The silence that followed the accusation was not one of shock, but of cold, hard calculation.
Every man in the room, titans who had built empires on trust and backroom deals, began to doubt his neighbor. Jason's single, poisoned dart had severed the bonds of their fragile alliance. They were no longer a coalition. They were a roomful of rivals, each one suddenly wondering who else was lying about their strength.
J.P. Morgan, his face a thunderous mask of rage, pointed a thick finger at the door. "Get out," he snarled at Jason. "Your father-in-law's money is not welcome here if it comes with his poison."
"My father-in-law's money," Jason replied, his voice still unnervingly calm, "is not on offer."
A fresh wave of murmurs swept the room.
Before the chaos could erupt again, Morgan made a move. He strode to the massive, heavy oak doors of the library and spoke to his man waiting outside. "Lock these doors. No one leaves this room until we have a solution."
A resonant thud echoed as the bolt was thrown. They were sealed in. A room full of kings, now prisoners in a velvet cage.
With the room's attention now a palpable force, Jason presented his counteroffer. It was as brutal and simple as a blade to the throat.
"Mr. Morgan asks you to pour good money into bad. To save institutions that have already failed," he said, his eyes moving from one banker to the next. "My father-in-law proposes something different."
He let the silence stretch, forcing them to lean in.
"The Rockefeller fortune will not be used to prop up our failing competitors."
The statement was a grenade. The unspoken second half was clear: We will let you burn.
"Instead," Jason continued, "it will be used to acquire their sound assets at a fair, distressed market price as they are liquidated. We will not save the men who broke the system. We will save the system itself by cleansing it of their weakness."
It was a declaration of conquest, disguised as a rescue plan.
He didn't wait for a group consensus. Morgan's strategy had been to force unity. Jason's was to divide and conquer.
He walked over to a pale, sweating man named Ledyard, the president of a trust company that Alta had identified as solvent but terrified.
"Mr. Ledyard," Jason said, his voice low, for his ears only. "Your Trust is sound, but you won't survive a week of this panic. The fear is too great."
Ledyard stared at him, his eyes wide with desperation.
"Mr. Rockefeller is prepared to extend a private, immediate line of credit to you personally," Jason whispered. "Enough to weather this storm. In exchange for a controlling interest in your railroad holdings."
He was offering personal salvation in exchange for the man's corporate crown. It was a devil's bargain.
Ledyard looked over at Morgan, then back at Jason. He gave a single, almost imperceptible nod.
One by one, Jason moved through the room, speaking to the men Alta had marked as vulnerable. To one, he offered to buy their devalued bonds. To another, a merger with a Rockefeller-controlled company. He wasn't building a coalition. He was buying an army, one soldier at a time.
Morgan watched, his face a mask of disbelief turning to impotent fury. His grand gesture, his command performance as the savior of Wall Street, was being dismantled before his eyes. His army was deserting him, not with a bang, but with a series of quiet, desperate whispers.
Finally, seeing that more than half the men in the room were now looking to Jason, not to him, Morgan conceded.
"Fine," he growled, the word ripped from his throat. The venom in his voice was thick enough to poison the air. "We will form a pool. But on terms we all agree to."
It was a surrender.
The rest of the night was a grueling negotiation. But the balance of power had shifted. Jason, representing the endless, liquid reserves of Standard Oil, dictated the terms. A rescue fund was created, but its rules were Rockefeller's rules. They would save the critical pieces of the system, but the weak, the over-leveraged, the men Morgan had intended to protect, would be cut loose, their assets to be devoured by the strong.
By the time the library doors were unbolted, the first gray light of dawn was breaking over the city. A deal had been struck. Morgan would be its public face, the hero of the hour. But Jason knew the truth.
The king was dead. Long live the king.
He returned home as the sun was rising, casting long shadows across the empty streets. The exhaustion hit him like a physical blow. The throbbing in his ribs, the dull ache in his head, the sheer mental strain of the battle—it all came crashing down on him.
He walked into the study. Alta was there. She was seated in his chair, a fresh pot of coffee on a silver tray beside her. She hadn't gone to bed. She had waited for the outcome.
She looked up at him as he entered, her expression intense, searching.
"Did we win?" she asked.
The word hung in the air between them. We. It was a seismic shift. The first time she had explicitly, verbally, acknowledged their partnership.
"Morgan will still be the public face of the rescue," Jason said, his hands unsteady as he poured a cup of coffee. "The newspapers will call him a hero."
He took a sip, the hot liquid burning away some of the chill in his bones. "But the terms will ensure that the Rockefeller interests will own half of Wall Street by Christmas."
A small, thin smile touched Alta's lips. It was a startling sight.
He was so tired he could barely stand. He leaned against the desk, the coffee cup rattling in its saucer. Alta stood and took the cup from his hand. She walked to a small cabinet and returned with a heavy crystal glass, a generous pour of brandy swirling within it.
She pressed it into his hand. "You've earned it," she said.
It was not a tender moment. There was no warmth, no affection. But it was a moment of profound, shared understanding. They were not husband and wife. They were co-conspirators, partners in a hostile takeover of the world.
Victory, he was learning, was just the prelude to the next war.
After Alta left, he sat at his desk, nursing the brandy, the silence of the house pressing in on him. He felt a faint draft from the bottom of the study door.
Slipped underneath it was a single, stark photograph.
He picked it up. His blood ran cold.
It was a grainy, long-lens shot, taken at night. It showed him in a discreet, dark alleyway. He was handing a thick envelope of cash to Mr. Gates, his shadowy fixer. The meeting had been arranged with extreme caution. No one should have known about it.
His heart hammered against his ribs. Who had taken this? How?
Tucked behind the photo was a small, folded note. His fingers trembled as he opened it.
The handwriting was neat, precise, and instantly recognizable. It was John D. Jr.'s.
The note contained only a few chilling lines.
I know what you are. I know the kind of men you associate with. My father may be blind to your methods, but God is not. And neither am I.
This is not over.
Jason stared at the photograph, the image of his secret, brutal power now a weapon aimed directly at his own throat. He had just conquered the Lion of Wall Street in his own den, only to return home and find that the serpent in his own house was now coiled, and poised to strike.