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FINANCIAL THRILLER
ESPIONAGE

Marked to Fail

By
Max Grossman

Paperback

Paperback
Published on 26 March, 2026
126 Pages
$12.99
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Available on amazon

About the book

When a delivery boy is killed in New York, no one imagines the death will matter. But buried in a routine police report is a detail that leads to a startling discovery: a London fintech darling quietly routing millions of everyday payments through a shadow network tied to Iran's missile program and Hezbollah.

Mossad deploys James Ashford — known inside the Office as the Actor — a Director-General's special operative with a personal stake in the hunt. As the investigation deepens, he's joined by unlikely allies: a disillusioned lawyer, a conflicted whistleblower, a journalist chasing the story of her life, and a rising tech executive who suspects the company she helped build isn't what it claims to be.

What Ashford uncovers isn't just terrorist financing — but a financial system engineered to move political power invisibly.

To the world, Wirecard is a unicorn.
To those inside, it's a weapon.

Book Details

Title
Marked to Fail
Author
Max Grossman
Genre
Financial Thriller · Espionage
Press
Press Kit & Media Assets
Publication
2025
Formats
Hardcover, Paperback, Ebook, Audiobook
Rights enquiries
hello@maxgrossmanbooks.com
Max Grossman Books
MARKED TO FAIL
LIVES
ABOUT
SPEAKING
For most, a clean outcome ends the story.
For some, it becomes the job.
© 2026 Max Grossman Books. All rights reserved.
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had learned two things about New York: that nobody looked at you, and that everybody needed something from you at the same time. He moved through the city like water moves through rock — finding the gaps, following the pressure, arriving where he was supposed to be without anyone being able to say exactly how.His name was Elias Osei. Twenty-two years old. He had come from Accra with a cousin's address and a phone number that turned out to be wrong, and had spent the first three weeks sleeping in a room he shared with seven men he did not know in a building that smelled of mold and cooking oil and something else he could not identify but that he understood to be desperation. He had found the delivery work through an app. The app did not care where he was from.

It was a Thursday evening in March when he
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
The building on Broad Street had a doorman who looked at the delivery bag the way certain men look at certain people — not with hostility exactly, but with the relaxed assumption of superiority that does not bother to hide itself because it has never needed to. He made Elias wait by the desk while he called upstairs. Elias waited. He was good at waiting.The elevator that came down was a service elevator. Elias got in. He had ridden service elevators in enough buildings to understand what they communicated — and to have decided, somewhere around month four, that he did not care. The decision had made everything easier.The door opened on the thirty-first floor into a short corridor of cream carpet and recessed lighting. A woman was already standing in the doorway of the apartment, her phone in her hand, not looking at it, looking at him with the mild impatience of someone who has been
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