Pulled.
His phone rang before he could process it.
“Martin, we’ve got a situation,” said Sarah Chun from the London office. Her voice sounded tight and breathless. “Redbridge is liquidating everything on our side. Every managed fund. Every custodial position. All of it.”
“How much?”
“Two point three billion so far.”
His second line started blinking. Then his cell phone. Then the internal alert system.
Sarah kept talking, but Martin was already looking at a new red warning box on his monitor.
Liquidity warning. Domestic portfolios. Estimated withdrawal: $4.2 billion. Immediate execution requested.
“Oh, no,” Martin whispered.
Jennifer from Compliance looked over the top of her cubicle. Martin never sounded like that.
His desk phone rang again.
CEO direct line.
“Martin,” James Thornton said, his voice clipped and cold. “My office. Now. And bring whoever handles the K. Ramil account.”
“Sir, that account is managed through third-party custodial services.”
“I don’t care if it’s managed through carrier pigeons. Find out who knows something and get them up here. Board members are calling me asking why our stock price dropped twelve percent in twenty minutes.”
Martin grabbed his laptop and moved toward the elevator at a pace just short of running.
Three floors below, Meera Glenmont was in the break room holding court.
She had gathered a small audience of junior associates and was retelling the lobby scene with extra flourish.
“You should have seen his face,” she said, lifting her coffee cup. “This man in ratty jeans and a hoodie walked in asking to invest one hundred and seventy dollars like he was some kind of high roller.”
The associates laughed because she was a senior VP and they wanted their careers to continue.
Nobody mentioned that some of them had started their own investment accounts with only a little more than that.
“The best part,” Meera continued, “was when I told him, ‘We don’t serve poor beggars here.’ The whole lobby went silent. Pure theater.”
That was when Martin Yun pushed open the break room door.
His face had gone pale. His tie was loose. His laptop was clutched under one arm.
“Meera,” he said.
The laughter died.
She turned with the smile still on her face.
“What?”
“What did you do to a man named Reed Lawson?”
The room went still.
Meera blinked.
“What are you talking about?”
“Reed Lawson,” Martin repeated. “Earlier today. In the lobby. What exactly did you say to him?”
Her smile thinned.
“He’s nobody, Martin. Just some guy who wandered in off the street wanting to invest his allowance.”
Martin stared at her.
His laptop chimed again.
He looked down, then back up.
“Reed Lawson is listed as the primary contact for every account associated with Redbridge Equities. And Redbridge just pulled $8.5 billion out of our bank.”
For three seconds, no one moved.
The coffee machine gurgled in the corner.
Meera’s face changed slowly.
Confidence first.
Then confusion.
Then fear.
“That’s impossible,” she whispered.
Martin looked at her like a man watching a captain deny the iceberg while the ship tilted.