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*****
He turned away from a shaken Bruce Willis and scanned the shadowy periphery of the set.
Standing behind a tangle of lighting cables were his parents, Grant and Linda, alongside his assistant, Amy.
Marvin offered a blinding smile and jogged over to them, mimicking the bouncy gait of a normal twelve-year-old boy. He threw his arms around his mother's waist, burying his face in her coat, while his father wrapped a protective arm around his shoulders.
"Dad! Mom! Why are you guys here?" Marvin asked, his voice returning to its velvety resonance, devoid of Cole's pathetic whisper.
He asked with warm curiosity, even though he spoke to them on the phone every day, and Amy and Gordon faxed them detailed production reports the second they wrapped shooting every evening.
Linda pulled back slightly, gripping his shoulders. Her face appeared strained, her complexion pale. The reality of Marvin's performance had terrified her maternal instincts.
"Oh, my little love, are you sure you're okay?" Linda breathed, checking his eyes for any lingering trace of trauma. "You... you scared me with those eyes just now. It seemed like you were looking into the unknown."
"Haha, Mom, I'm fine!" Marvin laughed, a rich sound that warmed the freezing corridor. "I was just a little too deep into the drama of the character. It's just a mask."
Grant, however, did not smile. He studied his son with a serious, clinical expression—a protective banking executive evaluating a high-risk asset.
"Marvin, look at me," Grant said firmly. "Do you need me to hire a psychiatrist for you? Someone who specializes in child performers? We can have them on set tomorrow."
Grant did not want his genius son to develop irreversible psychological issues while bleeding his soul onto 35mm film.
"No need, Dad!" Marvin smiled, stepping back and holding his arms out. "Look at me. I am perfectly normal. I can switch the character off in a fraction of a millisecond. Honestly, this compartmentalization is my second greatest talent, right after my flawless brain."
He paused, a wicked, dimpled smirk touching his lips. "Besides, Dad, I assure you, the only psychological trauma I am suffering on this set is being forced to watch Harvey attempt to eat a powdered donut at the craft services table. *That* is truly haunting."
Linda let out a surprised burst of laughter. The tension broke. Grant shook his head, a relieved, exasperated smile pushing through his serious facade. Yes, this arrogant, sharp-tongued creature was definitely their son.
Someone who could casually mock the very studio executive who had handed him the opportunity of a lifetime without an ounce of fear was not a boy crushed under pressure. No, this was Marvin at his most dangerous—relaxed, amused, and utterly convinced the world would bend around him sooner or later.
Grant studied him carefully across long time, watching the effortless confidence in his posture. The smug little grin. The complete absence of panic. Most teenagers would have been terrified of offending powerful people in Hollywood. Marvin spoke about them the way bored nobles spoke about servants.
And somehow, absurdly, the worst part was that people seemed to like him more for it—especially women.
Grant still wasn't entirely sure how his son managed it.
By every logical standard, Marvin should have come across as arrogant, overly confident, perhaps even insufferable. Yet people—particularly girls—gravitated toward him with alarming ease. Maybe it was the sharp wit. Maybe it was the dangerous confidence in his eyes, the kind that made it seem as though failure simply did not exist in his world. Maybe it is his impossible handsomeness. Or maybe it was because Marvin carried himself with the calm certainty of someone destined for greater things, and people were naturally drawn toward that kind of fire.
Even now, Grant was painfully aware that his son already had a small orbit of girls around him despite barely stepping into Hollywood. Calls at odd hours. Notes left behind. Excuses to visit. Outings on romantic engagements, and excursions to distant states were all evident.. Linda found it adorable and quite charming after all the girls were of similar age.
Grant found it deeply concerning.
Linda, of course, considered it proof they had raised a charming young man.
Grant considered it karma preparing to punish him personally.
Still... beneath the exasperation, there was undeniable pride. Their son walked into rooms full of powerful adults, movie executives, and aspiring stars without shrinking even an inch. He spoke with confidence, laughed without restraint, and somehow made people want to stay near him.
