The private room assigned to Keiko occupied a quiet corner of the upper floor, separated from the celebration unfolding elsewhere in the building. It was furnished with the restrained elegance expected of institutions that regularly handled fortunes.
Walnut paneling covered the walls. A pair of armchairs sat near a low table beside a window overlooking Geneva's evening lights. A silver tray had been left nearby with tea, coffee, and a selection of pastries she had no interest in touching.
She sat alone.
The applause from the auction hall had faded several minutes ago, replaced by the distant murmur of conversations occurring behind closed doors. Deals were being discussed. Relationships were being strengthened. Speculation was already beginning.
"The Lumina Rosa." She muttered inaudibly.
The name still felt faintly absurd. Some marketing executive at Sotheby's had proposed it during the first week. Several others had offered alternatives. The Crimson Star. The Heart of the Congo. The Eternal Rose.
The specialist handling the consignment had rejected all of them. The Lumina Rosa had remained.
Keiko suspected the woman understood something the others did not. The stone itself had never been the point. The story surrounding it had become the true commodity.
People purchased symbols far more eagerly than they purchased objects.
A diamond could be measured, but a legend could not.
She lifted her teacup and looked out across the window. Below, traffic moved through the city in orderly streams. The lights reflected off Lake Geneva like scattered gold leaf. Somewhere beyond the darkness rose the mountains.
For the first time in weeks she allowed herself to relax. Never completely, but just enough to feel some relief in her shoulders.
The transaction was effectively finished, and all that remained was paperwork.
A soft knock sounded at the door.
"Enter."
The Sotheby's specialist stepped inside accompanied by a man Keiko had not met before. He appeared to be in his sixties, silver-haired, composed, and possessed of the kind of expensive understatement common among people entrusted with extraordinary sums of money.
The specialist smiled.
"Madame."
Keiko rose politely.
"Good evening." The older man extended his hand. "My name is Henri Vasseur. I oversee several of our private client transactions."
Keiko shook his hand. "A pleasure."
"I assure you," Vasseur said, taking a seat, "the pleasure tonight belongs entirely to us." The specialist laughed softly.
"I believe everyone in the building feels the same." Keiko sat opposite them.
Vasseur placed a leather folder on the table. "The transfer from the purchaser has been completed."
Those words carried remarkable weight, as Vasseur opened the folder.
"The final sale price was two billion two hundred million Swiss francs. After the commission agreement negotiated previously, insurance allocations, legal processing, certification costs, and several administrative expenditures, the amount due to you stands at two billion eighty-seven million Swiss francs."
Even knowing the exact figure beforehand, hearing it spoken aloud felt strange. Not because she had never encountered wealth. But because of where the money had originated.
Reality occasionally struggled to keep pace with her children, but most specifically Reis.
Vasseur slid several documents across the table.
"Our legal department has prepared everything. Funds can be transferred immediately upon signature."
Keiko examined the paperwork carefully.
The figures were correct. The structures were correct. The routing arrangements established through Monaco were correct.
The specialist waited patiently, and after several minutes Keiko signed. One document after the other, until the final signature completed the process.
Vasseur checked each page before nodding. "It is done." He removed a secure tablet from his briefcase.
Several authorizations later, he pressed a final confirmation.
A small tone sounded. "There."
Keiko's phone vibrated once as she glanced down. The notification displayed the balance change.
Even she stared for a moment, though unfazed. The number was so large it almost ceased to carry meaning.
Vasseur smiled knowingly.
"That reaction is more common than you might imagine."
"I imagine it is."
"No matter how wealthy a client may be, there comes a point where numbers stop feeling real." Keiko slipped the phone away.
The specialist leaned back. "If I may ask something."
"Of course."
The woman hesitated. "You genuinely do not wish to be known?"
Keiko considered the question. Outside the window, Geneva's lights shimmered across the lake. "Fame is a liability."
The specialist smiled faintly. "Most people would disagree."
"Most people have never had it."
The woman accepted that answer, as the conversation shifted naturally after that. They spoke about markets. Collectors. Auction trends. The increasing competition among private buyers.
