Become a monk. One-week silent retreat.
Solve a cold case.
Before I can read the rest, the wheel spins again, the digital clicking sound filling the silent penthouse. It slows, ticking past the ridiculous, the impossible, and the deeply illegal, before landing on something painfully and profoundly mundane.
WORK A REAL JOB FOR A MONTH.
A beat of silence. Then the chat explodes.
A real job, laughing my ass off.
Like an office? With a stapler?
Oh my god, he’s going to have a boss.
This is the most boring one. Spin again.
No. This is the best one.
“A real job?” Zara drawls, finally interested. She sits up, the movement sending sharp shards of light from her diamond necklace across the room. “Like data entry? Or customer service?” She shudders, a delicate and practiced reaction.
To my own surprise, I feel a tiny, unfamiliar spark. It is not excitement. It is curiosity. A problem I cannot simply throw money at.
Julian’s eyes ignite with the holy fire of viral potential. He sees the entire narrative arc unspooling in real time. “This is gold. Pure gold. But not just any job.” He is already pacing, storyboarding aloud. “It can’t be at Ashford Enterprises. It has to be a business you own, or at least one you’ve invested in. A business you’ve completely forgotten exists.”
He swivels a secondary monitor linked to my office systems and pulls up my portfolio. He scrolls past the aerospace companies, the AI labs, and the biotech disrupters, diving deeper and deeper until he reaches a folder I have not opened in years. A folder my chief of staff has diplomatically labeled Community Ventures.
I vaguely recall it as a small-scale impact investment fund I set up in a fit of philanthropic optimism right out of university, before I learned that disruption is cleaner and more profitable than community. It is my guilt fund.
Julian scrolls past a co-op bicycle shop, a defunct vertical farming startup, and an app for trading artisanal cheese. His manicured, predatory finger stops.
“Here we go.” He zooms in, the text filling the screen. “Level Three Micro Investment. Fifty thousand dollars. Sunrise and Salt.”
I blink. I have zero, and I mean zero, recollection of this.
“Sunrise and Salt?”
“A bakery?” Zara asks, leaning in. She pronounces the word bakery as if it were a rare and slightly disgusting insect.
“A bakery!” Julian cackles, the sound echoing through the cavernous room. “Oh, this is perfect. You, Leo Ashford, the man who hasn’t touched a complex carbohydrate since 2023, are going to be a baker boy.”
The chat becomes a waterfall of hysteria.
He’s going to wear the little hat.
Leo making donuts.
I’m dead.
This is better than the goat.
I give him twenty-four hours.
“And the rules are,” Julian says, dropping his voice into a conspiratorial whisper for the camera, “you cannot be the boss. You cannot pull rank. You cannot buy your way out of it. You have to be a regular, bottom of the barrel, dough punching employee. For thirty days. Starting Monday.”
I finally glance at the minimalist clock embedded in the marble wall. The glowing numerals read 2:17 a.m.
“Julian,” I say, “tomorrow is in about thirty hours.”