Marvin was trouble.
Charismatic, ambitious, dangerously self-assured trouble.
And Hollywood tended to reward men exactly like that.
Marvin beamed.
He had stepped out of the dark role without a thought. As an Incubus—a demon built to wear countless human faces and manipulate empires—a fictional character's trauma could not affect him. He merely pretended to be entirely consumed by the play, primarily to avoid raising biological suspicion from the veteran crew.
Amy stepped forward, clutching a clipboard to her chest. At twenty-three, she was still young, but her baptism by fire as Marvin's right hand had forged her into a professional powerhouse. She wore a sleek black trench coat, her bright red hair pulled back into a severe, no-nonsense bun.
Yet, as her eyes met Marvin's handsome face, a faint blush crept up her pale cheek. The Incubus aura acted as a force of nature, and even armed with a clipboard, she wasn't immune to the gravity of his presence.
"You were terrifying out there today, Marvin," Amy murmured, her voice steady despite the flush on her cheeks. "The daily rushes are going to give the studio executives nightmares."
"That is exactly the plan, Amy," Marvin purred. He turned his lethal charm fully onto her and watched her breath hitch. "Keep them terrified, and they never question the budget."
After comforting his parents, the four moved to the warmth of Marvin's double-wide trailer.
The door clicked shut, sealing them off from the movie set. Grant shifted the atmosphere from parental concern to high-stakes corporate strategy.
"Marvin, we need to discuss liquidity," Grant stated, taking a seat on the leather sofa. "You have more money accumulating in your accounts than we projected for this quarter. It's time to consider tax avoidance structures. Are you going to keep stuffing your liquid cash into Yahoo, or are there other investments brewing?"
Amy nodded, pulling a financial ledger from her clipboard. "Grant is right. The Zenith Trust—connecting your *The Parent Trap* backend royalties, your book advances, and the Columbia Records shares—deposited **$8.5 million** two days ago. That figure is substantial for a single quarter's passive income. Leaving it liquid is inefficient."
"For the immediate future, I will continue to pump capital into Yahoo, with Scarlet Capital acting as the quiet lead investor," Marvin said, pouring a cup of hot water. "But do not worry about the $8.5 million sitting idle. I have targets for that capital."
Marvin sat across from them, eyes gleaming with the thrill of conquest. "I am going to purchase the global adaptation rights to several obscure literary properties before Hollywood realizes they exist. First, the fantasy series we discussed: *A Song of Ice and Fire* by George R.R. Martin. It's a political bloodbath. I want all motion picture, television, streaming, interactive media, gaming, merchandising, licensing, and derivative rights."
He turned to his assistant. "Amy, deploy our legal people to track down a Polish author named Andrzej Sapkowski. He writes a dark fantasy series called *The Witcher*. It possesses a fascinating approach to monster evolution and power, rather than relying on generic magic systems. It is a goldmine waiting to be adapted. Finally, find Mike Pondsmith. He owns a tabletop game called *Cyberpunk*. Buy the IP outright."
Amy's pen flew across the legal pad, tracking his diverse portfolio demands. "Consider them hunted, Marvin. I'll have the initial contract offers drafted and sent to their agents before we wrap principal photography on this film."
"Excellent," Marvin smiled. "But to answer your broader macroeconomic question, Dad... no, the IP acquisitions are side projects. I have my eye locked on equities."
Grant leaned forward. "Which ones?"
As a veteran patriarch of a financial family, Grant knew his son possessed the same prophetic talent for Wall Street that he did for Hollywood.
"Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and a few more," Marvin stated.
Grant frowned, shaking his head. "The internet sector? Marvin, that is not a safe choice right now. The internet bubble has unhinged the market and raised the Federal Reserve's vigilance. This entire sector is a bloated balloon that could burst at any moment. When it does, bankruptcies and 90% drops in market value will be the theme for these tech companies."