For nearly an hour they discussed subjects that neither found particularly difficult. Eventually Vasseur stood.
"I suspect you've had a long evening."
"I have."
"Then we will not keep you." The specialist accompanied him to the door before pausing.
She turned back. "I have spent thirty years in this industry."
Keiko looked up.
The woman continued. "I have handled imperial jewels, royal collections, museum acquisitions, and estates worth billions. I thought I had become impossible to surprise."
Her eyes softened slightly. "Thank you for proving me wrong."
Keiko smiled. "You are welcome."
The door closed behind them, as silence filled the room. Keiko sat alone for several minutes, then she finally reached for her phone.
Adonis answered on the second ring. "Mama." His voice sounded entirely calm. As though he had not just casually altered the trajectory of their lives.
"It's done."
A brief pause.
"What was the final number?"
"Two point two billion."
Another pause.
"That's fine." He said while yawning, but it wasn't tiredness, it was likely that one of his siblings over the phone had yawned, and it was contagious.
Keiko laughed despite herself. 'That's fine.'
Most nations would have described it differently. "You don't sound surprised."
"I already calculated the likely outcome... though, it is about 300 million more than I thought it would be."
"Of course you did."
He remained silent for a moment, then his voice grew thoughtful. "How many people attended?"
"Several hundred."
"Interesting."
"Why?"
"I wanted to know who showed interest."
Keiko immediately understood. Of course he did. Money had never been an interest for him, nor was it the final objective.
Information was. Relationships were. Influence was.
The auction itself had been a fishing net cast into deep water. Every bidder revealed something. Every observer revealed something. Every interested party revealed something.
The diamond had merely been bait, albeit a very expensive one.
She rubbed her temple. "Sometimes I worry about how your mind works."
"Only sometimes maman?" That earned another laugh. A rare thing from his mother lately, and when the laughter faded, her expression softened.
"Put your siblings to bed, and then you should go to sleep."
"I don't need much."
"That wasn't a request."
There was a brief pause from him. "Yes, Mother."
The call ended, wit Keiko staring at the dark screen for several seconds, before she eventually stood. It was time to go home.
In the two weeks she had been waiting for the auction, she had been all over europe. Registering a company here, filing paperwork there. All primary Companies under, and as well as singularity corporation, had been registered across Switzerland, Monaco, The UAE.
But she couldn't go home quite yet, as she still had to register and secure all the bank licences in three different states. Fortunately, she had already started the process, as while she was doing this, Reis hadn't been sitting back waiting idly.
—————————
~ Monaco, Montecarlo - Two weeks Later ~
Several thousand kilometers away, Adonis sat alone in the Monaco apartment.
The laptop screen illuminated the room.
Numbers covered it.
Accounts. Projections. Structures. Corporate entities. Market analyses. Acquisition targets. Potential timelines.
The sale proceeds had already appeared within the financial architecture he had prepared beforehand.
Money moved quickly when properly organized. Especially when one anticipated every step. He reviewed the figures calmly.
The original expectation from the diamond auction had been 1.9 Billion pounds. That target no longer existed. The resources now available exceeded even his optimistic projections.
A lesser mind might have celebrated.
Reis did none of those things. The auction itself had not completed a goal. It had merely unlocked the next phase.
He opened a new document. The title consisted of a single word.
FOUNDATION.
For several minutes he stared at the blank page. Then he began writing. Though these weren't so much plans or ideas, as they were blueprints.
Ideas were possibilities. Blueprints became realities.
Broken down into focused sections. Infrastructure. Talent acquisition. Research. Political insulation. Long-term planetary development. Humanity itself.
He closed his eyes briefly.
When they opened again, emotion had disappeared beneath discipline. The document continued growing.
Page after page. By three in the morning it exceeded a hundred pages. By four it exceeded two hundred. By sunrise it approached four hundred.
Most of humanity would require decades to assemble such a plan. Reis required a single night. When the first rays of sunlight appeared over Monaco, he finally stopped typing.
The completed document filled hundreds of pages.
