The Venerable One's preparations to guide Stephen Strange had continued for at least half a century.
But that work had now come to a complete end. Kamar-Taj's watchers in the mundane world would lead Stephen Strange to his final destination. The question now was how to make Strange feel despair without inflicting too much harm on him. In truth, that would not be difficult. Even with a high-paying profession like surgery, Stephen Strange had not finished paying off his mortgage. Not everyone could be like Salomon and pay the full purchase price of a Penthouse Apartment in one lump sum after covering the renovation costs. Once Stephen Strange lost his source of income, his originally high-quality A-rated mortgage would instantly drop to B-grade or even C-grade, then be bundled up and sold by the bank as one of countless securities, allowing the bank to cut its losses or even turn a profit.
After that, the debt collectors would no longer be letters from the lending bank, but banks that had purchased the debt—or even gangs. New York's largest underground securities broker was none other than Wilson Fisk. Some of his men specialized in financial work, and his dealings with banks were an unspoken rule in the financial market. Since the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis, some banks had chosen to sell utterly unrecoverable, lowest-tier subprime loans at low prices to gangs operating under the name of brokerage firms in order to recoup their losses. The gangs would then send thugs to collect the debts, resulting in countless deaths. By then, Strange, a former doctor, would have no ability to resist.
Salomon understood the mindset of people like Stephen Strange very well. That irritating, arrogant man had almost no friends he could turn to. Even in desperate straits, he might rather starve