Marvin admired his father's cautious insight.
Grant was right. Armed with the knowledge of the future, Marvin knew the market value of 1990s internet companies was artificially inflated. He even knew the exact month the dot-com bubble would burst and wipe trillions off the ledger.
But he also knew the future of the human race belonged to the internet. Since he had disposable cash now, why not use it to establish a monopoly?
"The internet is the future, Dad," Marvin purred, leaning forward. "The so-called 'bubble burst' you fear is a necessary filter. It will eliminate the weak, uncompetitive, and bloated companies. This benefits the apex predators that survive the crash. The market will be cleared of noise, competition will be annihilated, and investors will finally know where to place their bets."
"So," Grant asked, his eyes narrowing. "Do you believe companies like Apple, Microsoft, and this bookseller Amazon can survive the crash?"
"Yes, Dad," Marvin smiled. Certainty flashed in his eyes. "They will not just survive it. They will own the ashes. I trust my judgment..."
…
..
.
---
Hours later, Grant Meyers sat in the quiet leather backseat of his chauffeured town car, watching the blurred lights of the Philadelphia highway.
He pondered Marvin's economic words for the entire drive back to his hotel. A knot formed in his stomach. The boy's logic made sense, but the risk of catching a falling knife in a bursting bubble was massive. No analyst on earth could accurately predict how large the dot-com bubble would grow, or which companies it would slaughter before it popped.
Then, Grant recalled the staggering amount of blood money his son had made from the Asian Financial Crisis just months prior.
The Asian crisis money.
Over a hundred million dollars of liquid profit, currently sitting quietly in highly leveraged equity positions across South Korean, Chinese, Taiwanese, and Japanese conglomerates. The boy had bought them at crisis-floor valuations, saying nothing, doing nothing public. Just sitting there in the dark.
All of them have survived, and their market value is currently on the rise.
Grant exhaled. His breath fogged the cold glass of the window.
The money would probably stay quiet. The Asian financial markets were still bleeding out—sovereign governments scrambled, IMF bailout conditions were being negotiated, and millions of citizens wept in the streets, trying to recover what they'd lost.
Nobody in the ministries of Seoul or Jakarta was going to waste investigative energy chasing down a modestly-sized, foreign equity position when George Soros and multi-billion-dollar Western hedge funds had extracted billions and became the global headline.
That was the unglamorous reality of how international high finance worked. Federal investigators, angry regulators, and hungry financial journalists followed the magnitude of the splash. They went where the numbers were the largest, and where the billionaire names were already known.
A hundred million dollars in profit, structured across anonymous international counterparties, sitting under the legal umbrella of a Cayman Islands family trust, was nothing but background noise against the deafening signal of the institutional players. The quiet shrimp didn't get noticed when Great White sharks thrashed in the water.
Even if a forensic accountant or newspaper followed the complex paper trail—taking considerable time and legal resources for a minor return—they would hit Grant Meyers' name first. Then, they would hit Irving Meyers' name buried in the Cayman Islands Trust Accounts, even if they remained in the name of Marvin Meyers. The two most plausible, wealthy adult males in the Meyers family structure with established financial backgrounds.
Investigators would stop there, satisfied, or look elsewhere entirely.
Nobody in the global banking sector was ever going to look past a wealthy grandfather and a Wall Street father to conclude that a twelve-year-old child had designed the short position.
Grant almost laughed out loud in the quiet car at the thought. Almost.
The equity reinvestment helped the illusion, both practically and narratively. The extracted money was back in domestic Asian markets now, ten times the original leveraged amount, sitting in minority stakes in functioning companies employing real citizens. If an angry regulator ever looked, they wouldn't find a foreign speculator who'd extracted cash and fled. They'd find a patient, long-term investor who'd entered the market at the bottom of a crisis and stayed to help rebuild.
*****
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