Economic frameworks. Industrial strategies. Scientific initiatives. Educational reforms. Energy solutions. Medical breakthroughs. Space development. Artificial intelligence safeguards. Political contingencies. Cultural preservation.
Every category interconnected. Every section reinforcing the others. An ecosystem... of sorts. An empire.
And he intended to build all of them.
A key turned in the apartment door as Keiko entered carrying breakfast. She stopped upon seeing him still awake, her eyes narrowing. "Tell me you slept."
Adonis looked at her. "No."
She sighed, as the sound carried the accumulated exhaustion of motherhood. "Of course not."
She placed the food on the table. Then her gaze shifted toward the laptop. Page after page filled the screen.Her eyes widened slightly. "How much did you write?"
"A preliminary draft." He stealthily didn't answer the question.
She stared. "How long is it?"
"Approximately four hundred and twelve pages."
She let out another sigh. "You are impossible."
"That is statistically unlikely."
Keiko pinched the bridge of her nose. "Do not start."
He smiled faintly. A genuine smile. Rare enough to catch her attention.
She sat beside him.
For several minutes neither spoke. They simply watched the sunrise. The Mediterranean glittered gold beyond the windows.
A new day.
"Since we're both here, before I have to travel again, let's consolidate on earnings." He sat his mom down, displaying a spreadsheet of expenses so far, in comparison to their earnings.
Fortunately, they were Monegasque citizens, so personal income taxes were non-existent.
Reis had been betting for the past three weeks, with his bets spread the bets across four betting institutions: Betfair. Bet365. Pinnacle.
With each bet containing multiple accumulators to maximize the time and Return on investment, per dollar, per event.
It also included some of the scorers and the exact number of buckets they would score. To be entirely fair, he could have just maximized odds even further, listing each scorer, the number of points/touchdowns/goals scored by them, and the numbers each team scored by halftime, which he did, but in extreme moderation.
He continued this over the course of the two weeks, bringing his total winnings to just over £741 million at the end of the month, and even that still seemed little compared to what he needed.
A total of two individual bets fell through, letting him know that whatever he thought he might in fact know, wasn't infallible.
That aside, money was a means to an end for him, nothing more. The Euro, GBP, US Dollar; all were effectively meager in a manner of speaking. They had their uses now, but didn't hold much... if any value at all, to him.
His main focus was Institutional influence. Which was where the banks would come into play, he had also gotten into the forex and commodities markets, with leeway enough to maximize the returns based on his knowledge. Netting another £1.481 billion from that over the course of the month.
The irony and absurdity of it, a ten-year old old boy that was a self made billionaire. Anyone hearing that would view it as a joke and laugh it off, but that was the reality, and nothing would change that.
Income
Diamond Sale - £2,087,000,000.00
Forex Profits - £1,481,813,342.21
Gambling Profits - £741,648,517.34
Their total income for the month came to £4,310,461,859.55.
As for their expenditure, that figure was considerably smaller, though still large enough that most corporations would have considered it an aggressive expansion budget.
Keiko adjusted her glasses as the spreadsheet expanded across the screen.
Lockhart & co.
Location: George Town, Grand Cayman
Class A Banking License Capitalization - £42,300,000
Regulatory Fees & Legal Structuring - £3,800,000
Land Acquisition - £7,400,000
Headquarters Construction - £18,600,000
Data Infrastructure & Security Systems - £9,700,000
First-Year Operational Allocation - £8,900,000
Total Expenditure - £90,700,000
Obscura Investments UAE
Location: Dubai International Financial Centre
Banking Capital Requirement - £455,000,000
Regulatory Licensing & Compliance - £1,200,000
Land Acquisition - £26,800,000
Headquarters Construction - £41,700,000
Banking Infrastructure & Core Systems - £22,600,000
First-Year Operational Allocation - £15,900,000
Total Dubai Expenditure - £563,200,000
Bank of Kronos Switzerland
Location: Geneva
Banking Capital Requirement - £18,400,000
Regulatory Approval & Legal Costs - £2,100,000
Land Acquisition - £11,600,000
Headquarters Construction - £16,800,000
Swiss Security & Cyber Infrastructure - £12,400,000
First-Year Operational Allocation - £9,300,000
Total Geneva Expenditure - £70,600,000
At the bottom of the spreadsheet sat the combined figure.
