He had never expected that Carter would possess such a huge amount of capital. He thought, at most, it would be tens of millions or maybe a hundred million pounds at the very top. He guessed that this guy must have reached some kind of verbal agreement with his older brother, planning to ask for family support if he couldn’t keep things going.

He never imagined that Carter would make so much money in such a short time—he had really underestimated his friend. “Could it be that he’s a transmigrator too?” Seeing his friend’s success, he even had such a thought pop up in his mind. Maybe it was because Leon Thompson felt he had never managed to show the huge advantages of being a transmigrator, so now, whenever he saw someone doing better than him, he suspected the other person was a transmigrator as well.

“When you first came to me, I never thought that in just four years, you’d achieve such huge success!” This praise was truly heartfelt—after all, everyone hopes their friends can make something of themselves.

Carter didn’t seem so happy to hear his friend’s praise: “At first, I thought I was really successful! But later, I realized that my early smooth sailing was inseparable from the shadow of my family.”

Leon Thompson understood immediately. The hardest stage for a self-made businessman is the very beginning, because you have nothing—not even a clue how to get your startup capital, which is a real headache. But for Carter, these things were never a problem.

His family must have prepared a sum of money for him as soon as Carter set out. And in his first few investments, the family only needed to support him behind the scenes, making sure Carter’s investment plans could proceed smoothly, and then success would almost be a given.

What? Investment failure? For someone like Carter, who had been raised as an ‘elite’ by a powerful family and held large sums of money, as long as one or two investments succeeded, more success would follow. He wasn’t an idiot—he’d learn from his failures, and since he wasn’t short on funds, as long as he was more cautious in future investments, making money was almost inevitable.

Once he figured all this out, Carter felt his own success wasn’t worth mentioning, because it was really the family’s success and didn’t have much to do with him.

As his friend, Leon Thompson could certainly guess what Carter was thinking, but he felt this was just Carter overthinking things, and he didn’t believe it would have any negative impact on Carter in the future. Given time, after a few more years in the business world, Carter wouldn’t have these awkward thoughts anymore.

That’s right—in Leon Thompson’s eyes, Carter’s current mindset was like a child throwing a tantrum with adults because he couldn’t get his favorite candy.

So, he put the matter aside and didn’t plan to bother with it. Instead, he picked up the documents and continued reading. Now that he knew Florence wouldn’t have to worry about funding for at least the next few years, Leon Thompson felt completely at ease, so he had the leisure to go through the stocks owned by Carter one by one.

But when his eyes landed on a very familiar phrase, Leon Thompson froze for a moment.

“This is...?”

He looked at it carefully several times, making sure he hadn’t misspelled it, and the font on the document was very clear, so there was no way he could have misread it. Since he hadn’t made a mistake, the most urgent thing was to confirm with Carter himself to see if this was really the company he remembered.

“Sol! You own thirty percent of Google’s shares?” He put the document on the desk and pointed to the line with the word Google on it.

Carter just glanced at it and said, “What? You know this American company too?”

“So it’s true, it really is that Google!” Hearing Carter’s words, Leon Thompson became even more certain that this was the American company he remembered, the one that made its fortune with a search engine.

“You’ve heard of this company?” At this point, Carter suddenly seemed to remember something and laughed: “Come to think of it, the reason I invested in this internet company is actually thanks to your advice back then!”

“What? My advice?” Leon Thompson was a bit surprised—he didn’t recall ever suggesting that Carter invest in internet companies!

“Yes, don’t you remember? Before I was about to leave, when we were chatting, you said, ‘The future is the age of the internet!’ Didn’t you? So I went and looked for some internet companies to invest in.”

Hearing Carter’s words, Leon Thompson didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He hadn’t expected the root cause to be himself. Other than marveling at the power of the butterfly effect, he really didn’t know what else to say. But at this moment, he actually hoped more things like this would happen.

*****************************************************8

PS: As expected, nothing came out...

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Chapter 6 Next Step Plan

Outside the office building of the Florence club, countless Florence fans waved their purple scarves and sang loudly, celebrating the club’s rebirth. Meanwhile, inside the office, the two people holding Florence’s future continued their conversation.