The color drained from Marcus and Adrian's faces the moment Jason finished speaking.
Brown studied them with undisguised impatience.
"Seriously? It's that bad?"
Neither man answered. Neither needed to. The weight in their expressions communicated everything Brown's arrogance prevented him from grasping.
Yes, GG Technologies was structurally compromised. Everyone in the financial world knew that. Ashes Capital's short-selling record was precise and merciless, built on months of careful positioning. But Jason's personal track record was something else entirely. Every move he had ever made in the market had been clean, decisive, and profitable. Not lucky. Not bold. Calculated to the last decimal point.
And this time, he hadn't come alone.
He had arrived with a coalition.
Marcus rose from his seat and offered Brown a thin, polished smile.
"Young Master Carter, forgive us. Urgent matters require our attention."
Adrian followed without a word. Brown fell into step behind them, and the three men moved to the car in tense silence.
The moment the doors closed, Marcus opened a video call.
Victor's face appeared on the screen. Beside him sat Daniel. Both looked as though they had aged a decade in the past hour.
Marcus laid out everything. The alliance Jason had announced. The capital network behind him. The public declaration made in front of the entire banquet. When he finished, silence stretched between the car and the villa study like a held breath.
Daniel spoke first, his voice measured and cold.
"Ashes Capital's short reports are authoritative. Fast, accurate, and their failure rate is nearly zero." He paused. "GG's cash flow is almost completely exhausted. Their R&D burn rate cannot be sustained. Technology monetization remains speculative. The convertible bonds are approaching default, and debt restructuring is not a realistic option." He looked directly into the camera. "In pure financial terms, GG is already a distressed asset."
He let that settle before asking the real question.
"So why would Jason enter the market at all? is he sending us a message?"
Victor stopped pacing and stood still.
"I wouldn't take this seriously from anyone else," he said. "But Jason doesn't treat money the way other people do. He never has." He looked at the screen. "And this time he brought others with him. Capital of that weight cannot be ignored."
Daniel gave a single nod. "But we cannot retreat because of a speech at a dinner party. We've spent months building this position. The groundwork has been laid. We are at the harvest stage. Walking away now means every dollar spent, every relationship leveraged, every piece of research produced becomes a sunk cost."
Ashes Capital, as a foreign hedge fund, could not operate without friction. They depended entirely on the Zane Group's infrastructure and connections. The Zane family had contributed enormous resources to make this short campaign possible. Pulling out now would mean abandoning not just capital, but reputation.
Brown leaned forward, his confidence already returning.
"Father, think about it clearly. Jason made that announcement directly in front of me. That was deliberate. That was intimidation." He spread his hands. "If he genuinely wanted to rescue GG, why announce it publicly? The smart move would be silence. Buy quietly, stabilize the stock, and say nothing."
He sat back with a smirk.
"He made that declaration to frighten us into retreating. If it works, we lose face, GG still collapses anyway, and he doesn't spend a single dollar. If it doesn't work and he actually commits capital out of pride?" He shrugged. "Then we take everything in one sweep."
The car fell quiet.
Inside the villa study, Daniel and Victor didn't respond immediately.
Marcus and Adrian exchanged a look. Neither of them shared Brown's comfort. They had watched Jason operate before. Every time he appeared reckless or emotional, it turned out he had already completed ten moves the rest of the table hadn't even considered yet. This felt less like a warning and more like a door being held open, inviting them to walk into a room they hadn't inspected.
Victor made the call.
"Continue monitoring. Do not increase exposure. We wait."
Not a retreat. Not an advance. Observation.
Brown exhaled with satisfaction and settled into his seat. He was certain he had read the situation correctly.
Marcus kept his eyes on the window and said nothing. In his experience, the most dangerous opponent was never the one who raged or threatened. It was the one who smiled and stated his intentions with perfect calm.
Back at the villa, Victor voiced the thought that had been nagging at him.
"The people at that banquet are not fools," he said. "They all know GG's condition. No rational investor commits serious capital to a company on the edge of collapse." He narrowed his eyes. "They're almost certainly showing solidarity with Jason. Following his lead as a gesture of goodwill. When the situation deteriorates, they'll exit quietly."
