The Plaza Hotel in New York City is a symbol of American opulence. In my old life, I had stayed there twice—once for a honeymoon that didn't last, and once to acquire a struggling steel conglomerate. It was a place where history was written in ink and champagne.

  But on Sunday, September 22, 1985, history was being written in panic.

  I sat in the living room of Mercer Hall, staring at the television. It was a massive wooden box, a Zenith, the kind that sat on the floor like furniture. The screen flickered with the Sunday news cycle. The house was quiet. Big Jim was at church, praying for oil prices to rise. Travis was at a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Priya was in the garden.

  Only Robert was with me. He sat in his leather armchair, a thick legal brief on his lap, but his eyes kept darting to the screen. He was pretending to work, but he was waiting.

  "It's noon in New York," Robert said, checking his watch. "If they were going to announce something, they would have done it by now."

  "Diplomacy takes time, Dad," I said, peeling an orange. "They have to argue over the wording. The French want to sound important. The Japanese want to sound humble. The Germans just want to go home."

  Half a world away, in the White and Gold Suite at the Plaza Hotel, the air was thick with cigarette smoke and the heavy weight of inevitable compromise.

  James Baker, the US Treasury Secretary, looked tired. Across from him, Noboru Takeshita of Japan looked impassive, though his internal calculations were running at the speed of a supercomputer. The West Germans, the French, and the British were restless.

  "We agree, then," Baker said, his voice gravelly. "The dollar is too strong. We intervene. We sell dollars. We buy yen and marks. We signal to the market that the party is over."

  Takeshita nodded once. A microscopic movement that would shift billions of dollars of wealth from the West to the East.

  "Agreed," the German minister grunted.

  They stood up to shake hands. A photographer was let in. The flashbulbs popped, capturing the moment the American Empire admitted it couldn't compete without tilting the board.

  In Tokyo, it was already Monday morning. The markets were opening.

  A junior trader at Nomura Securities stared at his screen. The order flow from New York had just hit the wire.

  SELL USD. BUY JPY. ALL ACCOUNTS.

  The trader blinked. He thought it was a glitch. Then the phone bank lit up. Every line. Simultaneously. It sounded like a fire alarm.

  "They did it!" someone screamed across the trading floor. "The G5! They're killing the Dollar!"

  Pandemonium erupted. It wasn't the polite, ordered chaos of a Japanese office. It was the visceral, bloody frenzy of a fish market when the catch comes in. Men were shouting, waving tickets, loosening ties. The Yen was climbing—vertical. The Dollar was freefalling.

  Back in Austin, the black rotary phone on the side table rang. The sound was jarring in the Sunday silence.

  Robert stared at it. He didn't move.

  "That will be Henderson," I said. "He's probably at the country club. Someone just told him the news."

  Robert picked up the receiver. "Mercer residence."

  I watched my father's face. Robert Mercer was a man of stone, a lawyer who had stared down judges and senators. But as he listened, his eyes widened slightly. His jaw set.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  "Calm down, Henderson," Robert said. "Yes. I see... Yes. No, do not close the position. We hold. I said, we hold."

  He hung up. He looked at me. He looked like he had just seen a ghost, or perhaps, a god.

  "The G5 released a joint statement," Robert said, his voice quiet. "They are driving the dollar down. The Yen just jumped four percent in the last hour of trading in Tokyo. The German Mark is rallying."

  "And our position?" I asked.

  "Henderson says the margin account is up... significantly. He wanted to know if we should take profits."

  "Not yet," I said. "This is just the shock. The trend will last for two years. But we'll take the initial cream off the top tomorrow."

  Robert took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "How did you know, Rudra? Not just that it would happen, but when?"

  I looked at him. I couldn't tell him I had read about it in a Wikipedia article forty years in the future.

  "I told you, Dad," I said, leaning back in the plush sofa. "The world is inefficient. If you look closely, you can see the cracks before the dam breaks."

  The front door slammed open. Big Jim walked in, looking flushed and angry. He was wearing his Sunday suit, but his boots were dusty.

  "Damn preacher," Jim grunted, tossing his hat on the rack. "Kept us there for two hours talking about humility. Humility doesn't drill oil wells."

  He looked at us. He saw the tension. He saw Robert's pale face and my calm smile.

  "What's wrong with you two?" Jim asked. "You look like you're attending a funeral."

  "No, Jim," Robert said, standing up. He looked at his father with a new kind of strength. "We're just watching the news."

  "News is all lies," Jim muttered, heading for the liquor cabinet. "I'm signing that loan tomorrow, Robert. First thing in the morning. I want that capital released."

  I watched the old man pour himself a drink. He was about to sign away the family's future to dig for worthless oil. And I had just made enough money to buy his debt.

  Monday morning at First Texas Savings & Loan was usually a sleepy affair. Tellers counted cash, the coffee machine gurgled, and the air conditioning hummed. Today, the Private Wealth office smelled of sweat.

  Mr. Henderson looked like he hadn't slept. His tie was crooked. Papers were strewn across his desk. When Robert and I walked in, he stood up so fast he knocked over his pen holder.

  "Mr. Mercer!" Henderson squeaked. "Mr. Rudra!"

  "The numbers, Henderson," Robert said, sitting down.

  Henderson handed over a dot-matrix printout. His hand was shaking.

  I took the paper. I scanned the columns.

  INITIAL MARGIN: $200,000 LEVERAGE: 50:1 POSITION: SHORT USD / LONG JPY CURRENT P&L: +$420,000

  In twenty-four hours, I had tripled the trust fund.

  "The Dollar is crashing," Henderson whispered. "Everyone is selling. The panic is... it's beautiful. I mean, it's terrible. But for you..."

  "Close half the position," I said calmly. "Liquidate three hundred thousand into cash. Keep the rest riding the trend."

  "Liquidate?" Henderson blinked. "But it's still going down!"

  "Bulls make money, bears make money, pigs get slaughtered," I quoted. "I need the cash for incorporation."

  Robert watched me giving orders to a man twice my age. He didn't intervene. He was learning.

  "Henderson," Robert said. "Draw up a cashier's check for ten thousand dollars. Payable to Rudra Mercer. Personal spending money."

  I looked at my father. He winked.

  "The rest," I told Henderson, "goes into a new corporate account. The paperwork my father prepared."

  "Bhairav Holdings," Henderson read the file name. "Foreign entity?"

  "Domestic," I said. "For now."

  We walked out of the bank thirty minutes later. The sun was high and brutal. I had a check for ten grand in my pocket and a shadow company worth half a million dollars and growing.

  "You realize," Robert said as we reached the car, "that Big Jim is signing the papers at the bank across the street right now."

  I looked across the avenue. There was Big Jim's truck.

  "Let him sign," I said. "He's selling the past. We just bought the future."

  "So," Robert said, unlocking the Lincoln. "You have your company. You have your capital. You're sixteen years old. What's the first move, CEO?"

  I looked North, towards the scrubland of Round Rock, where the heat waves shimmered off the asphalt.

  "We go shopping for dirt," I said.