ReadNovel Chapter 147: A Large Debt
Chapter 147: A Large Debt
The morning sun cut sharply through the office, casting long, geometric shadows across the desk. Jake leaned back in his leather chair, watching Alice stare at the two folders in front of her as if they were live explosives.
"Just pick one, Alice," Jake said, gesturing toward the papers. "I have already vetted the two. The hard work is done."
Alice bit her lower lip, her fingers hovering over the resumes. "But Jake, this is the COO. If I make the wrong call, it directly impacts the company massively. I really think you should look over their final interview metrics again. What if—"
"There is no ’wrong call’ here," Jake interrupted, his voice calm but firm. "Both candidates are perfectly qualified. Their experience is practically identical, and their psychometric profiles match our company culture seamlessly. Any of them is suitable for the role."
"But what if one has a better hidden track record? Or what if the other adapts faster to our company?" Alice looked up, trying to pass the files across the desk. "You have better instincts for this. Just look at yesterday’s interviews."
Jake didn’t take the folders. Instead, he locked eyes with her and smiled faintly. "I simply trusted my gut feeling. Hiring, at this stage, is about trusting the structure we are building. I hired you because I trust your judgment. There is no right or wrong choice here. Both are perfect for the role and the company. Just pick one."
Alice let out a defeated sigh, her shoulders dropping. For another ten seconds, the room was completely silent save for the ticking of the wall clock. Finally, she pulled the right-hand folder forward.
"Diana," Alice said, nodding to herself as if convincing her own mind. "Her background with fast-moving consumer goods might give us a slight edge in the initial rollout phase."
"Then Diana it is," Jake said, standing up and buttoning his suit jacket.
Alice looked up, surprised. "Where are you off to this early?"
"A meeting with Sterling International Bank," Jake replied, checking his watch. "I need to ensure our liquid capital is exactly where it needs to be."
By 10:00 AM, Jake’s vehicle pulled up to the sleek glass facade of the Sterling International Bank headquarters.
When Jake had walked into this building a couple of days ago, he was a man with a nine-billion-marks net worth asking for a massive, high-risk fifty-billion-marks loan. The reception back then had been polite, professional, but deeply cautious. Tyler Rollins, the CEO, had looked at him as a well-connected young man playing a game far too big for his bankroll.
Today, the atmosphere was entirely different.
The moment Jake stepped out of the elevator onto the penthouse floor, Mr. Reed, Rollins’ executive secretary, was already standing at attention. He didn’t just greet Jake; he bowed slightly, his face completely devoid of the detached, bureaucratic coldness from their first encounter.
"Mr. Rivers, an absolute pleasure to see you again," Reed said, quickly stepping ahead to open the double mahogany doors to the CEO’s private suite. "Mr. Rollins has been expecting you. Please, right this way."
As Jake stepped into the spacious office, Tyler Rollins didn’t wait behind his desk. He stood up immediately, crossing the room with an open, expansive stride and a wide grin that reached his eyes. He extended a hand, gripping Jake’s firmly.
"Jake! Good to see you, my boy," Rollins said, his tone dripping with a warmth that was entirely absent during their previous meeting. He guided Jake toward the plush leather sitting area near the floor-to-ceiling windows. "Please, sit. Reed, get us some of that Blue Mountain coffee. Immediately."
"Thank you, Tyler," Jake said, taking a seat and crossing one leg over the other.
Rollins sat opposite him, leaning forward, his eyes scanning Jake with an intense, newfound respect. He had seen the trading slips. He knew that within forty-eight hours, Jake had used Sterling’s high-tier institutional trading desk to turn three hundred million dollars (3 billion marks) into three point one billion dollars (31 billion marks) through five flawless, heavily leveraged Gold trades. Combined with Jake’s other rapidly moving assets, the man sitting in front of him was suddenly pushing past the hundred-billion-dollar mark. He wasn’t just a client anymore; he was a financial force of nature.
"I have to say, Jake," Rollins began, shaking his head with a chuckle that was genuinely impressed, "those XAUUSD positions... I’ve had my top analysts look at the execution timing. Absolute poetry. To go all-in with 1:100 leverage five consecutive times without a single overnight swap fee? The accuracy was terrifying. You’ve set a record for the highest volume passing through our execution desk from a single private account in a forty-eight-hour window."
