The news cycle had turned into a relentless storm, yet again.
Once again because Tony Stark did something insane, though this time he came up with a rather catchy name the vulture gobbled up in one go.
Iron Man. The words were everywhere. On billboards. In newspapers. Blinking in twenty-foot letters across Times Square. It was no longer some shadowy government project or black-ops contractor rumor. Stark had stepped out of the cave, survived who knows what, and then, just to ensure the world would never stop talking, he sat down in front of a hundred flashing cameras, smirked like a man with a death wish, and said:
"I am Iron Man."
The internet combusted. The market followed suit.
Ethan Cain watched it all from the comfort of his home office, two monitors glowing with stock charts that looked more like the seismograph of a magnitude 8 earthquake than any sane company valuation. Stark Industries, already volatile after Tony Stark's return from captivity, took off like a rocket strapped to another, bigger rocket.
His phone rang less than a minute after the broadcast.
"Cain," his stock broker rasped like he'd been smoking through a panic attack. "Please tell me you're watching this."
"I am."
"You're still holding, right? Tell me you're holding."
"I'm holding," Ethan said, sipping a protein shake.
"Good. Good, great. Because this thing's jumping in twenty-point swings every fifteen minutes. It just hit sixty mil in value—your stake, not the total stock cap—sixty. Then thirty. Then back to fifty. I'm gonna need heart medication."
Ethan leaned back in his chair, watching the digital chaos like a warlord enjoying the battlefield from a distant hilltop.
"Let it breathe."
"What does that mean?!"
"It means," Ethan said, "Tony Stark just turned the defense industry into a tech circus, and everyone wants in. Let the clowns fight over the popcorn."
He hung up.
By midnight, the figure had hit eighty million. Ethan didn't sleep. He didn't even blink, except to refresh the charts. It was thrilling, in the way hanging off a skyscraper with dental floss might be thrilling…if you were clinically insane.
It was all volatility. All risk. And Ethan? Ethan didn't sell, he held like those degenerates at Wall Street Bets, like he wanted those diamond hands.
He was no longer gambling. He was investing in certainty, because while he didn't know everything about the future anymore, he knew enough. He knew the Iron Man tech revolution would sweep across the globe. He knew the next few years would be chaos, and the winners would be those who moved first, bought early, and didn't blink when things went red.
So he held.
And the world burned.
Meanwhile, chaos of another kind was sneaking through New York's alleys and rooftops.
Ethan noticed it in small, strange ways.
Peter Parker was getting slower.
The kid wasn't just tired, he was wrecked. Stumbling into Ethan's basement office with the kind of under-eye bags that would bankrupt a Sephora. Caffeine jittery. Late. Distracted. His hands sometimes shook when he reached for his phone, bruises that made no sense came and went.
Ethan didn't need to see the suit to know what was going on.
All it took was one look at Peter's web search history, which Ethan had full access to thanks to a clause in the contract no sixteen-year-old ever read:
"How strong is a human spine"
"How far can a person fall before dying"
"Does silk conduct electricity"
"What's the best camera for night photos"
Combine that with some quiet new bruises and a dozen half-finished prototype sketches for impact-resistant gloves made with a much, much tighter budget than Ethan's combat socks, and the picture formed pretty clearly.
The spider had crawled out of the lab and its self-doubt.
He was swinging now.
Peter had officially entered his masked menace era.
Ethan said nothing.
But he did wonder if Paul existed in this reality.
If he did, then Ethan might just kill someone.
"Hey," Peter said one afternoon, dragging himself through Ethan's reinforced garage door like a teenager who'd fought a subway train and lost. "I finished the specs you asked for."
He slapped a USB drive onto the desk, then dropped into a chair and immediately slumped sideways, like gravity was a suggestion he'd given up on.
Ethan picked up the drive. "Nice. You look like death, by the way."
Peter blinked one eye open. "Thanks. I've been...busy."
Ethan nodded, plugging in the drive. "Crime doesn't sleep, huh?"
Peter froze for half a second. Then grunted. "Yeah. Midtown's been rough lately."
"Tell me if I'm giving you too much work, wouldn't want your grades to fall." He said noncommittal, repressing a smile at the small heart attack he gave the young vigilante.
. . .
Publicly, the world had gone full circus.
Tony Stark's announcement sent shockwaves across the tech and military-industrial world. Weapons contracts were being pulled. Governments were scrambling. Stock prices wobbled like a drunk on stilts.
And yet public opinion soared. Everyone wanted to believe in the billionaire who built a suit in a cave and said no to war. Kids wore Iron Man masks. Merch flew off shelves. Talk shows gushed. Journalists speculated.
Meanwhile, Ethan's carefully placed investments rippled through dozens of smaller companies, materials science, energy storage, avionics, AI. His money moved like a storm through the tech sector.
Some days it dropped to thirty million. Others, it spiked past seventy. But Ethan held.
And waited.
Because this was just the beginning.
Just like Peter.
One night, Ethan stood on the roof of his building and watched the city.
Somewhere in the distance, a streak of red and blue arced between two towers, graceful, fast, and just a bit clumsy.
"Idiot," Ethan muttered.
But he didn't look away.
Because for all the volatility, all the chaos, all the risks.
Some things were worth holding onto.
Even the unpredictable ones.
Author's Note:
If you're enjoying the story and want to read ahead or support my work, you can check out my P@treon at [email protected]/LordCampione. But don't worry—all chapters will eventually be public. Just being here and reading means the world to me. Thank you for your time and support.