The year is 1998. In the merciless world of the stock exchange, Alexandre, a brilliant young trader, finds himself caught in the middle of a game of scheming and manipulation. An employee of the BGCI, he is duped into covering up several risky transactions by his colleague and so-called friend. The losses begin to snowball, becoming ever harder to hide. Facing an audit and with a journalist hovering around, Alexandre''s fall from grace takes a deadly turn. This first volume brings us forward 12 years in the future, when Christopher Dantes, a businessman as rich as he is mysterious, makes his first public appearance at the Millennium Financial Ball, coming face to face with the people involved in the plot of that sordid drama of the past.