"Hohohohohohoho! Pff-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh."

London. The Hales boutique offices.

Isabella had started laughing in her private office and couldn't stop for a good while.

She had made an excuse about something urgent and come back to London ahead of the others.

Her father and her two brothers hadn't had time together in a long while, and they needed it to talk through what was in front of the house. And a deer hunt reeking of blood was not to her taste in the first place.

Back in London, the first thing Isabella did was pull up the pound futures and the FX margin charts.

The collapse on September 26, and the explosive rebound that started right after it.

The pound had looked for a while like it would fall forever, and it was steadying now, a little at a time.

"Johanna……. How did it taste, losing to our Bear?"

A smile spread at Isabella's mouth, happier than she could have put into words.

Something jammed in her chest had come loose.

She wasn't sure when it had started.

She couldn't put a date on when what was between her and Johanna stopped being a plain rivalry between two people.

Hales and Eisenberg.

The two houses had been set against each other in European finance for a very long time.

Now the two of them stood for that rivalry, one house each.

They were both women, and near enough the same age.

Both had been marked as prodigies in their families from childhood, and both had gone into the family business early.

From some point on, the longer it ran, the further ahead Johanna got.

After Brexit, the money behind the British royal family and the noble houses was not what it had been.

Eisenberg, on the other hand, had German and Swiss money at its back and had grown fast.

All that time Hales had gone on investing conservatively — conservatively enough that you would call it too much.

After Arthur Hales, the eldest son, moved up to managing partner and chief investment officer, the tendency got worse.

Her father Rupert wasn't…