Bull Market, Drowning Heart

The coiled **cable** lay between them on the bed like a black snake, thick and dormant. Elias stared at the ceiling fan's hypnotic rotation while Maya dressed in the darkness, her movements sharp and practiced.

"You're going back?" he asked, though he already knew the answer.

"The **bull** starts breeding at dawn. Your father can't handle the aggressive ones alone." Maya zipped her boots with a finality that made his chest ache. "And you should be sleeping. Market opens in four hours."

Elias turned toward her silhouette. "I keep dreaming I'm **swimming** toward something, but I can never reach it."

"That's what ambition feels like," she said, not unkindly. "You're chasing numbers, Eli. You're trying to outrun your father's legacy with quarterly returns and derivatives. Meanwhile, we're drowning in debt you won't acknowledge."

"The **water** main burst again yesterday. There's three inches in the basement."

"I know. I bailed it out while you were on that conference call with Tokyo."

Elias sat up, the sheets pooling around his waist. "I'm doing this for us. For the future."

"You're doing it because you're terrified of being your father," Maya said, her voice cracking. "He's seventy years old and still sleeping in the barn with the bulls because he can't let go of the ranch. And you're becoming him—just with a spreadsheet instead of a herd."

She reached for the door knob, then paused.

"What if I sold?" The words hung in the air, impossible and terrifying. "What if I liquidated everything and we—"

"You won't." Maya's certainty was gentle. "And even if you did, you'd still be swimming toward something you can't name."

She left. The cable on the bed seemed to tighten around him like a noose he'd tied himself.

Downstairs, the water waited in the darkness, rising.

Outside, a bull lowed in the distance, carrying the weight of generations on its back.

Elias lay back down and closed his eyes, waiting for the market to open.