Pound Foolish (Windy City Neighbors Book 4) (36 page)

     Rich and
private
! She could never tell Greg! He’d be so angry. He was already jealous of Lincoln when he had no right to be. After all, she hadn’t
done
anything. It had just been a harmless fantasy and hadn’t hurt anyone. In fact, hadn’t she given Greg a good time that night? So why not have a little fun?

    
“Why not have a little fun?”
. . . wait. She’d heard someone else say the same thing recently.

     Out of the corner of her eye Nicole saw Greg coming back up the walk toward the house, and she scurried down the hall to the bedroom. Shutting the door and leaning against it, her breath came in short gasps as she remembered.

     Pastor Hanson had said the same thing in his sermon that morning.

* * * *

Greg hit the TopOps trading site with enthusiasm Monday morning, and it began to pay off. Of course, he didn’t win every bid, but his balance climbed steadily throughout the day until by closing time that afternoon, he was over a thousand dollars ahead.

     He blew out a breath of satisfaction. This was the time to explain what he was doing to Nicole. He transferred five hundred from his TopOps account to his credit card account, bringing down the balance owed on their credit card. She’d be happy about that.

     He strolled into the kitchen. “Hey, Nikki, what’s for supper?”

     She just kept cutting up sweet red peppers. “A pasta dish with chicken and veggies. Should be ready in about thirty minutes.”

     “Mmm. Sounds good.” Should he tell her now? No, he’d wait till she wasn’t busy. “Hey, mind if I drop in on the Jaspers for a few minutes? They weren’t home yesterday. Still need to find out how the boys are.”

     Nicole shrugged. “Just be back in time for supper.”

     Greg stared at her back a few moments before leaving. She was hard to read these days. Oh well, he’d keep doing what he could, and maybe it’d finally melt the ice.

     He waited several minutes after ringing the Jaspers’ doorbell, but this time Michelle opened the door. She looked pretty tired. “Hey, Mrs. Jasper. We, uh, heard about the boys. Nicole and I are so sorry. I wanted to check in and see how they’re doing.”

     The boys’ mother didn’t open the door any wider than was necessary to talk. “I just got home with Destin, Mr. Singer. Tavis is still in the hospital, but he seems to be doing fairly well.” She paused for a moment. “Jared’s at the hospital with him, but we’re going to switch a little later. If you come by about eight, I think he’d be here by then.”

     “Oh, sure. That’d be great. I’ll do that. Maybe I can see Destin then.”

     She hesitated. “Well . . . maybe, if he’s not asleep by then. He needs his rest.”

     “Of course. I understand. I’ll try to drop by later when Jared’s here.”

     Michelle closed the door slowly without saying anything more. Greg knew it had to be a stressful time for them, but he got a funny feeling something else was going on. Or maybe Destin needed her. He walked back down their porch steps. At least he wouldn’t be late for dinner.

     The pasta dish was too large for the kids to pass, so after Greg said a blessing, Nicole served everyone. Handing Greg’s plate to him she said, “You seemed to have your nose in the computer again all day. Is that new thing you’re trying working?”

     “As a matter of fact, it is.” Nicole asking the question would make it so much easier to explain. “Today . . .” He grinned proudly at his kids. “I won a thousand dollars!”

     Nate’s eyes got big. “Wow, Daddy, you’re rich!”

     “Not yet, but we’re gonna be.” He checked to see how Nicole responded. “In fact, you’ll be glad to know, honey, that I transferred five hundred of it into our credit card account to reduce our balance.” He didn’t mention that was where he got the money to invest in TopOps in the first place.

     Nicole toyed with her pasta. “I still don’t quite understand what it is you’re doing. How do you
win
a thousand dollars in one day? It sounds like gambling.”

     “Ah, I shouldn’t have used the word
win
. It’s earnings. It’s based on the markets. It can be the stock market, commodities, or international currency. That’s what I’ve stuck with until I get more skilled. You see, the value of the dollar is always fluctuating relative to other currencies.”

     She stared at him. “You mean you’re betting that the dollar will lose value? That sounds un-American.”

     “Well, it’s not.” Greg threw up his hands. “Why do you always presume the worst about anything I do?”

