While Catherine Zeta-Jones stood at the window wondering how good life could be with real money, Scott Rogers sat in the back of his stretch Lincoln, watching the Westchester streets slide past on the way to LAX.
Ten years of memories played through his mind like a private film reel.
He hadn't always been Scott Rogers. Once, in another life, he had been an ordinary man from the future who went to sleep one night and woke up as an eleven-year-old boy in rural Arkansas—father freshly dead, mother already breaking under the weight of it all.
The new memories arrived in a flood. His name was Scott Rogers. His father had been Steve Rogers, a Vietnam veteran. His mother, Sarah, had held the family together until she couldn't.
Steve had come home from the war in 1971 a changed man—quiet, then angry, then lost to pills and eventually harder drugs smuggled up from Mexico. One night in 1982, during a deal gone bad, he was caught in the crossfire and died on a street in Little Rock. Sarah lasted only a few months longer before cancer took her. At eleven, Scott had no relatives, no guardian, and no choice but to enter the foster system.
Without intervention, his future had looked bleak: six more years in care, then a mountain of property taxes, maintenance bills, and student loans waiting when he aged out. Most kids in that position never climbed out.
But the universe had given him two gifts along with the second chance.
The first was a face that could have been Tom Cruise's younger brother—sharp jaw, intense eyes, easy smile. The second was total recall of the next thirty-plus years of history, markets, music, and culture.
Five years ago, when he had just turned eighteen, fate handed him the break he needed.
Hillary Clinton, then the First Lady of Arkansas, visited the children's home during a welfare inspection. She noticed the polite, good-looking kid with straight-A grades who looked uncannily like a movie star. What started as polite conversation turned into something far more personal. Within weeks a discreet relationship began.
Hillary wasn't rich, but she had connections. After months of careful persuasion—and keeping her very happy—she pulled strings to get him signed with Sony Pictures. Sony had just bought Columbia and was desperate for political goodwill in Washington. Scott became the perfect low-profile favor.
With zero acting training but perfect timing and market instincts, he was fast-tracked into Sony's music division. In an era when most unknown faces earned two or three thousand dollars for a music-video lead, he was suddenly pulling twenty thousand. Guest spots on television that paid four thousand for regular actors paid him fifty thousand per episode.
He wasn't winning Oscars, but he didn't need to. The checks cleared.
The second and third years were even better. He used his future knowledge to help Sony artists with positioning and trends. The Japanese executives, who at the time had money to burn, saw the results and kept the projects coming. By the end of year three he had earned well over three million dollars.
He didn't waste it on cars or parties. Almost everything went into the stock market.
He bought blue-chips everyone would later worship—Nike, Cisco, Microsoft—and loaded up on energy names like Devon Energy. In 1989 that single position turned hundreds of thousands into two million. In 1990, tipped off early about tightening environmental rules, he went all-in on Waste Management. The stock exploded and pushed him into eight figures.
1991 was the breakout year. The Gulf War bull market, early knowledge of banking digitization, and heavy leverage on Jack Henry & Associates sent his portfolio into the stratosphere. He also took his first serious flyer on small-cap "miracle stocks" he remembered from old internet lists. A million dollars became thirteen million in months.
By December 1991 his net worth stood at two hundred seventy million dollars.
Suddenly the press noticed. The Wall Street Journal called him "the minor star who rode the bull market to a new tax bracket." The New York Times and Los Angeles Times ran features on his unlikely rise. Invitations poured in. So did requests from every charity under the sun—animal rescues, climate groups, obscure foundations. Scott found the constant begging tiresome, but he wasn't naïve. In this town, money attracted leeches.
He wasn't completely opposed to giving. For practical reasons he had quietly donated a sizable amount to the Los Angeles Police Department. The result was immediate: a patrol car now sat near his West Hollywood gate every night. No one from South Central ever bothered his property. Peace of mind was worth every penny.
The Lincoln turned onto the airport access road. Scott leaned back, a small smile on his lips.
He was no longer the orphan from Arkansas. He was twenty-one years old, worth nine figures, sleeping with one of the most ambitious women in American politics, and dating a rising British actress who thought she had won the lottery.
And the best part?
The real game was only just beginning.