Chapter 167: Chapter 167: Smells Like Money
The aroma of freshly brewed espresso and sizzling bacon filled the kitchen of the Zenith penthouse. Sunlight filtered through the glass windows, reflecting off the polished marble countertops.
Jake stood by the kitchen island, fastening the silver buttons on his cuffs. He wore a crisp, charcoal-grey bespoke three-piece suit that tailored perfectly to his frame, paired with a dark silk tie. A luxury mechanical watch sat heavy on his left wrist.
Catherine walked out of the bedroom, adjusting a diamond earring. She looked elegant in a deep emerald-green professional wrap dress and classic black heels. Her hair was styled perfectly, matching her sharp corporate demeanor. She walked over to the stove, plating the eggs and toast before turning to Jake with a knowing smile.
"You’re remarkably quiet for a man who is currently trending higher than the national election," Catherine said, a teasing smile playing on her lips as she accepted the glass from him. "I glanced at LOOP before brushing my teeth. The entire business district is treating you like some kind of mythical creature."
"Every day is a big day lately," Jake replied, taking a sip from his black coffee. "The pre-market data is already looking heavy. The whole city is on edge after that interview."
Catherine leaned against the counter, her eyes tracing his expression. "Aliya’s vlog didn’t help either. I checked LOOP before getting dressed. You buying a McLaren at double the price is currently the most discussed topic in Veyra."
Jake chuckled, checking the time. "Al doesn’t know how to do anything quietly. Let them talk. It serves the purpose."
"Just don’t break the local servers before lunch," Catherine teased, stepping forward to adjust the knot of his tie with practiced ease. "I have a board meeting at nine, and I need the communication lines working."
"No promises," Jake said, leaning down to give her a brief kiss. "Eat your breakfast. The driver is waiting downstairs."
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The heavy rain had finally cleared by Wednesday morning, leaving the glass skyscrapers of Aurelia’s financial district gleaming under a crisp, pale winter sun. Inside the pristine executive suite of Golden Investments, the quiet hum of high-tier terminal cooling fans was the only sound cutting through the early morning stillness.
Jake sat behind his desk, his tailored suit jacket draped over the back of his leather chair. His white shirt sleeves were rolled up to his forearms, a fresh cup of unsweetened black coffee steaming beside his keyboard.
With a casual flick of his thumb, he unlocked his phone and opened the LOOP interface.
He paused, an amused brow creeping upward.
Jake stared at the screen, a quiet exhale escaping his nose. ’Al really set a fire with that video. I expected a bump, but this is a circus. Seven million people staring at an empty page. If I don’t give them something solid, the blowback on Golden Investments’ public image will be a headache I don’t want to deal with.’
Thanks entirely to the viral luxury car shopping vlog Aliya had aggressively dropped, his ghost profile had experienced a secondary atmospheric spike. The metric was staggering.
[ 7,104,820 Followers ]
Account Status: Verified • 0 Posts
Seven million people. More than a quarter of Veyra’s entire connected population was currently staring at a completely blank, picture-less digital profile, waiting for a single sign of life.
’Eight twenty-eight. The pre-market order books are loading, and the spread is widening. Let’s give them a little nudge and see how fast the herd moves.’
Glancing at the desktop clock, which read exactly 08:28, Jake leaned back in his chair. He tapped the text field, typed a single, cryptic sentence, and hit upload without a second thought.
At precisely 08:30 AM, the blank feed received its very first historical update:
@JakeRivers_GI: Today smells like money.
Jake tossed the phone onto the desk blotter, intending to pull up his morning operational sheets. He didn’t think much of it—it was a simple, confident phrase.
But the internet didn’t see a phrase. They saw an oracle delivering a prophecy.
Within ninety seconds, the internal notification counter on his device didn’t just climb—it froze the app entirely. Across the capital city, the simple four-word status update acted like an electric shock delivered straight to the central nervous system of the financial district.
Inside a high-end apartment complex downtown, Luke—the proprietary derivatives trader—was in the middle of pouring a cup of water when his monitor emitted a sharp, high-priority system chime. His phone screen lit up simultaneously with a LOOP broadcast alert.
He dropped the cup. Water splashed across the counter as he lunged for his mouse, his eyes bloodshot.
"Chase! Chase, get up right now!" Luke screamed toward the adjacent bedroom, his voice cracking with pure adrenaline. "He posted! The Gold King just updated his feed!"
