World's Richest Man: I Leaped Across Time-Chapter 182: Growth

The next two days were a blur of clear water, white sand, and sunlight. We lost track of time. No thinking about FBI, shadow organizations and crypto charts. Just the ocean.

On the final afternoon, Captain Ross pushed the throttle. The yacht surged forward, cutting through the chop as we raced back to the marina.

Sam and I stood at the railing, watching the Fort Lauderdale skyline turn from a jagged line into a wall of glass and steel.

He looked nervous again, his fingers tapping on the metal rail. "June is coming up," he said, his voice low over the sound of the engines. "My father’s birthday. I have to figure out my strategy."

"I’ve got a strategy for you," I said, looking straight ahead at the city. "Don’t go."

"Jack, if I don’t show, I’m out of the will. I lose my claim."

"You don’t need his claim," I said calmly. "You’ve got a billion dollars in assets right now, Sam. You built that. You don’t need to beg for his approval or his money."

I turned to face him. "Let Gabriel have the party. Let him play the good son. You stay here and build your own empire with what you have. We’ll make Gabriel fall together. On our terms."

"My own empire," he repeated quietly. "Yeah. Let’s do that."

The engines idled as we reached the dock. The vibration stopped, and the crew started throwing lines to the dockhands. The spell was broken. We were back on land.

The crew unloaded the luggage into a pile on the pier.

Sam was the first to head to his car. He looked better—color in his cheeks, standing taller. Mia sat in her wheelchair, but she looked bright and happy.

"Back to the grind?" Sam asked, extending a hand.

"Back to the grind," I agreed, gripping it. "Take the week, Sam. Focus on Mia. We’ll start the new plan Monday."

Mia reached out, and I bent down to hug her. "Thank you, Jack. Really. This was exactly what we needed."

"Just get strong, Mia."

Sam signaled the bodyguards, and they loaded up the SUV.

Jacob and Lucy were next. Jacob was sunburnt bright red, but he was grinning. "Man, that was legendary. We need to do this again."

"Next time we celebrate when you two get engaged," I said.

Lucy laughed, adjusting her hat pulling on Jacob’s arm. "Did you hear that darling?", then she looked back at me, "I’m holding you to that."

They walked off toward their car, hand in hand, looking tired but happy.

Britney gave me a shy hug, then hugged Charlotte longer. "Thanks for inviting me. It was... a lot. In a good way."

"You’re part of the circle now, Brit," Charlotte said. "Call us if you need anything."

Then, there was Valentina.

She stood by her convertible, bag already in the seat. She wore a white cover-up over her bikini, looking like a movie star. She lowered her sunglasses as we walked up.

Her eyes flickered between us with that same amused look.

"Well," she purred. "That was certainly... educational."

Charlotte stepped forward. "Don’t be a stranger, Val."

Valentina smirked, leaned in to kiss Charlotte on the cheek, lingering just a second too long, before turning to me. She traced a finger down my shirt. "I never am. Check your phone later. I might send you some photos."

She winked, slid into her car, and drove off, leaving us standing in the parking lot.

Charlotte grabbed my hand. "Ready to go home?"

"More than ready."

The drive north to Gainesville was quiet. The adrenaline had faded, replaced by a heavy tiredness. Charlotte slept for the first hour, her head against the window.

I kept the radio low, thinking. The fifty points. The conversation with Sam. How to make further use of Liberation. The world I was building was getting bigger and more dangerous. But looking over at Charlotte, breathing softly in the passenger seat, I knew why I was doing it.

We hit Gainesville around midnight. The streets were empty.

I pulled into our driveway and killed the engine.

Charlotte stirred, blinking her eyes open. "We’re here?"

"Home sweet home."

...

The weeks that followed didn’t tick by in seconds or minutes; they were measured in market closes, server logs, and the rising tide of influence.

June 2004

I checked my Freewinds status. Fifty points. Enough to buy favors that could topple governments, or enough to buy protection when the world inevitably tried to crush me. I let them sit there. Potential energy is often more dangerous than kinetic.

July 2004

"The birthday came and went," Sam told me over the phone. He was in Orlando, I was in Gainesville.

"And?"

"And Gabriel was paraded around like the Second Coming," Sam said, his voice hard but steady. "Father announced the restructuring. Gabriel is effectively the heir apparent. Doyle is out. I... I wasn’t even mentioned."

"Good," I said. "Let them think you’re irrelevant. How’s the Apple position?"