| Consolidated Banking Expansion Costs |
|----------|----------:|
| Lockhart & Co Operations | £90,700,000 |
| Obscura Investments Operations | £563,200,000 |
| Bank of Kronos Operations | £70,600,000 |
Total Banking Expenditure£724,500,000
Current Liquid Holdings After Expansion Commitments:
£3,585,961,859.55
The preliminary expenses were still within what they had expected, but that was only a side task in truth.
Reis turned to look at his mother. "Were you able to find them?"
"With much difficulty." Keiko said sighing. "But, I believe they will all be on board."
~ Zurich, Switzerland ~
Sara's hands trembled, as they had been for quite some time.
The tremor radiated from the palm outward, invisible to the world but unmistakable to the owner of the hand, whose entire sense of self was attuned now to disruptions, chemical and otherwise.
She was still in her pajamas; old Cambridge cotton, frayed at the hem; staring at a kitchen table cluttered with unopened medical bills. Somewhere in another room, her email client pinged, persistent in its digital optimism: maybe this, this message, was the one that would change the inertia of her small, collapsing universe.
She forced herself to stand, and the motion was fluid, practiced, nothing for outsiders to notice. On the inside, her chest felt like an aquarium with a hairline crack, water seeping out slowly, unstoppable. She moved down the short, narrow corridor of her rented Zurich flat, past the row of books with broken spines, into the entryway where the box addressed to her now sat.
It hadn't been there when she checked her post two hours earlier.
Sara hesitated, her fingertips hovering above the octagonal package. No sender information. No postal markings. Just her name in a precise, unfamiliar script. The tremor in her hand intensified, a physical manifestation of the warning signals firing in her brain.
She should call someone. But who? The police? With her record? The thought almost made her laugh.
"Well," she murmured to the empty hallway, "it's not like I have much to lose."
She lifted the box. If she could even call it a box. Surprisingly light, and carried it to her kitchen table, sweeping aside the medical bills with a single motion. The surface was smooth, almost unnaturally so. No seams. No obvious opening mechanism. The material felt neither like plastic nor metal, but something in between.
An alloy perhaps, it felt quite durable, yet it incredibly light.
Another tremor ran through her, stronger this time. The doctors had given her six months. That had been four months ago. The experimental treatments had failed spectacularly, leaving her with crushing debt and a body that betrayed her a little more each day.
"If this is some elaborate prank..." she whispered, but didn't finish the thought.
When she placed her palm against the box's surface, a subtle warmth spread beneath her skin. The sensation was so unexpected that she pulled back instinctively. Then, driven by curiosity that had always been both her strength and downfall, she pressed her hand against it again.
The surface yielded. Not physically, but somehow responding to her touch. A seam appeared where none had been before, and the top panel slid open with mechanical precision.
Inside lay four smaller boxes, three cuboid and one slightly different in shape. Opening the different one, there was a slim object that looked like stylish eyewear, a sealed vial containing something silvery, and an envelope with her name.
Sara's breath caught. The tremor in her hands stilled momentarily, overwhelmed by a surge of adrenaline. This was either the most elaborate scam she'd ever encountered or something far more significant.
She opened the envelope first, pulling out a single sheet of paper. The handwriting was precise, almost inhumanly so.
Ms. Steiner,
You are dying. Current medical science cannot save you. I can.
The vial contains a solution to your condition. One injection. Complete cellular restoration within 72 hours.
The other items serve various purposes, as does the package itself.
€250,000 has been transferred to an account in your name. Details enclosed. This is not charity. This is recruitment.
You have approximately seven weeks of deterioration remaining before terminal system failure.
If you do choose to accept my offer, after dispensing the vial into your body, you will erase all traces of your existence in Switzerland, and go to the listed address in Monaco where you will wait for the time being.
Your new name is on the passport at the bottom of the package. Also keep the glasses worn on your person from now on.
The choice is yours.