Chapter 18: AI & Tech Domination (2024–2025)

The boardroom on the forty-second floor of our new Miami headquarters hummed with the low thrum of cooling fans and the faint click of keyboards. Sunlight poured through floor-to-ceiling glass, glinting off the sleek black table where my inner circle—five handpicked executives who owed their seven-figure bonuses to my unerring calls—leaned forward like men watching a sure bet. I stood at the head, sleeves rolled up, the faint scar on my forearm from that long-ago kitchen counter still visible under the cuff. Five years since the crash that never happened, and the empire had grown faster than even my 2026 memories had predicted.

“Gentlemen,” I said, voice calm but edged with the same certainty that had turned $1,247 into nine figures, “we’re not chasing the AI wave. We’re the fucking tide.” I tapped the holographic display floating above the table. Agentic systems—autonomous AI agents that didn’t just answer questions but executed entire workflows—were exploding. My 2026 knowledge had guided every pivot: early stakes in the companies that became the backbone of multimodal models, quiet acquisitions of data-center land near revived nuclear plants, proprietary fine-tuning on private datasets no regulator could touch. By late 2024 we’d launched Nexus Core, our flagship platform that turned raw corporate data into self-running empires. Revenue had tripled in eighteen months. Now, in the first quarter of 2025, we were closing a hostile takeover of a rival analytics firm whose board had laughed at my offer six months ago.

The lead negotiator, a silver-haired shark named Harlan, slid the final signatures across the table. “They folded at four-fifteen this morning. Your counter on the IP clause was surgical.” His eyes flicked to the screen where live feeds from our private servers showed agentic bots already migrating their entire codebase. “How the hell do you see these moves before the market even blinks?”

I smiled, the kind that didn’t reach my eyes. “Second sight.” Inside my head the real answer thrummed: eight years of future burned into every decision. I’d known the exact week generative video would mature, the precise month energy demand from training clusters would spike nuclear restarts, the quiet regulatory windows that let us embed without oversight. The portfolio wasn’t just climbing anymore—it was rewriting the skyline.

By the time the champagne corks popped, the deal was live. Nexus Core absorbed their tech, our valuation crested another half-billion, and the harem waiting on the superyacht Eternal in the marina below already knew the celebration would be biblical. Fifteen women. Fifteen perfect reasons the money mattered.

I left the building with the taste of victory sharp on my tongue and took the private elevator straight to the dock. The Eternal gleamed under the Florida sun—ninety meters of polished teak and tinted glass, five decks rising like a floating palace. Infinity pool on the sundeck, beach club at the stern with a glass-bottomed wellness lounge, and a private upper deck ringed by waist-high railings that offered zero concealment from the open sea. Exactly what I wanted.