The Love of Money II
Copyright© 2025 by MindSketch
Chapter 36: When the Wind Blows
Fiction Sex Story: Chapter 36: When the Wind Blows - Marcus and the others are no longer just surviving the world—they’re shaping it. Erin has always known what she wants. Now she’s orchestrating it. Helen is learning that submission isn’t surrender. Bobbi, stripped of her old identity, stands at a crossroads. New women cross his path. Old ones return. Some hand him their heart. Some, a leash. Some, a knife in the back. And then there are the ones waiting for him to stumble. It's hard to rest when you have a target painted on your back.
Caution: This Fiction Sex Story contains strong sexual content, including Ma/Fa Fa/Fa Mult Coercion Consensual NonConsensual Reluctant Romantic Lesbian BiSexual Heterosexual Fiction Rags To Riches BDSM DomSub MaleDom FemaleDom Light Bond Rough Sadistic Spanking Group Sex Harem Orgy Interracial Black Female White Female Oriental Female Indian Female Anal Sex Analingus Cream Pie Exhibitionism Facial Massage Oral Sex Petting Pregnancy Sex Toys Squirting Voyeurism Big Breasts Small Breasts Slow Violence
Friday, September 20th, 2:31 pm
The global economy was on fire, and it was my fault.
And I stood next to the window, surrounded by possessions and collectibles that could have fed and housed a family of four for at least a year, sipping coffee that probably cost as much as a high-priced meal. All while feeling sorry for myself.
“Is there anything you can do?” Emily asked.
“I don’t know,” I said into my coffee cup as I took a sip.
“Perhaps you can buy all the banks and—”
The sound of shattering glass cut Natashya’s words off as I sent the mug hurling across the room, where it crashed into one of the bookcases lining the walls. Coffee splattered across books that cost more than some vehicles. “I said, ‘I don’t know!’”
Whirling around, I glared at the dancer, who appeared to be in complete shock at my tone. She glanced at Emily, who also looked equally troubled.
It was understandable. I never acted this way ... not around them.
I sighed and pressed my fingers to my eyelids.
“Marcus...” Emily’s voice was full of cautious concern.
“Fuck,” I said. “I’m sorry, guys. That was uncalled for.”
“It is okay,” Natashya said in her light accent. “Is it really that bad?”
“Yeah,” I said, my throat thick with emotion. I finally looked back up at them and leaned against the window. Part of me wanted the bulletproof glass to just shatter and introduce me to death by defenestration.
“The stock market hit a historical low today. Basically, all of Europe can’t use money right now.”
“And this is your fault?”
I shrugged at Natashya’s question, not really wanting to answer that question.
“You can’t know that,” Emily said, full of conviction.
“Em,” I sighed.
“You can’t know that!” my sister insisted. “No one person can be at fault for something like this.”
“This is Hiro,” I said. “He did this in retaliation for what I just did to him.”
My phone buzzed on the desk. I ignored it, assuming it was yet another call to check up on me, ask me questions, or ... anything else. My phone number was kept extremely private—Erin made sure of that, but in this day and age, nothing stayed that way for long. Journalists had begun trying to call me directly. I would need to get a new number soon.
Emily scowled at the phone, then said, “You couldn’t know what they would do!”
I hit the back of my head against the glass several times and groaned in frustration. “I was warned! Amber was in here earlier, telling me that she could give me the information to get a jump on whatever Hiro was planning!”
“Amber?” Natashya, who was looking at her nails, snapped her gaze up to me. “As in that bitch who kidnapped us?”
“Yeah.” I winced, temporarily forgetting that she had shared my fate. No ... something worse than my fate. Natashya bore some scars from that event that wouldn’t heal for a long time.
“She was in here!?” Natashya jumped to her feet. Emily did the same but grabbed her girlfriend by the wrist and pulled her in for a hug.
“No,” I sighed, shoving off the window and walking toward my office chair. “She was in one of the conference rooms downstairs.”
“You let her go?” Emily asked. It wasn’t meant to be accusatory, but I was so raw that it felt that way.
“Yeah. I did. Holding her against her will is called kidnapping.”
Natashya narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you have Ryo locked in a room?”
I paused mid-sit and instead planted my hands against the surface of the desk, staring at Natashya.
“Touche...”
The exotic entertainer opened her mouth to say something else, but I cut her off.
“Tash, if you’re about to give me shit about not taking the bitch who kidnapped us prisoner, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. I’m not in the fucking mood.”
Despite looking like she wanted to say something, she shut her mouth.
“Thank you,” I said.
The doors opened and in walked Helen, followed by Erin and Charity—the three Weird Sisters who had stormed the kitchen a few hours ago to deliver terrifying news.
Judging by their faces, it looked like our day hadn’t improved since then.
