Florence, 1500
By the third week, Elias had memorized the entire contents of his father's account room.
It wasn't difficult. Luca di Vero was a cautious merchant—not reckless enough to gamble, not clever enough to rise above local rivals. He kept meticulous books, though his math was often off by a Florin or two. He worked with textile traders in Lucca, and grain merchants in Naples, and lent coins to a minor noble in Siena who would default within the year.
Elias remembered that noble's name from a brief footnote in a 19th-century Florentine bankruptcy scroll he'd once studied in his old life.
That deal was doomed. He could save his father five hundred Florins.
But he didn't.
Not yet.
---
At breakfast, Luca praised him again.
"You do well with your letters, Elias. Your tutors say you read faster than the older boys."
"I like numbers more than letters," Elias replied. "They speak more plainly."
Luca laughed, but there was tension behind the smile. "That may be true. But do not speak like that outside this house. The priests might think you are cold-hearted."
They thought Galileo was dangerous, too.
Elias only nodded.
---
That day, he asked his tutor—Master Giovanni, a bitter Greek refugee from the Ottoman conquest—for something unusual.
"Can you teach me double-entry accounting?"
The man raised a bushy brow. "That is not for children."
"It's for merchants. I want to help my father."
Giovanni looked at him long and hard. "Where did you hear of such things?"
"From Father's assistant, Vincenzo," Elias lied. "He showed me a little."
Giovanni considered, then shrugged. "Very well. But if you headaches from the numbers, don't blame me."
My head won't ache, Elias thought. This is the language of empires.
---
That night, when the house quieted, Elias snuck into the account room.
It wasn't locked—few things were, yet—and by candlelight, he flipped open a ledger with practised hands. His small fingers traced the lines. Income, expense. Goods owed, interest is taken. Debts forgiven, debts forgotten.
There. The name: is Giulio d'Este of Siena.
He marked it mentally. In two years, that man would be hanged for attempting to defraud the local diocese.
Elias picked up a quill, hesitated, and then set it down. Not yet.
If he altered anything too soon, Luca might notice. Worse, the wrong people might notice—a ten-year-old boy shouldn't understand trade ratios better than grown men.
Patience, he reminded himself. You don't change the world by force. You guide it like a banker guides credit—quietly, invisibly, and only once the risk is acceptable.
---
When dawn broke, Elias had made his decision.
He would allow the Giulio loan to proceed—but he would prepare for its collapse. He would suggest—at just the right moment—that Father avoid renewing the terms. And he would begin his real work:
Creating a ledger no one else could read.
He called it the ghost account, and it lived entirely in his mind.
In that account, he tracked every coin that moved in and out of his father's house. Every trust made, every lie told, every ounce of loyalty or disloyalty earned.
Soon, he would begin to act. Carefully. Indirectly. One suggestion here. One correction there.
But not yet.
He was still a boy, after all.
Let them think him quiet.
Let them underestimate him.
---
Some fortunes are stolen. Others are inherited.
Mine will be grown. Coin by coin. Mistake by mistake. Victory by silence.