Chapter 90: C.P. Company
Mia pulled him into a hug the moment he came through the door.
"I'm fine," Simon said. "Really."
She held on for another few seconds before letting go. "I saw the news. All of it. I almost called—" She stopped herself.
"Don't," Simon said quietly. "There may be eyes on the building."
Mia processed this and nodded once. She'd learned that particular caution the same way she'd learned most things in her life — by proximity to people who lived with it constantly.
"Dinner's ready," she said. "Where's Meg?"
Simon moved into the kitchen. "Her parents came to get her. After what happened today, her dad drove to Burbank himself."
He said it matter-of-factly, not mentioning that he'd arranged for her father to find out through a carefully placed call to Wallace, who had mentioned it casually to Veronica, who had mentioned it to Meg's father with the particular efficiency of someone who didn't realize she was passing along orchestrated information.
The alternative was Meg sitting across from him at this table asking questions he couldn't answer, which was a problem he wasn't ready to solve tonight.
Mia looked at him with the specific expression she used when she suspected something and had decided not to pursue it. "Just us, then."
"Just us," Simon agreed.
"Beer and popcorn," she said. "I was thinking Twilight Zone."
"All night," Simon said. "Every episode."
"Good," Mia said, and went to the kitchen.
Christmas in LA had the quality of a holiday that the weather didn't cooperate with — sixty-five degrees, clear sky, the city going through the seasonal motions while the climate declined to participate. The fifteen-day break between Christmas and New Year's was real, though, and most of the city was using it.
Simon had planned a road trip — rent an RV, take Meg and Mia somewhere north along the coast, give everyone a break from the city's specific weight. The plan had not survived contact with reality. Meg's parents had exercised their parental authority after the Buy More incident, Mia had received an informal advisory from the police that asked her to remain in the city in connection with ongoing inquiries related to Dom's case, and the road trip was shelved.
Which left Simon, his laptop, and the stock market.
He'd been watching the Bering Aeronautics situation since before Christmas.
The short position on Bering had paid out exactly the way he'd calculated: the FBI investigation into the company's executive team — bribery, regulatory fraud, the kind of thing that emerged when the people who'd been victimized decided they had enough to go public — triggered a selloff that dropped the stock thirty percent in a single session.
Simon had covered his short position at the bottom and walked away with three point two million dollars.
Then he'd done the second move.
Pierce Aeronautics had been taking the reputational damage of the theft allegation, which had pushed their stock down on uncertainty. Simon knew the allegation was false. He knew the truth was going to come out, and he knew that when it came out the trajectory would reverse sharply.
He bought Pierce at the depressed price.
Two days later, Pierce held a press conference announcing that the stolen design files had been recovered and that they were pursuing legal action against parties responsible for the false theft narrative. The details were vague enough to maintain deniability while being clear enough to move markets.
Pierce's stock climbed forty percent in a single day.
Simon sold at thirty-eight percent, leaving two points on the table for the people who'd get there after him.
Total from both positions: seven point four million dollars.
Combined with his existing capital, he was past ten million for the first time.
The tax problem was real.
A gain of seven million in a short period, processed through a brokerage account under his real name, was going to attract attention and cost a significant percentage before he could access the money practically. The marginal rate on short-term capital gains in California was not kind.
The solution was the same one most people with this problem used: structure.
A corporation, properly organized, could hold assets, defer recognition, and operate in ways that reduced the immediate tax impact significantly. The California minimum franchise tax was eight hundred dollars annually for a company with no taxable income — which, for a company whose stated purpose was international trade consulting and whose actual purpose was something else entirely, was a manageable number.
He'd already put the deposit down on the tenth-floor suite. He'd already spoken to a corporate attorney. The remaining steps were paperwork.
He named the company C.P. Corporation.
Courage and power — the two things that had gotten him through the past year. He chose the name seriously, not because it sounded good, but because he wanted a name that meant something to him rather than one that was chosen for marketing purposes.
Nine million transferred from his personal accounts to the company's operating account. The brokerage positions were restructured under the corporate entity going forward.
Then the buildout.
He gave the architect a detailed brief. The space had a logical flow for what he needed: reception at the entrance, six individual offices and a conference room down one corridor, a central common area that served as both break room and open workspace, and in the rear section — past the central area, away from any casual visitor's line of sight — a server room, equipment storage, two holding rooms, and two interview rooms.
Every interior partition: fire-rated assemblies with steel reinforcement. Every glass surface: ballistic laminate. The rear section's ceiling had additional structural reinforcement in case someone put something heavy on the roof.
He'd seen what a Buy More looked like after a firefight. He didn't intend to be unprepared in his own building.
Beckman, when he reached out, supplied the electronics without meaningful objection — military-grade servers, secure communication hardware, the installation team that knew how to set them up properly. The team arrived on a Tuesday, worked through the weekend, and left without identifying themselves to anyone.
The result, when the installation was complete, was a facility that would look from the outside like an unremarkable commercial suite in a mid-tier Burbank office building and function from the inside like a properly equipped operational base.
Not as concealed as the yogurt shop basement. Not as large. But entirely his own, which was a different kind of advantage.
The neighboring suite had also been under renovation since late December.
Simon had noticed this the first time he came to check on the buildout — contractors going in and out of the suite at the far end of the floor, the sound of work happening, the particular energy of a space being converted from empty to occupied.
He knew who was moving in. He'd seen four of them coming off the elevator on the day he signed the purchase agreement. He understood, in general terms, what they were building and what they were going to use it for.
The specific operational details, he didn't know.
He was going to correct that.
He borrowed a set of listening devices from Casey — small, passive, designed for placement and extended use — and on a Wednesday night when the building's cleaning crew had finished and left, he went through the stairwell to the neighboring suite's floor, used the lock skills Sarah had been teaching him for the past two weeks, and spent forty minutes placing devices in locations that would provide useful coverage without being discoverable by a standard sweep.
He went back to his own suite, made a cup of coffee, and sat at a desk that didn't have a chair yet because the furniture delivery was Thursday.
He listened to the quiet of the building at two in the morning and thought about the year that was almost over.
A lot had happened.
More was coming.
He finished the coffee and drove home.
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