Taking Stock

DAMIAN CLARKE (30) is an introverted, anxiety ridden financial analyst working for Prime Trust, a Los Angeles based hedge fund. He believes in doing things by the book. He’s out of place in a business that often makes money by stretching the rules. Nobody does that better than his prick of a boss, WARREN CARLSON. An egotistical and greedy hedge fund manager.

It’s not the job that Damian wanted, but it pays the bills and helps care for ANDY (26), Damian’s mentally disabled younger brother. It also placates his wife, AMANDA (29), beautiful and outgoing. She’s out of his league.

Damian’s older brother, MATTHEW, (32) is a Gulf War veteran with PTSD and a gambling addiction. He spends his days bouncing between Las Vegas casinos. Just biding his time until something or someone takes him out of his misery...Something like getting into deep debt with JAKE PETERSON, a notoriously cruel Las Vegas based mob boss, but fate has other plans.

Matthew is forced to assist Peterson’s crew as a lookout until his debt is supposedly repaid. As luck would have it, on the last job of Matthew’s first night of work, an oversized goon who is supposed to kill Matthew, has a heart attack leaving Matthew holding the bag…a $100,000 bag. Frustrated, Matthew decides it’s just not his time to die and instead skips town with the money. He first stops at Damian’s home to say goodbye and heads off to a California mountain town to hide and finally rehabilitate his life.

Jake and his henchmen’s search for Matthew leads them to Damian. They take him hostage and torture him. Damian has a simple choice; tell them where Matthew is or die. Damian won’t give up his brother, instead he offers Jake insider trading information that would enable Jake to make far more than what Matthew owes him. Although the fraud violates Damian’s ethics to the core, the scheme works. Unfortunately for Damian, it works too well and now Jake wants more…much more and threatens Andy’s life, if Damian refuses.

Adding to Damian’s turmoil, he discovers that Amanda is having an affair with his boss and tormentor, Warren Carlson, who Damian now suspects of engaging in illegal trading activity of his own.

With his life in shambles, Damian turns to Matthew for help to get Jake out of their lives. Matthew returns to Vegas and lures one of Jake’s henchmen to an off-strip hotel. Matthew takes the henchman hostage and forces him to drive him to Jake’s compound. There, he exacts vengeance on Jake and ensures that he will never bother them again. Meanwhile, Damian gets the evidence needed to bring Carlson down and turns it over to the SEC. And with that, two enemies are vanquished.

With nothing left for him in Los Angeles, Damian, Matthew and Andy head back to their small home town in Michigan. Matthew opens a gas station and Damian finally gets the career he always wanted – teaching business ethics at a small university.