Double, double toil and trouble; fire burn and caldron bubble...
“Marcus,” Helen said. “We’ve got some updates.”
“Where’s the cauldron?”
All three of them stopped short and blinked.
“What?” Helen said.
Emily tittered—trust the theater geek to get it.
“It’s not important,” I waved a hand dismissively as I plopped into my seat. “What is it?”
Erin stepped up to the front of my desk and tapped a handful of manila folders against the wood.
“It’s bad. It wasn’t just one company or one bank. Tanaka orchestrated a multi-layered derivatives collapse using a series of offshore shell corporations—each loaded with toxic, high-leverage instruments. It’s like he built a house of cards out of credit swaps and then yanked the bottom card.
The moment European regulators flagged one of the shells for insolvency, a cascade of margin calls began. It hit Luxembourg and Amsterdam first. Within a few hours, liquidity vanished from half a dozen high-yield funds.”
Erin compressed her lips into a thin line as she snorted in frustration.
“And here’s the thing: he owned some of the exposure. Deliberately. He let a few of his own holdings take a dive so no one would suspect the pattern. Bet you can guess who the actual target was.”
“Us,” I said.
Erin nodded. “Three of our financial partners were exposed—one of them was underwriting a new line for the Dunbar expansion. The other two handled portfolio bundling for your private equity branches. Between market losses, margin calls, and contagion panic, market-wide fallout is already past $45 billion, and it’s still moving. Your personal exposure is about $17 billion, give or take. It might stabilize, but it could very well double.
She paused just long enough to make sure I understood.
“And that’s not counting secondary damage. Our name is all over the headlines—investors are pulling out like it’s 2008 again. Hiro didn’t just want to hurt us ... he wanted to destabilize us. Ruin our reputations and shake the world’s confidence in our brands.”
Silence reigned for a full ten seconds as I let what Erin told me sink in.
“He did one hell of a job,” I finally said.
“I don’t understand,” Emily said, laying a hand on my shoulder. She’d approached my chair while Erin had been talking.
Fortunately, I knew enough to put it in simpler terms.
“He took out a few no-name companies, then let them default on purpose. But they were holding the equivalent of loaded guns—these contracts that only work as long as everyone else believes the system’s stable. Once the defaults hit, it spooked the market. Banks started calling in debts. Funds lost liquidity. My partners couldn’t move money fast enough, and we got dragged down with them. It’s like he poured gasoline into the global financial system a year ago ... and just now lit the match.”
“Does that mean Marcus will lose everything?” Natashya asked, stepping up next to Emily.
“No,” Erin said. “He still has the majority of his wealth, but a lot of his liquidity is gone, so cash flow is tight at the moment.”
“Which means I’m limited on what I can personally do,” I concluded. “He’s crippled me.”
“I’m working to change that,” Erin said, “But it’s going to take some time ... longer than usual. A lot of our influence is gone, right now.”
“That also means,” Chloe said, walking into the room, “that Marcus doesn’t leave the secured floors of this building until I give the all-clear. None of you do.”
“What?” Emily said.
“Why?” Natashya chimed in.
“Resources are stretched, and Tanaka knows it. I’d bet you a year’s salary that he has at least two dozen mercenaries within a few blocks just looking for a chance to acquire you, or take you out.”
Natashya gasped and took a couple of steps back. “I ... no ... I need to get out of here...”
“Afraid that’s not happening, Miss Larazev,” Chloe said.
Emily reached out to her girlfriend. “Natashya—”
“Emily! I can’t stay here!” The dancer’s eyes shone bright with tears as she clutched her girlfriend’s hand. “They will get me, again!”
Natashya collapsed in Emily’s arms—she wasn’t openly sobbing, but she looked like she was on the verge.
Alarmed, I started to rise from my seat, but Emily held up a hand, signifying that I should stay where I was.
“I’m going to take her to our room,” she mouthed, and the two of them walked out of my study. I could hear Natashya murmuring something about not going through that nightmare again as they exited.
Erin watched them leave, worry for the dancer painted on her face. Charity did the same, looking particularly pale, which was saying something considering her ethnicity.
“Will she be okay?” Charity asked.
“She’ll be fine,” Helen cut in, seemingly unaffected by the younger woman’s breakdown.
“Marcus, INTERPOL has reached out to us, and the SEC has already flagged two of your trades from last week. They won’t find any evidence of insider trading, but they were close enough to the flashpoint that they’re sniffing like bloodhounds.
Some of your partners are preparing suits for fiduciary negligence. Several companies have shuttered their doors in the space of hours. Yunger, Price & VanCamp has already engaged legal in four other countries. This was a nuclear bomb, and the fallout is going to last a long time.”
