My Arrogant Rival Told Me To Stick To Knitting — He Didn’t Know I Was Bankrupting His Company

Part 1

The rain turned the London cobblestones into a slick and treacherous mirror reflecting the dim gaslight.

I sat in the gloomy carriage with a heavy ledger balanced on my knees.

My fingers were stained with a faint trace of black ink at the cuticles.

Dan sat across from me, shifting uncomfortably and clutching his umbrella like a shield.

He was my proxy on the trading floor because the exchange did not allow women.

The brokers were panicking about a rumored blockade, but panic is merely a tax on the foolish.

I told Dan to sell our domestic iron while the price was artificially high and buy Baltic timber.

When he stepped out into the downpour, I turned my face to the rain-lashed window.

I hated the secrecy and the constant reliance on timid men to execute my strategies.

Society offered a woman with a ruined estate only two choices: marry a tolerant man or become a governess.

I chose a third option and taught myself the brutal, unfeeling math of supply and demand.

That evening, the math was the furthest thing from the minds of the guests at Lord Craig’s dinner party.

The dining room was stifling, heavy with the scent of roasted mutton and cheap flattery.

I sat near the lower end of the table, invited only because my bloodline was old despite my empty purse.

At the head of the table sat Brian, an immensely wealthy lord who possessed the careless arrogance of a man who had never been told no.

He was currently the darling of the financial district, building a massive railway to connect the northern coal mines.

He boasted that British engineering would easily blast through the difficult limestone terrain.

I had read the surveyors’ reports weeks ago and knew exactly what was hiding beneath that rock.

I mentioned quietly that limestone is porous and the water table was exceptionally high from the spring rains.

I pointed out that blasting through it wouldn’t yield a tunnel, but rather an underground river that would triple his reinforcement costs.

Silence descended on the room like a heavy suffocating blanket.

Brian stared at me, the amusement slowly draining from his face and being replaced by a cold, hardened pride.

He assessed my cheap silk gown and the distinct lack of jewels at my throat.

He offered a slow, patronizing smile that made my blood run cold.

He asked if I had read that theory in a ladies’ periodical or if it had simply come to me in a dream.

He suggested that I should be knitting instead of meddling in trading matters I could not possibly comprehend.

The laughter from the men at the table was immediate, loud, and incredibly cruel.

I did not flinch or defend myself against his public humiliation.

I simply picked up my wine glass, took a slow sip, and smiled.

I told him he was entirely right and that I would leave the heavy lifting to the men.

Leaving the estate before the dessert course was even cleared felt immensely satisfying.

Tears were entirely absent during the carriage ride home, replaced instead by a cold, sharp focus.

My study welcomed me with quiet shadows until a struck match brought the oil lamp to life over a fresh sheet of paper.

A single direct note was drafted immediately for my proxy Dan.

The instructions ordered him to sell every share of Brian’s railway that we held and heavily short the stock using our entire margin.

Taking those profits to buy into the rival canal company at the opening bell would complete the trap.

I sealed the envelope with a drop of red wax, my hands perfectly steady.

Brian’s arrogance wasn’t just insulting, it was a glaring market inefficiency.

I always capitalized on inefficiencies.

The next few months were a master class in slow and agonizing financial ruin.

It started quietly in the columns with a small delay in the blasting.

Brian’s brokers assured the public it was a temporary setback.

Water and rock did not care about an arrogant man’s pride.

By October, the reality of the limestone was absolutely impossible to hide.

The tunnels were flooding far faster than the expensive steam pumps could clear them.

The laborers went unpaid and walked off the site in droves.

The cost to reinforce the tunnels with iron casings wiped out his company’s entire capital reserves.

On a dreary Tuesday in November, the true panic finally set in.

The trading floor was a madhouse of screaming men waving handfuls of worthless paper.

By the end of the day, his stock was trading for mere pennies.

Meanwhile, the canal company saw its stock price surge by three hundred percent.

I sat quietly in my parlor darning a pair of old gloves while my net worth quadrupled in a single afternoon.

Across town, Brian stood in his opulent office buried under a snowstorm of urgent telegrams and demand letters.

His chief financial advisor Greg informed him that the credit lines were completely frozen.

If they could not secure a massive cash injection by Friday, the creditors would seize his entire shipping fleet.

Greg revealed that a mysterious private investor operating through a proxy had heavily shorted their stock months ago.

This phantom investor now held enough liquid capital to float the failing railway.

Brian commanded Greg to find this secret principal and offer them twenty percent equity and a seat on the board.

Greg tracked the proxy, bribed him, and returned with an address on a slip of paper.

Brian snatched the paper, expecting a prestigious bank or a gentleman’s club in Mayfair.

Instead, he found himself staring at the address of a modest townhouse on a faded, unremarkable street.

The arrogant lord who told me to stick to knitting was standing on my doorstep in the freezing rain, begging for a bailout.