NOVEL NEXT Chapter 277: Climbing the Forbes List
Victory was usually a satisfying feeling, and this one was no different. With his plans perfectly followed like everyone involved were oblivious pawns in his chess board, Darren felt nothing else but true satisfaction.
His face glowed purple. It was the reflection of the Investor System, finishing his sell order.
┏Sell Order Executed: 285,714.2857 BTC - Liquidation in Progress┛
That was how much Darren had gotten from that Bitcoin purchase two weeks ago. The two million dollars he had spent while Lilian suffered under the possible complications of Caldridge's betrayal.
At that time, Bitcoin was worth $7 after multiple fluctuations. But now, the product of his cunning testified for him. Bitcoin was worth $250! And the business world had not shut up ever since.
Not only were they talking about how Bitcoin could be the future and how the government had lied, but they began buying more and more, which was why the system was able to initialize sales faster than it usually would.
And it had to, because the amount that Darren was withdrawing this time was a record. Even for himself.
At $7 per BTC, Bitcoin worth 2 million dollars was 285714.2857 BTC. And now, at $250, Darren's present portfolio was worth: $71,428,571.42.
Seventy-one million dollars. Pure, liquid profit from a single, audacious play. It was a number large enough to silence most critics for life. That was if Darren wanted to be flaunty about it.
But he didn't. Not especially. Besides, seventy one million was barely the tip of it. Merely the overture.
He still had the offshore accounts.
The cryptic wallets that Lilian had tried to take away from him. All legal, but still too dodgy to not raise an eyebrow.
But what could the government do? They were now too busy picking after themselves after their collapse.
Black Cipher, Voltaire Holdings and Nalu Streams Enterprises still stood, the false companies covering his hidden wallets.
Forty-three meticulously crafted wallets, built by the IT team led by Kara's wit, existing solely to hold digital treasure untraceable to Darren Steele.
Each had invested $50,000 into Bitcoin at that same $7 price point. And under Darren's orders, Kara had initiated the sale.
It was a $2,150,000 total investment. And the sale brought back $76,785,714.28.**
Together, the figures added:
┏$71,428,571.42 (personal sale) + $76,785,714.28 (phantom profits) = $148,214,285.70.┛
One hundred and forty-eight million dollars. All from a single calculated plan. Yet, that was still not the end of it.
"Show me the hive."
The system's interface replied by replacing the present screen with a complex, three-dimensional latticework representing the neural network he had Ileana create for him.
Project Fantom Hive
It sounded like nothing, but it was the complete pinnacle of why Darren wanted Ileana in the first place.
Darren wanted an army of ghosts. Thousands of wallets in tiny amounts. Scattered, untraceable, and invisible. And he wanted to be the only one who controlled them. No one else was to even know about it.
He told her this all those weeks ago. Because he had this all planned even then.
Ileana had delivered just what he asked. She created Fandom Hive into an ecosystem mimicking blockchain decay. She exploited the protocols, dormant ICOs, and test networks she stole from the Lotus Triad after stopping their cyber attack, including the chaotic debris of some of their failed forks.
Using a modified version of the nascent Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) wallet concept, she generated a theoretically infinite number of child addresses from a single, deeply buried master seed phrase – a phrase only Darren possessed, etched not on any server, but onto a sliver of titanium locked in a biometric safe within the office wall.
Each child wallet held a seemingly insignificant amount – 5 BTC, 12 BTC, maybe 28 BTC – amounts easily dismissed as dust, test funds, or lost coins.
Ileana then used custom scripts to weave these wallets into the fabric of the blockchain's history. Some appeared as unclaimed mining rewards from 2010. Others were disguised as outputs from long-dead mixing services or sat in wallets associated with defunct exchanges like the short-lived "Mizar Bridge" API, repurposing its abandoned relay layers as camouflage.
She created layers of transaction "noise" – micro-transactions between Hive wallets, timed to coincide with unrelated network activity, making the entire structure look like random blockchain static. Thousands of needles hidden not just in a haystack, but in a thousand different haystacks scattered across a digital desert.
The master control? A single, heavily obfuscated command module, embedded within a seemingly benign piece of code on an air-gapped server Ileana maintained.
