The automated chime on my desk phone sounded at eleven minutes past nine on the morning of December 31. Beyond the windows of my corner office, winter light lay pale across the Chicago River, and traffic crawled between banks of dirty snow. Inside, the office was warm, quiet, and expensive—the sort of room meant to assure clients that the people handling their money were always in control.
I opened the banking app on my phone, expecting to confirm the arrival of the annual performance distribution promised to me in writing eleven months earlier.
The credit entry read $24.00.
The transaction memo identified the sender as Apex Crest Capital Management. Beneath it appeared the words Annual Performance Profit Allocation.
I sat perfectly still in my leather chair and stared at those two digits until the screen dimmed in my hand. For a few seconds, I wondered whether I had opened the wrong account. Then I refreshed the page. The number did not change.
Twenty-four dollars.
Not twenty-four thousand. Not a partial transfer. Not even enough to cover dinner for two in downtown Chicago.
The heavy oak door to my office flew open hard enough to rattle the glass frames displaying my algorithmic research patents. Grant Montgomery stood in the doorway with his tailored navy blazer unbuttoned and his silk tie pulled slightly off center. During my six years as lead quantitative architect at Apex Crest, I had never seen him anything less than immaculate. That morning, his face was flushed, his breathing shallow, and his phone was clutched in front of him like evidence he did not know how to explain.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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