The idea of Fisherman's Wharf came from the original San Francisco waterfront, once a working fishing harbor and later reinvented through commercial development into a district with its own mix of leisure, culture, and tourism. Located around Jefferson and Taylor, it had long since become one of the city's signature landmarks.
The area was packed with shopping centers, crab stands, street performers, and musicians. For tourists, it was one of San Francisco's must-see spots.
For locals, though, the sightseeing was secondary. Most of them came back for the Dungeness crab and clam chowder.
Bruce had heard plenty about the place before, but since he was not especially obsessed with seafood, he had never come often.
"Over here!"
Hearing Katherine call out, he quickly headed toward her table.
"You do realize making a lady wait more than twenty minutes is extremely rude, right?"
He had not even sat down yet, and the complaint had already arrived.
Bruce shrugged helplessly.
"I didn't exactly plan on it. Traffic was a mess. What, did you already order?"
"How was I supposed to order before you got here?" Katherine shot back. "And since you were late, you're paying."
"Fine. No problem."
The two of them had grown up together, so they knew each other's tastes far too well to bother with fake politeness. They ordered quickly.
Then Katherine got straight to it.
"Talk. What exactly is going on with that twenty million, and what is Phoenix Capital?"
Bruce sighed.
"Can we at least eat first?"
"No." Katherine's tone was flat. "If you don't explain this properly, do you really think I'll enjoy dinner?"
That killed any thought of stalling.
"All right, all right. Since you want the full story, I'll give it to you."
He organized his thoughts, then brought out the explanation he had prepared in advance.
"Katherine, you know I've always liked numbers and computers. And basketball too..."
She snorted.
"Please. If basketball hadn't made you look cool and helped you attract pretty girls, you never would've bothered."
Bruce coughed into his fist, mostly to hide the awkwardness.
Unfortunately, judging from the original Bruce's memories, that had in fact been part of the reason.
"Katherine, everyone's allowed a few dumb teenage motivations. Besides, do you want me to keep talking or not?"
She waved a hand.
"Go on."
Once he got past that land mine, he continued.
"A while back, when I was bored, I built a statistical analysis program for NCAA basketball outcomes and score patterns. Later, when I went to Britain to visit Rowling..."
"Hold on." Katherine narrowed her eyes. "You told me you went to Britain to clear your head. Now you're saying you went there to see Rowling?"
Bruce touched the side of his nose.
Right. He had said that.
At the time, he had been on a tight schedule. Between the capital-accumulation plan and the much bigger Rowling play, he had needed a quick excuse. So he had gone with heartbreak and a need for a change of scenery.
"You lied to me?"
Bruce practically flinched.
The memories he had inherited from Bruce included far too many scenes of getting physically bullied by Katherine as a kid. He raised both hands immediately.
"Katherine, hear me out. I didn't have much choice. I'd written a fantasy novel tied to Harry Potter, and I wanted Rowling's blessing. I wasn't sure I'd succeed, and if I failed, I really didn't need you laughing in my face on top of it. So I used a cover story."
She stared at him for nearly two full minutes.
Finally, she nodded.
"That is barely acceptable."
Bruce relaxed, if only a little.
"Next time you lie to me, I don't care what the reason is. You don't get forgiven."
"Fair enough."
"All right." She leaned back, suddenly much more relaxed. "So your book thing worked?"
"It did. Three more days and it goes on sale."
Katherine looked genuinely surprised.
"Seriously?"
"Seriously."
He almost followed that with "Since when do I lie?" but caught himself just in time. Thankfully, Katherine's attention had already shifted.
"Well," she said, studying him, "I guess I shouldn't be that shocked. You've always been annoyingly good at everything."
That was true enough. In Katherine's memory, Bruce had always worn the halo of a prodigy. Academics, hobbies, extracurriculars, it never mattered. He was always one of the best. And not among average kids, either. Among the students at Harker, one of the best high schools in the country.
"What's the book called?"
"Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. It's a series. Book one is done. Book two isn't started yet."
"When it's out, get me a copy."
"Done."
She tapped the table lightly.
"Now back to the twenty million."
Bruce nodded. That part was unavoidable.
