Chapter 89: The Bitcoin Ten
July. Early morning.
I'm checking prices out of habit. Coffee brewing. LA waking up outside my windows.
Bitcoin: $10.00 per coin.
I stare at the number.
Do the math three times to make sure.
15,000 coins at $10 each.
$150,000.
From $1,500 invested.
Ten thousand percent return.
My total portfolio:
Bitcoin: $150,000Apple stock: $75,000Google: $15,000Amazon: $10,000
Total: $250,000.
At 27 years old.
From supernatural knowledge.
I close the laptop. Open it again. Check the numbers again.
Still there.
Still real.
My secret spreadsheet has projections:
2013: Bitcoin hits $1,000 (potential $15M)2017: Bitcoin hits $20,000 (potential $300M)2021: Bitcoin hits $64,000 (potential $960M)
I'm sitting on a future fortune.
And nobody knows.
Katie thinks I'm successful. Shop owner, consultant. Comfortable.
She doesn't know I'm wealthy. Generationally wealthy if I'm patient.
My phone rings. Her.
"Morning," I answer.
"Morning. You up for breakfast? I'm craving pancakes."
"Yeah. Give me twenty minutes."
"Perfect. Love you."
She hangs up.
Said it casually. Like it's fact.
Love you.
We've never said that before.
She just did.
And I—
I didn't say it back.
The Original Pancake House. Crowded. Loud.
Katie's already ordered when I arrive. Stack of blueberry pancakes. Coffee. Orange juice.
"You look stressed," she observes.
"Just thinking."
"About?"
About being secretly wealthy and lying to you by omission every single day.
"Business stuff. Third shop opening in three weeks."
"You'll crush it. You always do."
The server brings my coffee. I doctor it. Buying time.
"Katie. On the phone. You said—"
"Love you. Yeah." She's cutting her pancakes. Not looking at me. "I know it's early. We've been dating what, two months? But I—feel it. So I said it. If that's too fast—"
"It's not too fast."
"No?"
"No. I just—wasn't expecting it."
"Sorry for the ambush."
"Don't apologize."
She's still not looking at me. Focused on her food.
"Do you—" She pauses. "You don't have to say it back. I don't want you to feel—"
"I love you too."
Now she looks up. "Really?"
"Really."
"Because you feel it or because I said it first?"
"Because I feel it."
She's grinning. "Okay. Good. That's—good."
We eat. The conversation moves on. But something's shifted.
She loves me.
I love her.
But I'm lying to her every day about who I am and what I have.
That distance—the secret wealth, the powers, the impossible knowledge—it's there.
Growing.
Katie knows successful Stuart.
She doesn't know wealthy Stuart.
Or transmigrator Stuart.
Or future-knowing Stuart.
She knows the edited version.
And that's—
That's all she can ever know.
Back home. Alone.
I open my spreadsheet. The secret one.
Add notes to the WEALTH_PURPOSE document:
Bitcoin hit $10. Quarter million liquid. On track for generational wealth.
Uses planned: - Scholarship fund for artists (launch 2012): $500K seed - Employee profit sharing (2011): 10% of shop profits - Emergency fund for friends (active): $50K reserved - Katie? Unknown. Can't tell her. Too complicated to explain.
I stare at that last line.
Katie doesn't fit in the wealth plans because I can't tell her the wealth exists.
Not without explaining how I got it.
Not without revealing powers.
And revealing powers means revealing transmigration.
And that secret stays buried forever.
So Katie knows I love her.
But she doesn't know me.
Not fully.
Maybe nobody ever can.
That's the cost of supernatural advantages.
Isolation.
Even in love.
I close the laptop.
Check my phone. Message from Katie.
Katie: That was nice. Saying it out loud. Love you, comic shop guy.
I text back: Love you too.
And mean it.
But also feel the distance.
The secret between us.
Growing wider every day I don't tell her the truth.
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