Ethan pulled up his banking app — the one from his memory that, which now was just a Chase student checking account with $847 in it.
He stared at the number for a long moment.
In another life, there had been accounts with eight figures resting in them like sleeping bears. Portfolios. Holdings. A penthouse. A car that cost more than most people's houses. All of it built brick by brick over a decade of grinding, of sleeping four hours a night, of eating sad desk lunches and missing every holiday that mattered.
And now: eight hundred and forty-seven dollars.
He let out a slow breath through his nose, set the phone face-down on the desk, and stared at the ceiling.
Then he smiled.
Because he also remembered every single decision that had built those eight figures. Every early bet. Every company he'd spotted before the crowd did. Every market shift he'd watched arrive like a slow-moving storm on the horizon while everyone else was still looking at clear skies.
He wasn't starting from zero. He was starting from before the starting line, with the entire race memorized.
"Back to square one," he murmured, almost to himself. Then he shook his head. "No — back to before square one."
He got up, washed his face, changed into a clean shirt, and headed out into the Saturday morning.
Columbus in late May had that particular quality of light — warm and unhurried, the kind that made even strip malls look almost pleasant. Ethan walked with his hands in his pockets, the body of a seventeen-year-old and the posture of a thirty-two-year-old CEO, which produced a slightly odd effect that a passing neighbor clocked with a curious squint.
He needed capital. That was the immediate problem.
The World Cup was thirty-four days away. He knew — with the certainty of lived memory — exactly how the tournament would unfold. Every upset. Every dominant performance. Every heartbreak and miracle. Brazil's catastrophic semifinal. Germany's clinical dismantling of the entire competition. Argentina grinding their way to the final on Messi's shoulders and then losing it in extra time to a lone substitute's goal.
He didn't need much to start. Just enough to place smart, incremental bets through the right channels. Nothing so large it drew attention. Nothing so aggressive it looked impossible. Just a quiet, methodical accumulation — the same way he'd built everything the first time, except faster. Smarter. Without the wasted years.
"Can't be sentimental this time," he told himself, turning onto High Street. "No seven-year detours. No carrying torches for people who've already moved on."
He thought briefly of Savannah Cole — somewhere across town right now, finishing her junior year, completely unaware that the boy two seats behind her in AP Econ had once spent the better part of a decade mourning what they never quite finished being.
He felt almost nothing. Which felt like a victory in itself.
By early evening, he'd ended up at Cloud Nine — a bar on Short North that had been a Columbus staple since the early 2000s. On weekends it pulled a mixed crowd: college students, young professionals, the occasional older regular nursing a drink alone at the far end of the counter.
Tonight they were running a replay of the 2010 World Cup Final on the main screen. Spain versus the Netherlands. Ethan settled onto a barstool with a Coke — he was seventeen, after all, and the bartender barely glanced at him in the Friday rush — and watched with a faint smile as a young Iniesta drifted across the pitch like smoke, threading passes no one else even saw coming.
Xavi. God, what a player. Pure football intelligence, the kind you couldn't coach into a person. The brain of the whole operation, making the game look as simple as breathing.
"Gotta find a way to get some seed money before the tournament starts," Ethan murmured into his glass, running the numbers in his head. Even a modest starting pot, placed correctly, could compound into something genuinely useful by the time the final whistle blew in Rio.
Around him, the bar was buzzing with the particular energy that precedes a World Cup — that global anticipation that turns otherwise sensible people into amateur analysts.
"Germany's going all the way this year, I'm telling you—"
"Brazil's at home. Home. There's no scenario where Brazil doesn't win."
"I heard the sportsbook is already getting hammered on Argentina—"
Ethan smiled quietly into his drink. Oh, you have no idea.
He was still working through the logistics in his head when something at the far end of the bar pulled his attention sideways.
A woman, sitting alone.
She was dressed in a sleeveless black blouse and a pencil skirt, black stockings catching the low amber light of the bar, legs crossed with the kind of natural elegance that didn't need to announce itself. Red heels. A cocktail held loosely between two fingers. A faint flush on her cheeks — one drink ahead of comfortable, maybe two.
She wasn't watching the game. She was somewhere else entirely, eyes slightly unfocused, whatever was weighing on her tonight clearly winning the battle for her attention.
Ethan's brow furrowed.
Why does she look familiar?
He studied her profile for a moment — the sharp cheekbones, the way she held herself even now, slightly withdrawn but composed. There was something in the posture, something in the line of her jaw—
It clicked.
Oh.
That's Mrs. Whitmore.
Diana Whitmore. Mother of Ashley Whitmore — one of Ethan's classmates. One of the most recognized faces at Jefferson High, actually: class president two years running, homecoming court, the kind of girl who made other students feel pleasantly mediocre by comparison. In his previous life, Ashley and Ethan had run in overlapping circles — friendly, easy, never anything more.
He'd met her mother twice. Once at a school fundraiser, once at a Fourth of July cookout at the Whitmore house junior year.
He hadn't recognized her immediately because context collapse was disorienting — you don't expect your classmate's mother to be sitting alone at a bar on a Saturday night looking like she was quietly losing a war with something.
He was just registering this, just deciding that the cleanest move was to quietly finish his Coke and slip out before she noticed him — last thing I need is Ashley hearing that I was at a bar — when he saw the man.
Heavyset. A faded scar running from the corner of his left eye down toward his jaw, the kind that had stories behind it and none of them good. He'd been standing at the far end of the bar for the past few minutes, and now he was moving — deliberately, with the unhurried confidence of someone who'd done this before — toward Diana Whitmore.
Ethan watched him lean in. Watched him put a hand on her arm.
Watched her pull back.
The bar was loud. The game was loud. The man said something close to her ear and smiled the kind of smile that had nothing warm in it. Diana's response was clipped — let go of me — audible only because Ethan had positioned himself to hear it without appearing to.
She tried to stand. His grip tightened.
There was something else, too — something Ethan's older, sharper eyes caught that the rest of the bar hadn't. The way she was moving slightly slower than she should be. The way her balance was just a degree off. The way her eyes, when she turned to push him away, were beginning to lose their focus faster than two drinks explained.
The cocktail in front of her was nearly empty.
A cold clarity dropped through Ethan's chest like a stone into still water.
She's been dosed.