Why I Make Money
Park Avenue, Manhattan.
Ironstone Partners headquarters.
"……He says he doesn't have cab fare."
A heavy silence settled over the top-floor executive office.
Cold sweat beaded on the chief of staff's forehead as he finished his report.
It was already hard enough to understand why an informant about to receive a million-dollar fee would refuse a client's summons — but the reason being "no cab fare" was beyond anything he could have imagined.
Given the CEO's usual hot-tempered, volcanic nature, a thunderous dressing-down would not have been out of place.
And yet.
"Puhahahaha!"
What burst from the mouth of Vincent Greco — founder and absolute ruler of Ironstone — was a full-throated roar of laughter.
"Cab fare? Ha! The man just slapped a million-dollar invoice in my face, and now he doesn't have the money for a taxi to get here?"
Vincent laughed so hard tears pricked at the corners of his eyes.
Born to a working-class family in Brooklyn, a graduate of City College of New York, he had built an eight-billion-dollar empire on Wall Street on nothing but results and numbers — an Italian-American self-made titan who had clawed his way up from nothing.
Formalities and face meant nothing to him.
And to a man like that, Donovan's answer was fascinating.
"Unbelievable. Truly unbelievable."
The laughter cut off. Vincent's eyes went sharp and cold in an instant.
The chief of staff swallowed hard.
The only time the boss looked like that was when he was running the numbers.
Vincent gazed down at the New York skyline beyond the window and replayed the past several months in his head.
A tiny anomaly he had spotted in one of his funds' profit structures.
Anyone else would have dismissed it as margin of error. But Vincent's instincts — honed over fifteen years of betting everything on pure numbers — had refused to let it go.
He had ordered an internal audit at once.
Five executives managing the fund had landed on the suspect list.
The result: no irregularities found.
I couldn't fire them on gut feeling alone without hard evidence.
Cutting five core executives who moved hundreds of millions of dollars on Wall Street, all at once, without a clear justification?
Investors would panic and pull their capital overnight, and a parade of astronomical wrongful-termination lawsuits would follow. That much was certain.
Worse — if he axed people on instinct despite an internal audit clearing them, he would be advertising to the entire market that Ironstone's audit system was a hollow shell.
Vincent had spent fifteen years building a reputation on nothing but perfect numbers and performance, drawing eight billion dollars into his orbit.
A purge without evidence would have been him smashing that reputation with his own hands.
So he had put out a hundred-thousand-dollar bounty externally.
Find me hard proof.
Months of digging turned up not so much as a speck of dust.
Then, three days ago, an unbelievable report had come up through the intermediary.
All five are co-conspirators.
Vincent had moved to verify it immediately.
Cross-checking the existing audit materials under the premise that all five had colluded, a structure emerged in which each man's books perfectly covered the others'.
A puzzle that was invisible when examined alone. A structure no one would ever have found without knowing the five were in it together.
And this evening, the man had come back with new information.
Henry Caldwell of Summit Ridge Capital.
The claim that he was the mastermind behind the whole affair.
That one still hasn't been confirmed.
The five co-conspirators could be verified with internal materials alone.
But an outside party's involvement could not be proven through an internal audit.
Verification would require a separate investigation.
Vincent turned to his chief of staff.
"Wire two hundred thousand to the intermediary first."
"Two hundred thousand?"
"He didn't just find a culprit — he found every last co-conspirator. Double seems fair."
Vincent smirked.
"Tell him the mastermind lead still hasn't been confirmed. Once we verify it, I'll wire another million."
After the chief of staff left, Vincent immediately hit the intercom.
"Get the head of investigations up here."
Ironstone's investigation team was among the elite even by Wall Street standards.
From rooting out internal corruption to due diligence on competitors, it was a unit Vincent had personally handpicked — former FBI analysts and forensic accountants from the Big Four.
Even to them, the name "Henry Caldwell" was not unfamiliar.
"Summit Ridge Capital. Denver-based hedge fund. Forty billion under management. Industry reputation is…… clean. Almost too clean."
Vincent's eyes narrowed.
