met free Chapter 152: Collateral
Chapter 152: Collateral
The sleek black sedan glided into the driveway of a quiet, tree-lined suburban neighborhood, a stark contrast to the towering glass and concrete of the financial district. Jake stepped out of the backseat, nodding a brief dismissal to Elias, who kept the engine idling just long enough to ensure Jake made it to the front porch safely.
Unlocking the door, Jake expected the quiet, empty stillness of a weekday evening. Instead, the smell of clean laundry and the distant sound of a television met him.
Walking into the living room, he found Aliya curled up on the sofa, her laptop balanced precariously on her knees and a half-empty bag of chips resting beside her.
Jake stopped in the doorway, arching an eyebrow. "What are you doing here? Don’t you have a perfectly good apartment next to campus?"
Aliya didn’t even look up from her screen, her fingers tapping rapidly on the keyboard. "Oh, I’m sorry Mr. Billionaire. Am I not allowed to visit my own parents’ house now?"
"Very funny," Jake said, tossing his jacket over the back of an armchair and unbuttoning his collar. "Looking at your track record over the past month, I honestly thought you’d forgotten this place existed. I haven’t seen your shoes in the hallway for weeks."
"Unlike you, dear big brother, some of us actually have things to do," Aliya shot back, finally looking up to glare at him with a sarcastic pout. "I have daily lectures, assignments, and projects to tend to. I can’t just skip out whenever I feel like it."
Jake let out a dry chuckle, walking over to the kitchen counter to pour himself a glass of water. "You’re talking like running a hundred-billion-mark company is child’s play. Trust me, the paperwork alone is worse than any report you’re writing."
Aliya rolled her eyes dramatically, sliding her laptop onto the coffee table. "Oh, poor billionaire. The burden of too many digits. Look, if you find it that bothersome, you can always just wire a couple of those billions to my account to lessen the weight. I’m a very supportive sister like that."
"You wish," Jake scoffed, turning back to face her with a mocking grin. "Focus on finishing your degree first. You still have to hit that GPA target if you want to win the bet we made."
"I am completely on track to—"
Before Aliya could finish her protest, the front door clicked open. Martha Rivers walked in carrying a grocery bag, with Ryan close behind her, loosening his tie after a long day at the office.
Martha took one look at the tense, defensive postures of her two children and let out a tired sigh, setting the groceries on the counter. "Can the two of you not spend more than five minutes in the same room without picking a fight? Honestly, you’re both adults now."
"He started it!" Aliya immediately pointed a finger at Jake, dropping her voice into a victimized whine. "I was just sitting here studying, and he walked in judging my life choices."
Jake didn’t say a word. He just leaned against the counter, watching her with a slow, deliberate grin. "And here I was, actively thinking about getting you a new car. You have deeply hurt me."
Aliya froze. Her mouth opened slightly, her mind visibly scrambling to figure out if he was being serious or baiting her. Seeing the absolute amusement in Jake’s eyes, her face flushed red. She snatched a decorative velvet cushion from the couch and hurled it straight at his head.
"Get out! You are the absolute worst!" she yelled.
Jake caught the cushion easily with one hand, laughing quietly.
"Aliya, watch your manners!" Martha scolded, though her own lips were twitching upward.
Ryan patted his wife’s shoulder, a warm, easy smile breaking across his face as he walked past the sofa. "Let them be, Martha. You know this is just the only way these two know how to show affection. If they aren’t trading insults, it means something is actually wrong."
Aliya crossed her arms, sinking deeper into the sofa cushions. "Well, his affection is ruining my life. Jake, you seriously need to keep a lower profile. It’s completely messing up my social circle at the university."
Jake paused, setting the cushion down on a barstool. "How exactly am I ruining your social life?"
"Do you have any idea how exhausting it is to go to a simple study group and have everyone hint around for investment tips because my brother is apparently the ’Gold King’?" Aliya groaned, throwing her hands up. "People I haven’t spoken to since freshman year are suddenly sending me memes of your face from TikTok fan pages. I’m literally collateral damage in your PR campaign."
"Well, you might want to brace yourself," Jake said, picking up his glass of water again. "It’s probably going to get a lot worse from next week. I just approved a live, prime-time interview for Tuesday evening."
Aliya’s jaw dropped. She stared at him for three seconds before let out a loud, theatrical groan, burying her face in her hands. "Live? On national television? Great. I guess I can say goodbye to whatever social life I still had. I deserve massive compensation for this emotional trauma, Jake. Massive."
Jake walked over, standing near the edge of the sofa. He looked down at her fake-crying routine, entirely unimpressed. "Stop with the crocodile tears, Al. I already told you—I’ll buy you the car. Pick whatever model you want this weekend, as long as it has a solid safety rating."