He checked the clock. Ten twenty-three in the evening.
"The American market opens in minutes. No one sleeps tonight."
He said the last part without drama, but the room understood the weight behind it.
At ten-thirty, Ashes Capital moved.
A comprehensive short report dropped into the market like a stone into still water. It contained supplier payment extension records, accounts receivable aging schedules, and detailed liquidity stress projections. The analysis was clinical, precise, and structured to destroy whatever confidence remained in GG's stock.
The market responded immediately. GG's price fell hard. Rick's firm, Qifu Venture Capital, which held a major stake, absorbed enormous unrealized losses within minutes.
Inside the Zane villa, the tension dissolved slightly. Brown couldn't contain himself.
"I knew it." He laughed and leaned back in his chair. "You were all overthinking this. Jason put on a performance and walked away. Anyone can make a speech." He shook his head with satisfaction. "I'd love to watch him throw a fortune into this fire out of stubbornness."
Victor, Daniel, Marcus, and Adrian did not react. Their eyes stayed fixed on the screens. Something felt unresolved. The short was working. The numbers were moving in the right direction. But the feeling in the room didn't match the data.
Then the buy orders began.
Kevin entered the market. Then Josh. Then Ethan, David, Robert, Matthew, Sophia, and Ryan in sequence. Large block purchases hit GG's shares and convertible bonds simultaneously through open market channels. The volume climbed past the Zane family's projections within the first few minutes.
GG's descent slowed.
Then stopped.
Then reversed.
Victor's jaw tightened.
"It's temporary. Sentiment is still weak. It won't hold."
He was still speaking when Jason entered.
Through offshore vehicles and Malaysian financial accounts, Jason executed a purchase of nearly fifty percent of GG's freely circulating shares. Simultaneously, he acquired three hundred million dollars in convertible bonds at fifty cents on the dollar, securing creditor voting rights in the process.
Total deployment in the first movement: eight hundred million dollars.
The room went silent.
Jason wasn't finished.
He coordinated with brokerage channels to cut off the supply of borrowable shares. Remaining float was locked through over-the-counter transactions. Short sellers who moved to cover their positions discovered that borrowable shares had nearly vanished from the market.
Out-of-the-money call options were swept in large volumes. Market makers, forced to delta hedge their exposure, began buying the underlying shares. Long volatility futures accumulated in parallel.
Each mechanism was simple in isolation. Together, executed at this scale and speed, they were devastating.
Jason's personal capital exposure reached one point six billion dollars.
Brown stared at the number on the screen. His mouth opened and closed without producing a sound. The man who had spent years measuring wealth in sports cars and hotel suites sat completely still for the first time anyone in the room could remember.
Victor's face had gone pale. Daniel's expression was stone. Marcus gripped the armrest of his chair hard enough that his knuckles whitened. Adrian's fingers shook against his keyboard.
They had known it wouldn't be simple. They had not prepared for this.
And the cascade wasn't over. Watching the scale of Jason's commitment, Ethan and the others increased their own positions. The psychology of the market shifted. This was no longer a debate about GG's fundamentals. It was a demonstration of force, and markets respond to force. Capital at that scale doesn't just prop up a stock price. It rewrites the narrative around a company, pulling retail sentiment and institutional attention in its wake.
Victor stopped moving entirely. His eyes locked onto the chart, and something changed in his face. A realization arriving too late to be useful.
"He's not trying to save GG."
Daniel looked up from his screen.
Victor's voice dropped.
"He's engineering a short squeeze. GG's fundamentals are irrelevant to him. He's not here for the company." He turned to face the room. "He's here for the short sellers' money."
The study went dead quiet.
Every person in that room understood what followed from that conclusion. Ashes Capital had spent months constructing a trap around GG Technologies, precise and patient and well-funded.
But at some point during those months, without anyone noticing, Jason had begun building a different trap.
One designed for them.
Ashes Capital and the Zane family had believed they were the hunters.
The screens in front of them told a different story.
They were the harvest.
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