"We hit the target. $1.5 billion leveraged. We are sitting on a powder keg, Jack.".

"Hold it. The explosion is coming."

While Sam held the line, I turned my attention to the machine Emily Heart had built for me in Miami. The Super PAC. ’The Liberty Grid’

I didn’t feed it directly. That would be too obvious. Instead, I used the network Sidorov had built. Money moved from my Swiss accounts to shell companies in the Caymans, then broke apart into thousands of micro-donations.

To the Federal Election Commission, it looked like a grassroots tidal wave. Thousands of "concerned citizens" donating $50 or $100 to support candidates who preached decentralization and digital privacy.

Ava called me, ecstatic. "We’re seeing the donations, Jack. The Super PAC is exploding. The people are actually putting their money where their mouth is. The ideology is spreading faster than we thought."

At the beginning "the people" was just me, sitting in a dark room, moving numbers from column A to column B to fund candidates I owned, but over time other people started to spread the ideas.

Liberation themselves were using Facebook, the company that I helped to grow faster than expected, to indoctrinate more people and show them how the country "could" look with decentralized systems.

Meanwhile, on the monitors glowing in my darkened office, I logged into the secure forum using the physical VPN and the pixel-encoded password.

My persona, MK, was no longer just a voice in the crowd. I was using Liberation’s rhetoric, the "Four D’s" of Decentralized Governance and Economy. However, it was not to free the people but to radicalize them.

MK: "The banks are betting against the future. Look at the ledger. Bitcoin isn’t just a coin; it’s the exit strategy.".

The price of Bitcoin ticked up. $2.10. $2.50. It was a slow burn, fueled by the whispers I planted in the ears of the desperate and the greedy.

August 2004

I accepted the honorary recognition that served as the capstone for my degree. I shook hands with Deans who looked at me like I was a golden goose. To the public, I was Jack Somnus, the prodigy investor, the tech visionary.

To the shadow world, I was the man playing both sides. Liberation wanted to destroy the "elite clubs" like Freewinds. I was using Liberation to become the king of one.

September 2004

The trap was set.

I had spent weeks analyzing the positions of WhitePath Capital—Gabriel’s flagship firm. He was arrogant. He believed in the old guard. He believed that established power could crush emerging innovation.

He was heavily shorting PharmaGen, a mid-cap biotech firm in California working on gene therapy. It was risky tech, volatile, and Gabriel was betting the house that it would fail FDA trials. He had leveraged WhitePath’s assets to drive the price into the dirt, suffocating the company to turn a quick billion.

He was overexposed.

I sat at my desk, the secure firewall humming in the corner. It was time.

I logged in as MK.

Subject: They Are Trying to Kill the Cure.

MK: "WhitePath Capital isn’t just shorting a stock. They are shorting progress. They have over-leveraged their position on PharmaGen (PHGN) by 400%. They think they can bleed this company dry before the trial results come out next week. They think retail traders are too stupid to notice the float is dry. If we buy, if we hold, they don’t just lose money. They drown."

I hit post.

I waited.

It started slowly. A few replies. A few confused questions.

Then, the volume spiked.

User67: "I checked the short interest. MK is right. It’s over 80%.".

User69: "I’m in for 500 shares. Screw the hedge funds."

User21: "If MK says squeeze, we squeeze.".

I watched the Level 2 data on my screens.

PharmaGen ($PHGN) Open: $12.40

10:30 AM: The buying pressure began. Small orders at first, the retail army waking up. $13.15... $13.50...

11:45 AM: The volume tripled. The forum thread was trending #1. The narrative had taken hold: David vs. Goliath. $15.80... $16.20...

I picked up the phone and dialed Sam.

"Watch the ticker for PharmaGen," I said.

"Jack? What are you doing?"

"I’m teaching your brother a lesson in supply and demand."

1:00 PM: The stock halted. Volatility pause. $19.50.

When it reopened, it gapped up. The shorts—Gabriel’s algorithms—were trying to cover, but there were no shares to buy. The retail crowd, my army, was holding.

$22.00... $24.75...

In Miami, inside the glass tower of WhitePath Capital, I knew alarms were screaming. I knew Gabriel was staring at a screen, his face draining of color, watching hundreds of millions of dollars evaporate in real-time.

2:30 PM: $28.90.

I leaned back in my chair, the glow of the monitors reflecting in my eyes.

MK: "Don’t let them breathe. Hold.".

The price ticked to $30.00.

The war for the Johnson empire has begun. I was beginning to spread the sparks of Revolution.