"Once I got to Britain, I met Rowling through her agent. Besides talking to her about writing and tightening up the outline and details for Fantastic Beasts, I had free time like anyone else. So I watched the news, wandered around, that kind of thing. You know how football is over there, especially in England. And the Champions League final was coming up, so it was everywhere. Out of boredom, I started feeding match data into the analysis software I'd built. And the results got interesting."
Katherine raised a brow.
"How interesting?"
Bruce leaned forward slightly.
"Historically, underdogs only won the Champions League final a little over ten percent of the time. As for common scorelines, 1–0 came up most often at 38.74 percent. After that, 2–1 at 31.29 percent. But what came next wasn't 0–0 or 3–1. It was 3–0, at 18.31 percent. On top of that, in finals where a team lost 3–0, over 56 percent of the time that losing side was the surprise underdog. And more than 72 percent of those underdogs had fought through a brutal semifinal against a powerhouse before reaching the final."
He let that sit for a beat.
"So I came to two conclusions. First, Real Madrid had close to a 90 percent chance of winning that final. Second, 3–0 had better than a 50 percent chance of being the final score. Katherine, that's not a curiosity. That's an opportunity. If I put down two million, I'd be looking at nearly a four-times return."
"And if you lost?" she asked bluntly.
"Of course I was afraid of losing. But the downside probability, based on the model, was under thirty percent. And even in the worst-case scenario, I still had another card to play."
"What card?"
"My book." Bruce spread his hands. "I believed Fantastic Beasts could sell big. If it did, the advance and royalties would be enough to cover the damage."
Katherine rolled her eyes.
"You really do believe your own hype."
Then she went serious again.
"So you used the entire four million you borrowed against your grandfather's farm for this?"
Bruce nodded.
"And another two hundred thousand pounds from Christopher."
"Christopher being?"
"My agent. Also Rowling's agent."
Katherine nodded slowly.
"All right. You've explained it. Now can we eat?"
Then, more quietly, she added, "Bruce, you won this time. But that kind of risk is insane. Don't make a habit of it."
There was genuine concern in her voice.
Bruce smiled.
"Don't worry. I never gamble just to gamble. Every move I make is based on analysis."
She started to nod.
Then suddenly stopped.
"No. Wait."
Bruce's hand jerked slightly under the table.
"What now?"
Katherine leaned forward.
"When we were buying York Farm, you insisted, repeatedly, that the payment had to be delayed by two months. Why exactly two months? You owe me that answer too."
Bruce felt a headache coming on.
Sharp women were exhausting.
Fortunately, he had expected this question too.
"Because of Fantastic Beasts," he said. "At the time, the plan was to use the future revenue from the book as collateral and issue an ABS deal, an asset-backed security, to raise between twenty and thirty million."
Katherine, with her Harvard economics background, knew exactly what ABS meant.
"And you were that sure Fantastic Beasts would sell?" she asked. "What if it flopped?"
"I was confident. But even if it underperformed, the downside was manageable. At worst, we'd lose the York deal and forfeit the deposit." He sat back. "Katherine, I'm nineteen. I own a fast-growing internet company, I control an agricultural company worth around seven million, and I've already graduated from Stanford with three degrees. I have enough margin for error to take calculated shots."
Katherine studied him for a long time.
Then she said quietly, "You really have changed."
Bruce felt his pulse jump.
"Changed how? I'm still me."
"No," she said. "You're more confident than before. And you want success a lot more badly than you used to."
Bruce exhaled softly.
"That's normal, isn't it? We're not kids in a bubble anymore. Once you step into the real world, life sands the edges off you whether you like it or not. As for wanting success..." He paused. "If a person doesn't have some kind of ambition, they might as well just drift."
"Ambition?" Katherine tilted her head. "You never used to talk like that."
"I didn't before. But after Stanford, I started thinking differently." Bruce smiled. "Now my ambition is to change the world."
Katherine snorted.
Only a Stanford person could say that with a straight face.
"That kind of thing is for idiots."
Bruce's smile widened slightly.
"Maybe. But history's usually made by stubborn idiots and obsessive maniacs."
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