Three Strikes at Midnight

The fluorescent lights of the trading floor hummed with the same relentless rhythm as his heart. Marcus checked his iPhone for the third time in as many minutes—2:47 AM. Elena hadn't texted back since their fight at dinner, the one where she'd called him "emotionally bankrupt" and then cried into her cabernet while he stared at his phone, tracking a futures contract that could make or destroy his year-end bonus.

He should have been home. Should have been fighting for his marriage. Instead, he was watching this bullshit—a literal bull market rallying on news of rate cuts, the numbers climbing like fever degrees while everything else in his life burned to ash. His boss had patted his shoulder earlier and said, "You've got balls of steel, Marcus. Ride that bull till it bucks." The old man's breath had smelled of whiskey and bad decisions.

His phone lit up. Not Elena. A notification from his mother: *Your father's in hospice. They say days, maybe weeks. He keeps asking about that baseball game.*

Marcus nearly dropped the device. The baseball game. The summer of 1998, when his father had driven him three hours to see the Dodgers play, the rare day the man had been sober enough to keep the radio down. They'd sat in the nosebleeds, sharing a singular, perfect moment when Marcus caught a foul ball, his father's face cracking open with something like pride. That had been the last good day before the drinking worsened, before the months of silences and slammed doors.

Now his father was dying, and Marcus was here, watching green numbers rise on a screen, measuring his worth in decimal points.

The bull market surged. His position cleared. He'd just made more money than most people saw in a decade.

He stood up, the chair scraping violently against the floor. His colleagues looked up, startled. Marcus didn't care. He grabbed his coat and walked out of the building, his iPhone burning in his pocket with unanswered messages from both women who mattered—the one leaving him and the one who'd birthed him.

The city lights blurred as he hailed a cab. Some rides you have to take alone. Some bulls you have to let buck you off before there's nothing left to save.