The transformation was instantaneous. Aliya bounced off the sofa, her eyes wide and sparkling as she practically launched herself at him, throwing her arms around his neck. "No take-backs! Dad, you heard him! He said whatever model I want!"
Ryan laughed, poking Martha in the ribs with his elbow as they watched the siblings. "See? What did I tell you?"
Martha shook her head, an affectionate, exasperated expression on her face as she began unpacking the groceries. "Alright, alright, enough bribery for one evening. Go wash your hands, both of you. I’m making dinner, and I expect actual, civil conversation at the table tonight."
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Dinner was a loud, comfortable affair that felt entirely detached from the cold efficiency of Apex Plaza. Martha had laid out a spread of roasted chicken and home-cooked sides, stubbornly refusing to let Jake use his phone at the table. For an hour, the conversation stayed strictly grounded—Ryan talked about a minor structural dispute at his engineering firm, Martha complained about the rising price of organic produce, and Aliya spent fifteen minutes showing her father a compilation of compact SUVs she was already researching on her phone.
Jake mostly listened, leaning back in his chair and enjoying the sheer normality of it. In this room, he wasn’t a market anomaly or a threat to legacy conglomerates; he was just a son who still got scolded for leaning too far back in his seat.
Once the plates were cleared, Ryan gestured toward the back porch. "Grab your coat, Jake. Let’s get some fresh air."
Jake nodded, picking up his jacket from the armchair and following his father out into the cool evening night. The air was crisp, carrying the scent of damp earth and incoming rain.
Ryan leaned against the wooden railing of the porch, looking out at those distant towers before turning his gaze to his son. "Your uncle called me this afternoon."
Jake paused, his hands resting inside his pockets. "Darius? Did he mention the wire clearance?"
"He said the funds hit the account before the close of business," Ryan said, a subtle mix of pride and gravity in his voice. "Fifty billion marks returned in full, plus the premium. He told me he’s never seen an institutional loan cleared that quickly in his entire career."
"There was no point in leaving a liability open on the ledger," Jake replied flatly, his eyes tracing the line of the horizon. "Golden Investments needs to be entirely unencumbered before we move into the next phase. Carrying a four-percent monthly interest rate just to maintain appearance didn’t make strategic sense."
Ryan stayed quiet for a moment, pulling a small silver lighter from his pocket and turning it over in his fingers. "He also told me about the invitation from the Ministry of Trade and Minerals."
Jake’s jaw tightened imperceptibly. "He mentioned it to me, too. It arrived at my office this morning."
"Those guys are a different kind of beast compared to Sterling," Ryan said, his tone dropping into the protective, measured cadence of a father who understood the darker mechanisms of the city. "The men in those ministerial offices don’t care about your connections or liquid. To them, a twenty-three-year-old with a hundred billion marks isn’t just an impressive success story—it’s an unregulated security hazard to their established network."
"I know," Jake said, his voice entirely calm. "They’re already trying to leverage the Meridian Group’s steel refinery expansion by freezing the zoning permits for the rail line. They want to see if I’ll react."
Ryan looked at his son, studying the hard, unyielding expression on Jake’s face. He saw no trace of panic, no hesitation. The boy who had walked across the graduation stage not long ago had been completely replaced by an executive who weighed political shakedowns like standard market variables.
"Darius booked that meeting to give you a shield, but don’t expect the Minister to be friendly," Ryan warned softly. "They will try to find a crack in your foundation. They’ll look at your age, your background, your family—anything they can use to force a concession."
"Let them look," Jake said, turning his head to meet his father’s eyes. A faint, icy spark of focus settled into his gaze. "They think my age is a vulnerability because they assume I’m desperate for their approval. But they’re missing the obvious part. Because I didn’t inherit an old-money empire, I don’t have decades of political debts to pay off. I don’t owe any favors to the Ministry."
Ryan stared at his son for a long beat, then a slow, proud smile crept onto his face. He reached out, clapping a heavy hand against Jake’s shoulder. "You’ve got your grandfather’s steel in you, Jake. Just make sure you stay two steps ahead of them."
"I’m already three steps ahead, Dad," Jake replied softly.
The first heavy drops of rain began to splatter against the wooden deck of the porch, catching the light from the kitchen window. Inside, they could hear Aliya laughing loudly at something on the television, while Martha called out for them to come back inside before they caught a cold.
Jake took one last look at the stormy sky over the city. Turning on his heel, Jake walked back inside to join his family, leaving the gathering storm behind him in the dark.
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