     “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. It’s just . . .”

     He closed his eyes a moment. “What I do doesn’t have any effect on the value of the dollar. I just analyze what the trend has been, and then predict what will happen in the next . . . minute. You can do it longer, but that’s what I’ve been doing.”

     “And if you win—I mean, if you’re right—who pays you? Where does that money come from?”

     “From the exchange. The company I’m working with.”

     “And they get their money from . . .?”

     “Other players, I mean, other investors who predicted the opposite.”

     “Can we be excused?” Becky piped up. “I’m done, and this is boring.”

     “After you finish your plate.”

     “But you gave me too much,” Becky whined.

     “Me too,” Nate echoed.

     Nicole sighed. “All right. Just take your dishes into the kitchen and put them on the counter.”

     Greg managed to get a few bites of his pasta as the kids did as they were told and then scurried downstairs to the family room. But his wife picked up the subject again.

     “Look, I get the stock market. Like a pharmaceutical company wants to develop a new drug, but it’s going to cost a lot of money to develop and test. So investors buy stock in the company, essentially loaning them the money. If it’s successful—a cure for arthritis, say—the company makes millions, and the investors get a share. But it doesn’t sound like this binary thing produces anything for anyone.”

     “Sure it does. It produces a profit, and it can be a pretty sweet one too.” But as soon as Greg said it, his words sounded hollow. He knew she was right.

     “I don’t know.” Nicole shook her head and stood up, gathering dishes to take to the kitchen.

     “Well, a thousand bucks is a thousand bucks, and that’s pretty good pay for one day, I’d say. We need the money. Don’t know why you’re complaining.”

     “I’m not complaining, Greg. I just want whatever you end up doing to . . . to work in the long term. But this sounds like gambling.”

     Greg stood up fast enough to almost knock his chair over backwards. He threw his napkin on his plate and stomped out of the room, out the front door, and stood on the top step of the porch staring at a cutthroat sunset bleeding through a dark overcast that stretched like a Frank Lloyd Wright cantilever toward the western horizon.

     He blew out his bottled frustration. He should probably go back inside and try to bring the conversation to a better conclusion, but he didn’t want to. Not now. The argument wasn’t his fault. He thought she’d be happy he’d made some money.

     He checked his watch—eight fifteen. Maybe Jared Jasper was home by now. Hands deep in his pockets and shoulders hunched, he went down the steps and headed up the street to the Jaspers.

* * * *

“Oh. Singer. Michelle said you might drop by.” Jared looked back over his shoulder. “Uh . . . maybe we should talk out here. You mind?” The man stepped out onto the porch.

     “No problem. Just wanted to stop by and see how Destin was doing.”

     “He’s getting around, but he’s on his way to bed right now.”

     “Just wanted to say how sorry we are. I was so shocked to hear about his accident.”

     Jared pulled the door closed behind him. He stared eye to eye at Greg. “No accident, Singer. These weren’t stray bullets. My boys were the targets.”

     “What? Oh, man. That’s terrible.” Thoughts swirled through Greg’s mind of gang paybacks. “How could they be caught up in something like that?”

     Jasper’s eyes narrowed and his expression hardened. “Like what?”

     “Oh, I didn’t meaning anything by that,” Greg said hastily. “I’d just always seen them as, you know, really wholesome kids. Not the kind who’d end up as targets.” Oh, man, he should shut up. He was getting himself in deeper with every word.

     “You really don’t know, do you?” Jared’s jaw clenched, his eyes still narrowed.

     “Know what?”

     “They were shot selling your . . . your stupid energy drink.” Jared spat out the words.

     “What?”

     “That’s right. Your energy drink. That SlowBurn junk you got him involved in.”

     “Now wait a minute. You’re not suggesting—”

     “No,
you
wait a minute, and answer me this. Did you tell my boy he needed to find a new location, some place where kids hang out?”

     “No! I mean, he wasn’t getting anywhere trying to sell it to his sports friends, so maybe I suggested he look for a new market or something, but I never—”

     “You know where he found it—this ‘new market,’ as you call it—and took his younger brother with him?”

     Greg just shook his head.

