The Shadow Tycoon
Copyright© 2026 by CaffeinatedTales
Chapter 4
After leaving Mr. Fox’s place, William wandered the streets for a while. Now that the deal was settled, his first income would come in soon, and exactly how much he earned would depend directly on how much he put in.
The more he invested, the higher the profit. In truth, even the top-tier financial syndicates would have salivated over a business like this.
He had spent this whole stretch reading newspapers. For all the world’s feverish talk of development, construction, financial expansion, and economic growth, even the annual returns promised by various funds had not exceeded fifteen percent.
In the first-quarter issue of The Wall Street Journal, some of last year’s detailed figures had been published. The fund with the highest actual return had yielded only 9.74 percent for the year, not even ten percent, and that had already made it the most profitable fund of the previous year.
Which was precisely why this deal mattered so much. But at the same time, it created a new problem, he needed a sum of “principal” to exchange for all those coins and small bills.
Mr. Fox had not mentioned that money. Given the background check he had run on William, there was no way he did not know that William had less than a hundred dollars to his name, in cash and in the bank combined, never mind the scale William had promised for helping Fox complete his “transition” as quickly as possible.
He needed to get another sum together. It did not have to be much, a few hundred dollars, perhaps one or two thousand would be enough, because once this thing started turning, it would only gather speed. For a relatively small amount like that, he planned to talk to Eleanor that night when he got back.
Though he knew doing that was, admittedly ... something rather low. Still, for the sake of the future, there was no helping it.
Time slipped away little by little as he drifted through the streets. That day, William returned home early. At half past six in the evening, Eleanor came back carrying a bag.
Inside were scraps of minced meat and some vegetables that no longer looked very fresh, things the supermarket where she worked was going to throw out that day. The employees usually divided them up among themselves. After all, the reason they endured the pressure and exploitation there was to get these things for free.
The moment she stepped into the apartment, Eleanor was a little surprised. During this period, William had always come home late. A day like this, with him back so early, was the first since all of this began.
At the start, she had still entertained the hope that William might honestly go find a job, preferably at a factory.
Factory work was hard, dangerous even, but the truth was that workers had the best benefits and social protections.
Those big industrial bosses had to look after them in all kinds of ways, and they could also join organizations like labor unions. Eleanor, working at a supermarket, had no way into one of those, because she was not a factory worker.
And there was no such unofficial organization as a Cashiers’ Union, either.
Nightmares were easy to remain trapped in. Good dreams, on the other hand, ended too quickly.
A full week had passed, and William, who had seemed newly fired up at first, had returned to the same dead point as before. Only now he had changed the pattern. Instead of loafing around at home, he used job hunting as an excuse to waste time outside.
The thought of it left Eleanor utterly disheartened. She felt her earlier choice had not merely been foolish, her eyes must have been blind as well.
And it was because she had gone through all this that she finally understood how right her mother had been, good looks were useless. Life needed foundations, not a handsome face.
She lifted her eyes and glanced at William, then changed her shoes, carried the bag into the kitchen, and began washing the meat scraps.
The scraps had all been shaved from bone racks, irregular little pieces with no real shape, most of them no bigger than a finger joint, lump after lump. For certain reasons, they looked noticeably darker than the neatly arranged cuts of beef.
So even at very low prices, they were hard to sell. Most people who bought them did not buy them to eat themselves, but to feed dogs.
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