With one authenticated command from Darren, every single Hive wallet would instantly, silently, sweep its contents into a single, pristine cold storage address – a black hole for digital wealth. The entire network was blind to the connections until the moment of activation.
The total nestled within Fantom Hive's ghostly embrace? 263,000 BTC.
The system showed his profit: 263,000 BTC × $250 = $65,750,000.**
Adding this to the tidal wave: $148,214,285.70 + $65,750,000 = $213,964,285.70
Over 200 million dollars. That was the entirety of what he had made from this crazy endeavor.
But even more than that, he'd created an assurance that Bitcoin was going to become successful. And he would follow on to be wealthier.
He was going to climb up that Forbes list. Not only as the youngest billionaires, but overall as the richest in the state. In the country.
Why not even in the wall.
Ding!
His phone chimed.
Darren didn't bother. He knew what it was about. It chimed again, making the office echo. Then another came. And another. His secondary monitor lit up with notifications flooding in from CryptoTracker:
@CryptoProphet: HOLY FUCKING SATOSHI! @Mr. Duckling just liquidated a legendary stack. The Oracle of LA strikes again! Profit estimates? Astronomical. #DucklingDominance #BTCKing
@BlockchainBetty: ....
@HandsomeDuckling:...
@WallStreetWolf: ...
Ding. His laptop joined the chorus – emails cascading into his inbox. Interview requests from Bloomberg, CNBC. Overtures from venture capital titans smelling blood in the water.
A formal notification: 'Forbes: Preliminary Inquiry Regarding Net Worth Verification.' His phone began to vibrate, the screen flashing with names that commanded respect in traditional finance.
Darren Steele didn't move. He leaned back in the sculpted embrace of his chair, the symphony of his ascension playing around him – the digital pings, the vibrating phone, the hum of the city below.
He stared at an unremarkable point on the far wall, ignoring the noise like they were flashes of cameras. As he stared, a small smile of realization spread on his face.
"I almost forgot," he murmured, the sound barely disturbing the charged air, "what it's like to just… laugh and hang out." He let the silence reclaim the space after his words. "Maybe it's time I did it for a while, huh. I deserve it."
Knock. Knock.
Darren blinked awake and looked at the door.
"Come in."
It opened smoothly, revealing Sandy, standing framed in the doorway.
Darren admired her for a moment. At thirty-one, Sandy still possessed that quiet beauty that belied her age, and it was accentuated this morning by a tailored heather-grey skirt suit and a crisp ivory blouse.
Her brown hair was pulled back in a neat, no-nonsense chignon, revealing pearl studs – elegant, understated. There were faint lines beginning to show at the corners of her eyes, lines earned not just by time, but by years of navigating the world before Darren exploded onto the scene.
Their gaze held their memories for a while, before she spoke first.
"Morning, sir," she said, stepping inside and closing the door. She approached the desk and placed a file precisely before him. "The consolidated financial report for Q2. I thought I'd bring it up myself."
Darren raised an eyebrow, surprised. "Sandy? You brought this up? Where's Rachel? Isn't she the one who usually does this?"
Sandy met his gaze, a hint of dry amusement in her own. She smoothed an invisible crease on her skirt. "It is ultimately my job, sir. Overseeing the flow. She only borrowed it for a while because of an issue." She smiled anxiously. "But it's fine now. I better get straight to it... especially on mornings like this."
Darren went through the files, but got bored halfway and sighed, dropping it on the table to start a conversation.
"You know," he said, losing some of his CEO edge, "I asked you to prepare something else a while back. That table reservation?" He watched her closely, searching for the memory. "Did you?"
Sandy didn't hesitate. A small, nervous smile touched her lips. "I did. It's confirmed."
"Where?" Darren asked, though he suspected he knew.
"Castle Cottage," she replied softly, the name conjuring images of stone walls, intimate lighting, and a past chapter of their complex dynamic.
Their eyes locked.
Darren's smile widened, genuine and warm this time, reaching his eyes and momentarily erasing the calculated intensity of the billionaire. It was the smile of the young man she remembered before the weight of empires settled on his shoulders.
"Castle Cottage," he echoed, the words sounding like a sigh of relief. "It's been... too long since we were there. Feels like another lifetime."
He sat back though his gaze still held hers, steady, expectant, the question hanging in the suddenly intimate quiet of the vast office.
"You free tonight?"