     “A street corner near Hamlin Park. They were lookin’ for a place where kids hung out, and they found ’em. Only problem was, some gangbangers saw them passing out stuff from their backpacks and thought it was drugs, thought my boys were trying to jump their territory. That’s why they got shot! Now do you understand?”

     Greg didn’t know what to say to the man who was getting right up in his face. “I . . . I’m sorry. But I didn’t tell Destin to go down there. I don’t even know anything about that neighborhood.”

     Jared tapped an angry finger on Greg’s chest. “It’s obvious you don’t know
anything
, but you’re the one who got my boy so deep in debt with all those cans you sold him that he was desperate to unload ’em, even in a place that wasn’t safe. And my baby boy got pulled into it too. Do you realize,
they both could’ve been killed?!
”

     Greg threw up his hands. “Look, Jasper, Destin came to me because he needed a job to earn money for a basketball camp you wouldn’t spring for. So you can’t put it all on me.”

     The muscles on the sides of Jared’s jaws were pulsing as he stared at Greg. Suddenly, he turned, went into the house, and slammed the door behind him.

     Greg stood rooted for a moment, his own anger flaring. What just happened? He’d come here out of kindness to see how Destin was doing. Hadn’t expected to be verbally attacked and blamed for the shooting.

     Going slowly down the steps, he turned toward home, his thoughts churning. Jasper hadn’t said anything about the shooting taking place near a 7-Eleven, but Destin had obviously found a corner where guys hung out, just like he’d suggested.

     He heard the Jaspers’ door open again behind him. “Hey, Singer! My kid used his college money to buy that junk from you. The least you could do is buy it back, ya know!”

     Greg waved his hand without looking back and kept on walking.

Chapter 36

Greg’s bidding on TopOps went well Tuesday morning, increasing the available funds in his online account. But he couldn’t escape the feeling that he was being attacked on all sides. Jared Singer’s accusations from the night before nagged at him, along with Nicole’s conclusion that binary trading was just gambling—not to mention that he hadn’t yet hit it big on TopOps. He didn’t even want to think about SlowBurn anymore.

     Wasn’t anyone on his side? All he needed was that breakthrough!

     He kept rehearsing arguments against Nicole’s opinions . . . while catching himself referring to his money as “winnings.” If he was going to convince her, he’d have to revise his terminology. Still, he knew his “investments” didn’t buy stock in TopOps or in any company that produced a product or service. When it came down to it, binary options involved a zero-sum game where no real wealth was created. When he won, TopOps lost. When he lost, they won. And simple logic told him that since there were so many binary companies out there, it had to be profitable for the owners, which meant that the players—
oops
, “investors”—lost often enough for the companies to stay in business. He gritted his teeth. Was Nicole right? Was he just gambling against the “house”?

     But he’d been gaining . . . with a potential for even bigger gains as he increased the size of his bids. He’d started with hundred-dollar bids, but now he’d increased them to two hundred dollars, which meant $140 in profit every time he won. And he distinctly felt he was getting the knack for when to “call” and when to “put.” It might be time to go to the next level, perhaps three hundred per bid.

     By noon, he again had a thousand dollars in his online account. If the trend continued, he could withdraw double what he’d taken out on Monday and still have sufficient seed money for Wednesday . . . or perhaps he’d leave it all in and go for really big returns.

     Then he hit a losing streak. By three o’clock he’d drained his balance. Slapping the desk with his hand, he got up and paced around the living room. “
Argh!
I hate losing even more than I hate not winning!” Had he said that aloud? He stopped pacing a moment and listened. Neither Nicole nor the kids were on the first floor. Good. He didn’t want them knowing about the losses. He stood at the front window, hands jammed in his pockets. The words he’d muttered seemed illogical . . . but as he thought about it, he realized when he was on an upswing, he could handle some losses. But when he was going into the hole, he began to feel desperate—desperate enough to do anything, take any risk, to win back what he considered to be “his.”

     That’s where he was right now. He had to do something. Anything. Press through, get beyond this losing streak. Okay. He’d go back to his credit card and withdraw the five hundred he’d deposited the day before. It’d only be temporary, right? He’d told himself he wouldn’t do it just to make larger bids, but he couldn’t end the day with a loss.