsettling: Except once at the start, Adriano had never lost money. Giovanni and Adriano both lost track of time, and by market close, Giovanni's hands were clasped tightly behind his back. Sweating profusely.
The account balance read: €32,180
He refreshed the page twice.
Starting capital: €10,000
Net gain: +221.8%
Time elapsed: one trading day
Giovanni said nothing for a long time. Adriano finally looked up at him. "There's another inefficiency forming," he said, pointing at the screen. "If we stay ten more minutes--"
Giovanni turned the power off.
"No," he said sharply.
Adriano blinked lazily. Giovanni exhaled, rubbed his face, then crouched down so they were eye level.
"We stop," he repeated, quieter now. "Not because you did something wrong. Because you did something… very right."
Adriano tilted his head, then shrugged.
"Okay."
"I'm home! Where are my two men?!" Reina's voice echoed through the mansion.
Before Giovanni could say anything, Adraino sped off to greet his mother and, naturally, tell her everything they had done that day. Then he sighed, ready to get an earful about his letting their baby son trade with real money.
.
Harvey exited his office.
"Donna, I need the--"
She handed him an envelope before he could finish his sentence, without looking away from her screen.
"Oh, also I didn't have a chance to--"
She handed him a cup of coffee. He smiled playfully.
"Marry me?" he joked.
"I took care of that, too. We've been married for the last seven years."
"Excellent," Harvey said.
At that moment, the nervous Mike walked up to Harvey.
"Umm, Devlin McGregor's fighting the subpoena. They filed a motion to dismiss the case based on our lack of evidence," he said.
"Good."
"Good," Mike repeated without realising. "Wait, what do you mean by 'good'?"
"They don't want to hand over the files. You pressed where it hurt. Means you're looking in the right place. Did you think they wouldn't fight back?" Harvey asked.
"Well, I... Now that you mention it."
Harvey stopped walking for a moment.
"Oh, my bad. I keep forgetting you don't actually know anything."
"Ha ha ha," Mike laughed sarcastically.
"The idea is, you make a move, they make a move. You go back and forth until one of you wins."
"Okay, what if they win the motion and the case gets dismissed?"
"You're not as good as you think you are," is all that Harvey said as they continued walking.
Jessica stepped out of her office for a moment to stop Harvey and ask him how the pro bono case, which he was most definitely working on and hadn't passed off to Mike, was going. Seeing this, Mike acted all innocent and moved away as quickly as possible. He didn't know what to do, but thankfully, he saw Rachel walking by.
"Rachel! Rachel, Rachel, Rachel. I need your help. There's a hearing on my subpoena," he begged.
"I've got three cases in front of yours, so you're gonna have to wait in line," she said.
"What? No. No, no, no. My hearing is tomorrow," Mike argued.
"So why are you coming to me? Ask Harvey, or the other new guy... the one with the yellow suit," she asked.
Mike stopped for a moment, but then got back on track. He quickly searched for a reason.
"B-beacause Donna says... you're the best researcher in the firm."
Rachel raised her eyebrow and smiled slightly; clearly, flattery had worked.
"Let me see the motion," she said.
She walked into her office, surprising Mike and making him slightly jealous. Or rather, very jealous.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa. You have an office? How do you have an office, and I have a cubicle?" Mike asked.
"Like you said, I'm the best researcher in the firm."
"Really? Well, I just made that up. I didn't even have time to talk to Donna, heh..."
She looked at him like she was asking him whether he was serious.
"Is this all a joke to you? 'Cause I take my job seriously."
"No, I'm- I'm sorry. Look I was... Look, you weren't there, okay. I care about this woman. She's got nowhere else to turn--"
"And you can't help her by yourself," Rachel interrupted.
"I can. I just... prefer not to."
"Okay. You're asking to look at private files without any evidence of your assertion," Rachel said after looking through the file.
"Yeah, but the only way that we can find the evidence is to look at those files," Mike said.
"It's a rickety argument."
"But is there a precedent?" Mike asked.
"Let's go see if we can find one," she said.
The two of them moved and took the elevator down. As the Paralegal, Rachel had experience with research, and she was proud of what she did and how well she did it. If at the beginning she thought that Mike was, using her own words, ogling her, now she seemed invested.
"Research is as much art as science, so we're gonna look at privacy and harassment law so you can find a combination of cases to make an argument. I'll take privacy," she said.
"I'll take harassment law," Mike said, in awe at the large number of books in the library.
"This'll take a while," Rachel said, already used to this. "We're gonna need dinner."
"Chinese."
"Eh, no. I can afford Chinese on my own. This is on the firm, I want Sushi."
"Ooh."
.
Adriano woke up from his power nap and looked around. It seemed that no one was present anymore. All the other associates had left already, leaving him there. He stood up, cracking his bones and looked around. After he saw Mike's cubicle, he tilted his head.
"Hmm..."
A few minutes later, he made his way to the library as well and heard the voices of Rachel and Mike laughing.
"You remember when I said you thought you were too smart to be a Paralegal?" Mike asked.
"Mm-hmm."
"Why..."
"Aren't I a lawyer?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"I--"
"Text anxiety," Adriano interrupted them.
Both Mike and Rachel were startled by Adriano's arrival. Rachel more than Mike, since he had hit the nail on the head.
"Adriano? What are you doing here?" Mike asked.
"I realised you hadn't left and thought about where you would most likely be."
"And this was the most likely place? How did you know I hadn't left?" he asked.
"Your chair."
"My chair?"
"The way it was placed. Like you had gotten up in a hurry, if you had left, you would have pushed the chair to the table again."
"..."
"..."
"You knew I was here based on the position of my chair? Like, what?"
"And I saw your backpack."
"So it wasn't the chair, it was the backpack," Rachel said.
"No. The backpack confirmed the chair."
They didn't understand what Adriano was talking about. Mike tried but then shook his head and returned to the topic.
"Wait, what did you mean, test anxiety?"
Adriano sat down next to Mike and leaned back, rubbing his head, before motioning at Rachel with his head. She took this as her cue.
"Ahh... he's right. I don't test well. I am smart, and I know I'd be a good lawyer. I just-- I don't know what it is. I can't take tests, and I bombed the LSATs."
She laughed, embarrassed.
"And even if I could get into law school, there's just no way I'd pass the bar, so... If only there was someone who could take the test for me."
"Yeah, if only there were," Adriano smiled.
"And how did you know that?" Rachel asked.
She was defensive about that detail and normally never talked about it. But somehow Adriano knew. And that bothered her.
"The way you talk, your vocabulary, the way you dress, the food you like, which you shouldn't be able to afford so frequently... but somehow did the past five days I saw you now," Adriano explained lazily.
"And what does that have to do with me not liking tests?"
"It tells me that you grew up with money. More than enough for such a lifestyle. And having test anxiety is not uncommon for those who never had to work for a thing in their lives and those who usually had everything fall into their laps."
Rachel's eyes widened as she was accused of being a rich brat.
"You--"
"It is also common for those who live under someone's shadow. Like a father, who is immensely skilled and whom you try to prove yourself to."
"..."
Mike didn't know what to say to break the tension. Rachel was furious and, at the same time, close to crying. Adriano had revealed her weakest points all while looking so lazy, too.