“Fucking Christ,” I said. “How many people lost jobs over this? Lost their businesses?”
“You can’t do that, Marcus,” Erin said on the heels of my questions.
“Why not!?” I said, popping out of my chair. “I fucked around and I found out, and now a ton of people I don’t know are paying the price.”
“You’ve already lost billions, Marcus,” Erin protested. “And you’ll lose more before we can stop this. I’d say that’s a hefty price.”
“At the end of the day, though, I’ll still have this,” I held up my hands, indicating the finery all around us. “While all those people will lose their livelihoods ... their homes.”
“Worry about that, and you’ll go mad, Marcus,” Helen said.
“What? I’m supposed to just go on like nothing happened to ... what ... thousands of people? Tens of thousands?”
“When two people are fighting for their lives, they can’t be worried about the ants they step on,” Helen said.
I balked at her words—spoken like a privileged woman who hasn’t had to worry where her next meal came from in a long time.
“Fuck off, Helen,” I snapped. “That’s cold. Even for you.”
“I’m being pragmatic,” Helen said, her eyes flashing brilliant blue fire.
“You’re being a bitch,” I shot back.
The two of us simply stared at each other. Besides Bobbi, I’d never experienced the desire to simultaneously want to punch a woman and fuck her.
“I...”
Both of us looked at Charity, who seemed about ready to run away from us so fast that she’d leave a cloud of dust in her wake.
We waited expectantly for her to go on.
“I, um, just wanted to say that social media is on fire. It’s a global crash ... it’s all anyone is talking about. There are a lot of people calling for your blood.”
I groaned and turned to kick my office chair, sending it rolling across the floor.
“But,” Charity went on, “There are a lot of people standing up for you! Some are talking about the charity work we’ve been involved with lately, and there are a lot of people who seem to resonate with the fact that you were just a normal guy who fell into a lot of money.”
“Also,” she continued, “the attack in Vegas still seems to be getting you a lot of favor. That got me thinking that maybe there was something to that, so I started floating the idea that the Vegas attack and this collapse are connected. My friends in the influencer space are running with it ... hard.”
I looked back at Helen and Erin, who both looked mildly shocked.
“I mean ... half the groundwork had already been laid.”
“You thought up a plausible conspiracy theory and spread it to try to buy Marcus the trust of the public?” Erin asked.
“Um...”
“Brilliant!” I said, happy to embrace a small ray of sunshine.
“I mean, I don’t know that it’s a conspiracy theory if it’s true.” She glanced between all of us. “It is true, isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” I said. Amber had been there to warn me of Hiro’s attack in exchange for most of the stuff Hiro wanted, but there had to be a connection between Hiro and her. Carla had implied that Amber’s visit to Hiro the night before the board meeting was what swayed him to vote against Chandler and me. Amber was probably there to get me to give up things on Hiro’s behalf before Hiro decided to go nuclear on me.
“Psalter’s here,” Chloe said.
All four of us turned to look in the direction of the door, where Henry stood. The look on his face was dour as he held up a small piece of luggage that reminded me of an old-time doctor’s medicine bag.
“I came here in hopes of smuggling you out of New York, but it looks like I came too late.” He glanced at Chloe. “Security tells me that neither you nor any of your staff are leaving your secured floors. Is this true?”
“Yep,” Chloe said before I could get a chance to respond. “Could be two days. It could be two months. Too early to tell.”
“Fair enough,” Henry said, setting the bag down by the door. Then he started to remove his jacket.
“I once spent a summer in Hong Kong, where I rented a room from a Polish fellow who fled his country before the Iron Curtain fell. He made it into Western Germany, which was an amazing feat in and of itself, but the BND caught him before he even made it a quarter of a mile. As with everyone caught crossing the wall, he was detained. Unfortunately for Filip, his family was well connected to the administration in the Polish People’s Republic, which meant detainment and interrogation.”
Psalter chuckled. “Due to the nature of Filip’s connections, they kept him in some office in an old, abandoned hotel so they could keep it well guarded secret. Between interrogations, he could be left on his own for days at a time.
Two months in relative isolation ... people talk about it as if it’s torture. Filip found it rather civilized, actually. He called it a sabbatical with bad room service.
He said the trick was to make it his. Day one, he liberated a broom from the custodian’s closet and used the bristles to brew a kind of ersatz tea. Day three, he’d negotiated with one of the guards for contraband reading material—Greek tragedies and a stack of Playboys from 1979. He developed a sort of parasocial attachment to Ursula Buchfellner ... Miss August, I believe. He didn’t know it at the time, but she’d been murdered just a few years earlier.” He shook his head. “A shame, really.”
“He told me that by week two, he was teaching mice to respond to rock music; by week three, they preferred Peter Gabriel to Phil Collins.