"The market was reading clearly those days," Jake said smoothly, keeping his demeanor level. "But that brings me to why I’m here, Tyler. With numbers that large moving that fast, people notice. I want to make sure my money isn’t in any jeopardy of being held up, frozen, or delayed by anyone who might try to come after my liquidity."
Rollins waved his hand dismissively, his expression hardening into one of absolute institutional loyalty. "You can rest easy on that front, Jake. Sterling International Bank isn’t some second-tier brokerage firm that panics when a client wins big. Unless the federal government issues a direct, high-level court order or a sovereign freeze—which requires a massive legal precedent you haven’t violated—we cannot and will not withhold your funds. We have no legal reason to do so, and frankly, protecting the capital of our VIP clients is our highest priority. Your money is completely secure."
"Good. I appreciate the clarity," Jake said as Reed quietly entered, set down two steaming cups of coffee, and vanished back into the hallway.
Jake took a sip of the coffee, then set the cup down. "There is one other thing. I was reviewing the final ledger statements from the execution desk. I noticed the bank didn’t subtract any standard transactional fees or commission lines from the final three-point-one billion balance."
Rollins smiled, leaning back into his chair and swirling his own coffee. "Ah, the mathematical ledger. I figured you’d catch that. Let’s be transparent about how a trade of that sovereign scale works. Your total cumulative notional volume—the raw turnover passing through our books across those five trades—reached an astronomical one point four eight trillion dollars."
Jake nodded. "Because of the open and close volume on the leverage."
"Exactly," Rollins said. "Now, under a standard Tier-1 VIP unbundled commission rate—say, zero point one basis points—the raw commission invoice would have come out to exactly fourteen million, eight hundred and twenty-four thousand, seven hundred and seven dollars and fifty-nine cents. Even if I gave you our absolute floor rate of a dollar-fifty per million traded, you’d be looking at over two point two million dollars in raw clearing fees."
Rollins leaned forward, tapping his finger on the armrest. "But Sterling operated these specific trades through our Principal Desk as a market maker. Because your orders went directly against our internal liquidity book rather than being pushed out to a secondary clearing house, our compensation was entirely baked into the execution spread and the minor slippage buffers. Moving that much capital in single block trades naturally pushes past immediate top-of-book liquidity, costing about fifteen cents per ounce. That gave us an implicit fee of roughly eighty-eight point nine million dollars (889 million marks), which were not taken out when making the trades to help your leverage since you wanted to go all in. So that’s the amount you owe the bank."
"Efficient," Jake noted, satisfied with the breakdown. "You can withdraw the debt from my current balance, I’m not in a rush to make more right now"
"Perfect," Rollins nodded, before shifting his weight slightly. His expression smoothed into a casual, conversational tone, though his eyes remained sharp. "Speaking of large sums of capital... what ever happened with that fifty-billion-dollar loan request we discussed last week? I know I had suggested that specific arrangement where we could make it work if you brought your uncle, Darius Rivers, into the fold to share some of the liability."
Rollins kept his smile steady, but Jake could see the faint tension in the older man’s jaw. Rollins had engineered that specific loan structure hoping to secure a piece of the sixteen percent equity in the massive Meridian Group that Jake held. It would have been a massive coup for Sterling Bank.
Jake smiled back, a perfectly relaxed, unbothered expression. "Oh, that. When I went to Darius and proposed the arrangement you suggested, he looked at the terms and decided it was simpler to just cut out the middleman. He ended up loaning me the fifty billion directly."
Rollins’ eye twitched imperceptibly, a micro-expression that lasted less than a fraction of a second before his well-trained executive mask locked back into place. He let out a hearty, booming laugh, clapping his hands together.
"Well! Haha! That is fantastic news, Jake! Truly," Rollins said, his voice brimming with a forced, jovial warmth. He raised his coffee cup in a mock toast. "I am genuinely happy for you. Of course, a family arrangement like that is much cleaner, and it saves you the trouble of dealing with institutional red tape. Splendid result."
Despite the performance, Jake knew exactly what Rollins was thinking. The man was kicking himself for missing out on a chunk of the Meridian Group, but at the same time, he knew he couldn’t afford to show even a hint of resentment. The young man sitting across from him was already moving like a titan in the industry.
Rollins took a drink of his coffee, quickly steering the conversation back to safer, more lucrative waters. "The important thing is that your liquidity is here, it’s growing, and Sterling is fully committed to backing your next play. Whatever you need, Jake—my personal line is open twenty-four-seven."
"I’ll make sure to take advantage of that," Jake smiled.
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