From the bedroom, a loud crash echoed as Chase practically tripped over his bedsheets, running into the lounge while frantically trying to open the app on his phone. "What did he say?! Did he drop the contract parameters? Is it a dividend buyback?!"
"No! Look at the screen!" Luke yelled, slamming his hand onto his desk as the page struggled to load against the vertical traffic scaling. "He just said ’Today smells like money!’ The broker chats are already melting down!"
Across the country, the comment section beneath Jake’s solitary post was getting hundreds of replies per minute, transforming into an absolute psychological war zone.
User_Alpha99: HE SPOKE! Brothers, the King has entered the chat! ’Today smells like money’—this is the baseline signal! He’s telling us the market volatility today is going to be historic!
ShortSqueeze_Veyra: What does it mean?! Is he buying the morning open or shorting the upper resistance? Someone call a Sterling Bank informant, we need to know what his primary institutional vault is doing!
Audit_Guy: Look at the volume indicators on the Veyra Exchange right now! The retail sector hasn’t even officially opened its morning bell, but the pre-market liquidity queues just spiked by three hundred percent! People are literally calling their relatives to liquidate their retirement bonds just based on four words!
VeyraVibes_Daily: I just called my older brother who works at the Aurelia Central clearing desk—he said their internal routing lines are choking because everyone is moving capital into their brokerage accounts at the exact same time. The King is holding the entire country by the throat!
Bearish_Dave: Everyone calm down. This is classic market manipulation prep. He’s trying to pump the sentiment so his fund can dump their long positions on our heads at 09:00. Don’t be exit liquidity!
Risk_Manager_V: Highly irresponsible post. A single individual shouldn’t have this much unearned leverage over retail sentiment. If the market reverses, millions of marks will be wiped out because of a vague four-word sentence. Watch yourselves.
Back in the quiet sanctuary of his office, Jake paid no attention to the escalating public hysteria. His focus had already shifted.
’The orders are stacking exactly where the algorithms want them. 2,342... 2,344... they’re pushing the price up to make it look like an aggressive bull run. The retail traders are biting hard on the long side. If I don’t put out the exact boundaries, they’re going to get crushed when the big banks pull the floor out.’
He pulled his terminal display closer, logging directly into the secure, institutional trading interface. The screen flickered, loading the real-time, highly volatile market chart for XAUUSD (Gold).
As the green and red candles ticked rapidly against the dark background, consolidating heavily within a tight, deceptive range, Jake took a slow, measured breath. He currently had massive liquid reserves resting ready across his domestic and international vaults, but he had no intention of playing it safe. To deliver on his public promise, he needed a setup of flawless, undeniable precision.
He focused his gaze on the moving lines.
Almost instantly, a familiar, dull pulse throbbed behind his left eye, and something deep inside his consciousness shifted.
The chaotic, unpredictable noise of the gold chart suddenly vanished. The candles stopped moving like random, volatile updates and began forming geometric patterns that surfaced with absolute, crystalline clarity. It was like watching a language he finally understood perfectly. Every hidden liquidity sweep, every institutional block order, and every microsecond of hesitation in the price action laid itself out right in front of him.
His eyes tracked the screen as the market makers’ intentions highlighted themselves in his mind. The major algorithms were intentionally propping up the price near the 2,345.00 resistance line. They were building a massive psychological trap—enticing millions of retail buyers to go long on a false breakout, before violently reversing the entire market to hunt their stop-losses down at the lower support floors.
Jake’s lips curved into a cold, sharp smile. He saw the exact ceiling. He saw the exact coordinates where the trapped volume would maximize.
Wasting no time, he reached for his phone. His fingers flew across the screen, translating the visual lines into a public message. He wasn’t going to give them a handout; he was going to give them a direction.
’Let’s see who actually knows how to read an order block. If they follow the parameters, they’ll clear enough profit to change their lives today. If they get greedy and miss the exit floor, that’s on them.’
He typed out his second official LOOP post, embedding the precise structural coordinates of the market trap directly into the text:
@JakeRivers_GI: I promised everyone a gift, whether you can claim it is up to you.
Asset: XAUUSD (Gold)
Liquidity Sweep Zone: 2,347.80 – 2,349.50
Target Floor: 2,329.65
Hope you smell the money too.
He hit submit.
’The bait is in the water. Silas should be ready at the bank desk, and the institutional blocks are lined up perfectly. Now we just watch the dominoes fall.’
The signal was live. Jake closed the terminal window, leaning back in his leather chair as he watched the morning sun fully illuminate the financial capital of Veyra.
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