Selena Clark lived in a dilapidated brownstone in Astoria, nestled between a laundromat and a bodega that sold expired milk. It was a far cry from the penthouses Victor was used to. The black Maybach rolled down the narrow street looking like a spaceship that had landed in the wrong century. Victor got out, flanked by his head of security, a massive man named Graves. He told Brad to stay in the car. They walked up the crumbling steps. There was no doorman, just a row of rusted buzzers. Victor pressed the one labeled 3B. No answer. He pressed it again, long and hard.
Finally, the intercom crackled. “Go away.” “Selena,” Victor said into the speaker. “It’s Victor Callaway. Open the door.” “I’m off the clock, Mr. Callaway. The restaurant opens at five.” “I’m not here for steak. I’m here about Triton. You’re going to let me in, or I’m going to have my lawyers subpoena you so hard you’ll be buried in paperwork until you’re eighty.” Silence. Then a loud buzz. The door clicked. Unlocked.
Victor and Graves ascended the stairs. The hallway smelled of boiled cabbage and old cigarettes. When they reached 3B, the door was already ajar. Selena was standing in the middle of the room. She had changed out of her uniform into oversized sweatpants and a faded T-shirt that said MIT Athletics.
The apartment was shocking. It was not the furniture. There was barely any. It was the walls. Every inch of the living-room wall was covered in charts, printouts of stock tickers, newspaper clippings, red string connecting corporate logos, and handwritten notes in complex mathematical shorthand. It looked like the inside of a serial killer’s mind, or a genius’s. On the small dining table, three laptops were humming, running what looked like high-frequency trading algorithms on a Linux interface.
Victor stepped in, his eyes scanning the room. “What is this?” Selena crossed her arms. “It’s a hobby. Some people knit.” Victor walked over to the wall. He pointed to a chart labeled Project Icarus. It detailed the entire corporate structure of Callaway Capital, Victor’s own firm. She had mapped out his leverage, his exposure, his hidden partners. She knew his business better than he did. “Who are you?” Victor asked, his voice quiet. “You’re not Selena Clark from New Jersey.”
She sighed, walking over to a small kitchenette to pour herself a glass of water. “My name is Selena, and I did work in a diner in Jersey. But before that, I had a different life.” “What life?” “Does the name Arthur Pendleton mean anything to you?” she asked. Victor frowned. Pendleton. The Oracle of Boston. He ran the Sovereign Fund. He jumped off a bridge five years ago after losing ten billion dollars in a Ponzi scheme. “He didn’t jump,” Selena said, her voice devoid of emotion. “And it wasn’t a Ponzi scheme. He was framed. He was set up by a consortium of rival banks who wanted his proprietary algorithm. They cooked his books, destroyed his reputation, and then they silenced him.” She took a sip of water. “Arthur Pendleton was my father.”
Victor stared at her. The resemblance was there. The sharp nose. The intense, calculating eyes. Arthur Pendleton had been a legend, a math prodigy who claimed to have solved the market. “I was his head quant,” Selena continued. “I wrote the code that they killed him for. When he died, they came for me. I wiped my identity, changed my name, and went underground. I’ve been waiting, Victor. Watching. Collecting data.” “Waiting for what?” “For a mistake,” she said. “For the people who killed him to get greedy.”