"Too clean?"
"Regular on the charity circuit, keynote speaker at industry conferences, board member of Denver Children's Hospital. His official narrative is that he left Wall Street to practice clean finance back home. Press releases, industry assessments — not a single negative article. Not one."
"Not a single one?"
Vincent stroked his chin.
If fifteen years of surviving Wall Street had taught him one thing, it was this: anything too clean was dirty.
"Dig."
"Sir?"
"Any points of contact connecting to Caldwell. I want results by morning."
The next morning, eight o'clock.
When the head of investigations knocked on the executive office door after an all-nighter, deep shadows sat under his eyes.
But the shock on his face ran deeper still.
"Sir. It's Caldwell."
"Sit."
The investigation head set a stack of documents on the table.
"We reverse-traced the five men's money flows on the premise of contact with Caldwell. Behind transactions that had looked completely clean until now, intermediary accounts surfaced. Every one of them leads to Summit Ridge Capital shell companies."
Vincent flipped through the papers.
The numbers were all converging on a single name.
"The intermediary accounts had been laundered four layers deep. Reverse-tracing without knowing the destination was a physically impossible structure. Without the name, we never would have found it."
A chill ran down Vincent's spine.
The name.
A four-layer laundering structure that months of elite investigation teams had failed to crack — resolved overnight by a single name tossed out by one man.
No. More precisely, he had uncovered the mastermind's name in three days.
And even the method defied comprehension.
Because the other party had supposedly told him everything of their own free will.
Does that make any sense?
But looking at the results, it did.
Vincent closed the file and spoke.
"Wire the million. Right now."
The chief of staff moved at once.
"And tell the intermediary I want to meet him."
Thirty minutes later, the chief of staff returned.
"Sir, we have a reply."
"What did he say?"
"……He says he's busy."
Silence fell.
On Wall Street, when Vincent Greco said "let's meet," no one refused.
It was a summons carrying the weight of eight billion dollars.
Even the heads of major investment firms cleared their schedules and came running — and some unidentified man had turned it down.
Twice, counting yesterday and today.
And yet.
"Hahahahaha!"
Laughter exploded from Vincent's mouth.
"Yesterday he couldn't come because he had no cab fare, and now he's busy?"
Vincent wiped his eyes, still laughing.
When the laughter faded, the look in his eyes had changed.
He took a deposit of 1.2 million dollars and his attitude didn't shift an inch.
When they sent two hundred thousand, and when they fired off another million on top of that, the man's responses had been identical.
Money didn't move him.
That meant one of two things.
Either he was a lunatic with no interest in money —
Or he was the real deal, unbound by it.
Interesting.
Vincent grabbed his jacket.
"Have the car brought around."
"Sir? Where to……"
Vincent's mouth opened — then stopped.
Wait.
Even if he wanted to go find the man, he couldn't.
All contact ran exclusively through the intermediary, and the man's identity was wrapped in a perfect veil.
"……Shall we look into who he is?"
the chief of staff asked carefully.
"No."
Vincent waved him off firmly.
"This is someone who saw straight through to a mastermind behind the scenes. If he gets even a whiff that I'm digging into him, he might never agree to meet at all."
The moment the words left his mouth, Vincent grasped the irony of his situation.
The master of an eight-billion-dollar empire had nothing he could do to arrange a meeting with an unidentified man.
There was only one option left.
Wait to be granted an audience.
Vincent let out a dry laugh and hung his jacket back on the chair.
"Tell the intermediary I'm ready to meet whenever. Time and place — he can set both."
"……Yes, sir. Understood."
After the chief of staff left, Vincent snorted in the empty executive office.
The last time he had been this desperate to meet someone was his wife.
At the same hour.
A road on the outskirts, far from Manhattan.
A jet-black Lincoln sedan glided along under the morning sun.
From deep in the back seat, Donovan held a flip phone to his ear as the Boss's voice came through.
"—What's your reason for refusing?"
"If I meet him now, it gets annoying. Even if I do meet him, not now."
"—This isn't just anyone. It's Vincent Greco. Owner of the eight-billion-dollar Ironstone."
