Somewhere around Frank's 22nd birthday, he accomplished something nobody has yet matched: he graduated from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in an unprecedented four years. He started as an undergraduate, to be sure, but his luck with business theory so impressed the professors, they merged him into the graduate program under a full assistanceship. Free college and an MBA in four years? Who was Frank to complain?

He wasn't. Everyone clamored for him to pursue a Ph.D., even offering him tenure and a staff position upon completion of his thesis, which they assured would be finished before 1932—securing his legacy as a business prodigy, to enjoy such stature before breaking a quarter-century on the old death-o-meter.

Frank turned them down by persuading, cajoling, and dragging an appreciable mass to a local speakeasy, where they all proceeded to disobey the eighteenth amendment with inspired zeal. By then, it was common knowledge prohibition was on the way out, at least to hear Frank tell it. In any case, who'd bother to catch them in a freewheeling stretch of California coast; far from campus and full of sneaky bartenders who doubled drink strength, anxious to witness the antics of besotted eggheads. Pick yer poison, pal.

With Frank there, everybody had a good time.

Nobody had hard feelings when he left with a measly Masters degree, there was always the chance he'd return once he tired of the business world. They understood, really, and had they his skill, all would have done the same: take the business world by storm, make a few million, maybe relax by spreading his techniques for the last few years before retirement. Our door is always open, they told him.

Frank nodded. Frank smiled. Frank crossed his fingers while promising he'd come back, flush with experience and knowledge a generation of students would gladly kill to learn. Teaching was boring—perhaps not as dreary as the classes themselves—but Frank hated being in one place for too long. He chafed, chomped at the bit, and vacated that campus the second commencement ended, practically unleashing a sonic-boom in his haste.

Kyle was born nine months later.

Frank began his legacy by joining a bank, wrangling his bustling social network into full production to land the most lucrative job obtainable lacking experience. Still, they paid him at least twice the standard wage for a freshly minted businessman, and that was just fine by him. Thanks to Frank, they were one of the few banks that actually survived the Great Depression. And why not? Part of Frank's Masters Thesis concerned market theory, and he claimed often that the current numbers were irrationally inflated. The bank was skeptical, but heeded his advice after a handful of sobering meetings where he presented exponential market projections—displaying the after-effects of the market crash in all its horrifying glory: they could handle several years of conservative investing and survive while hundreds of other banks disgorged their guts to ravenous creditors.

That was how Frank spent 1931, and part of 1932. For the next few years, he was a budding investor and philanthropist, relying on his luck to find important or emerging ideas which screamed sure thing! and goldmine! Hollingshead received $5,000 for his drive-in movie idea. Broadcasting, canned beer, chemical polymers, it didn't matter. Frank had his fingers deeply embedded in dozens of fledgling concepts; stepping where his feet felt most stable, he always felt calm when risking money, and unsurprised as the modest trickle of payback became a mighty deluge.

By the time Kyle was ten, Frank Cemtes was independently wealthy. He refused to disclose a number even to Jamie. "It's not important Áine," he'd say, his hot breath a tantalizing whisper in the privacy of their bed. "We have enough." She didn't mind, for it was only curiosity which drove her—indeed, what did a man who had everything, consider "enough?"

Jamie did know he promised to buy her a castle one day—but that was just their romantic dream. Wasn't it?

No longer. The dream was probably broken now, shattered, sundered, and eviscerated beyond repair. His luck hadn't saved a mere dog. The well had run dry, and retroactively punished him for overusing that precious gift. He could sense it: from now on, his luck would be proportionally terrible, unraveling his miniature empire, leaving his family penniless, and Kyle a casualty of the war. Everything he had, all he loved, would be snatched away by the grim claws of retribution.

Frank grimaced through another swallow of scotch.