"Isabella's return, you say?"

"That is so, my lord."

"Hmm……."

The earl's study in the house of Hales. Earl Rupert let a low groan out at the report Sebastian the butler had brought in.

An attacking investment, and a result to go with it, neither of them like Isabella.

Isabella, who had held to the safest investing she could, has bought futures.

And oil at that, the top of the commodities that are seesawing just now.

The return was enormous.

She took a selling position in futures at the high. A hundred million dollars had doubled in a few days.

"It is the boutique's best return of the year."

Make a return of more than ten per cent in a year and the clients are full of praise.

With the largest sums in particular, swelling an asset is not easy.

The moment a return goes into the minus, the clients leave without sentiment.

Which is why safety is what is looked for, always.

It is a boutique law firm that scratches where the rich itch, but the fees for managing their investments come to a considerable part of its income.

Isabella's high return, breaking out on top of a structure that only ever runs one way.

At a perfect moment at the very top she bet on futures falling.

Given the leverage multiple she chose, a ten per cent fall in crude produced a return of over a hundred per cent.

"On her own?"

Earl Rupert, who knows Isabella's nature at bottom, asked it with a doubting eye.

"That is, she appears to have followed…… an investment the Korean VIP client asked her to place."

Sebastian the butler, who has attended to the house's affairs over long years.

He had very nearly every matter of the house at his fingertips.

The range of it covered the earl's household, the children's private lives, the movement of their money, and the profits and losses on their investments.

He bows his head before Earl Rupert, but he holds a doctorate in business from Oxford University.

His family have served as butlers to the…