"And?"
"—……I'm asking why you refused."
A faint edge of impatience colored the Boss's voice. Fair enough.
From the intermediary's perspective, turning down a client of Vincent Greco's caliber made no sense whatsoever.
But Donovan's response didn't change.
"I have a solid reason."
Donovan pulled a small hand mirror from the inner pocket of his suit.
His own face in the glass.
He recalled the Indang he had checked the moment Vincent's meeting request came through.
Around the space between his brows — where the currents of fate gathered — a filthy, murky ash-gray energy had been rising in a tangled web, complex and foul.
The classic sign of getting sticky-entangled in a viciously tedious, complicated problem that would give you a splitting headache.
But the instant he decided to refuse the meeting, that murky ash-gray had cleared away as if it had never been there.
Proof: the Indang in the mirror right now was clean.
No reason to force a meeting with that hanging over me.
Color Reading never lied.
Meet him, get tangled. Get tangled, get a headache.
There was no reason to meet right now.
"Boss."
"—I'm listening."
"It's written all over my face. Meet him now and it gets complicated."
A brief silence on the other end of the line.
The Boss did not doubt Donovan's ability.
When Donovan looked at his own face and said "no," it genuinely meant no.
"—……If you're that certain, then so be it."
"Yeah. I'm sure. Better to put this one off."
"—Fine. I'll handle Vincent's side appropriately. So what now? Looking for a place to live first?"
Donovan grinned, flip phone still in hand.
"Boss. You know why I make money?"
"—……Hard to say. Most people I can guess. You, not so easily."
"Nothing special. I make money so I can live doing whatever I want."
Donovan watched the forest of Manhattan towers streaking past the window.
"I like looking at people's faces, blocking their shitty destinies, and rewriting them. That's fun for me."
"—……So what exactly are you planning to do?"
"Times Square? That's the most famous spot, right? I'm going to open a shop there."
"—……What? Times Square?"
"Yeah. Read faces there. Is there a better way to meet every kind of person imaginable?"
A dazed silence hung on the line for a moment, then the Boss spoke in a tone of pure incomprehension.
"—……You're kicking a 1.2-million-dollar client to the curb so you can open a fortune-telling shop in Times Square?"
"Yeah. Isn't that amazing?"
"—Amazing in an entirely different sense. I don't even know where to start. Turning a profit with a fortune shop in that location won't be easy."
"Eh, that's what working with you is for, right?"
The Boss let out a hollow laugh.
"—You really do always exceed my expectations. Well, as long as it doesn't interfere with jobs, I have no reason to meddle in your personal life."
His voice settled back into its usual dry business tone.
"—I'll contact you when a job comes up."
"Got it. I'll call once I've opened."
The call ended, and Donovan immediately addressed the front seat.
"Cole."
Cole glanced at him through the rearview mirror.
"Yes, Mr. Donovan."
"You heard. Take us to a real estate office."
The heart of Times Square.
The moment he slammed down a full year's rent plus key money in cash, even the haughtiest New York landlord handed over the first-floor storefront keys without a word of complaint.
Setting up the shop took less than a day.
No grand remodel needed. All he did was set a single heavy handmade wooden desk and two chairs in the middle of the empty space.
And beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass, he hung one simple neon sign.
Why Zen Psychic, of all things? Because under New York State criminal law, accepting money to tell the future was a crime — fraud, plain and simple.
But spiritual counseling grounded in religion or philosophy was perfectly legal.
So Donovan had no choice but to hang the title "Zen Psychic," draping it in the Eastern philosophy of Zen.
A perfect shield even the police couldn't touch.
And so Donovan's fortune shop dropped anchor right in the middle of the crossroads of the world.
A place where millions of people poured through every single day.
Just leave the door open, and every kind of destiny would walk in on its own two feet. That much was certain.
He opened with that bold confidence — and a week passed.
"……"
Suffocating silence filled the shop.
Chin propped on the empty wooden desk, Donovan stared blankly through the glass at the tens of thousands of people rushing past and muttered to himself.
"No…… customers?"