Billionaire Cashback System: I Can't Go Broke!-Chapter 31: Startup

The woman’s name was Priya and she was clearly not going to let the coat thing go.

Zara, entirely unbothered, attempted to explain.

"He bought it for me when we went shopping," she said. "And then his friend dropped it at Ryan’s apartment by mistake when he was returning our bags, so Ryan brought it tonight."

She said this as a complete explanation that resolved everything.

It resolved nothing.

Priya looked at Ryan. At Zara. At the bag. Back at Ryan. "Our bags," she said.

"We did some shopping," Zara said.

"Together." 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

"Yes."

"And the bags went to his apartment."

"Some of them."

Priya opened her mouth, closed it, and looked at the man beside her — whose name turned out to be Seth — with an expression that communicated volumes without saying anything.

Zara appeared genuinely unaware of what she was communicating.

Ryan kept his face neutral.

"Anyway," Zara said brightly. "Ryan, this is Priya — she handles PR for the agency. And Seth is one of our photographers."

Seth shook Ryan’s hand with the grip of someone still deciding what he thought. "And you are?"

"Ryan Russo."

"Are you in fashion?"

"No."

"Art?"

"No."

Seth waited for the rest of it.

"Early stage startup," Ryan said. "Tech."

The word landed the way it always landed in rooms like this — not badly, just without weight. Tech meant nothing here. It sat in the same category as ’I’m working on some things’ or ’figuring out the next move’, which in New York translated cleanly to a single interpretation.

Seth nodded with the politeness of someone who had moved on internally.

Priya had a small smile that didn’t reach much further than her mouth. "How exciting," she said. "Good luck with that."

Ryan smiled back. "Thank you."

---

Zara pulled him away after that, steering them toward the windows and the rest of the room like she knew every square foot of the space.

The sun had dropped further, the amber going deeper now, the city outside doing its early evening shift. From up here you could see a significant portion of Manhattan laid out in the darkening light — the grid of it, the density, the way it compressed and expanded depending on which direction you looked.

"Sorry about them," Zara said, not sounding particularly sorry, more like noting a fact.

"They’re fine," Ryan said.

"Priya is fine. She’s just—" Zara considered it, "—protective. Of things she thinks need protecting."

"And Seth?"

"Seth is a photographer who once described his own work as culturally urgent." She said it without venom, just accurate. "Draw your own conclusions."

Ryan looked out at the city. "Who’s the woman near the bar in the silver — don’t look immediately."

Zara looked immediately. "That’s Claudine. She styles for three major editorials and has told the same story about meeting Karl Lagerfeld at every industry event for the last nine years."

"Is it a good story?"

"It gets longer every time she tells it." Zara picked up a drink from a passing tray. "The man she’s talking to is her assistant. He’s heard it four hundred times and his face still does that thing where he laughs in the right places."

"Dedicated."

"Underpaid," Zara said.

Ryan smiled.

They moved through the room at a pace that was mostly Zara’s — stopping when she wanted to stop, moving when she’d had enough of a conversation, Ryan falling into step without needing direction. People noticed her the way people always noticed her, a consistent low-level awareness of where she was in the room.

But they also noticed him.

Not in the same way — more in the way people noticed something unexpected.

Zara was known in this space, known well, and one of the things apparently known about her was that she kept her circle extremely tight. Almost no men in it. The few people who knew this well enough were doing the visible calculation of who exactly Ryan was and how he’d ended up here next to her, apparently comfortable, apparently welcome.

By the third time someone glanced between the photo circulating online and the back of Ryan’s head, he was fairly sure the room had drawn its own conclusion.

---

Zara introduced him to a woman named Celeste — senior editor at a magazine whose name Ryan recognized — and a man called Dominic who did something in luxury brand consulting that he explained at a length Ryan found impressive.

Each time, the same sequence.

Is he in fashion? No. Art? No. What does he do?

And each time Ryan said startup, tech, early stages — he could feel the room’s temperature toward him adjust by a degree or two. Not hostile yet. More the coolness of people who had decided something wasn’t relevant to them.

Dominic was the most direct about it. He had the confidence of someone whose opinions had been validated by enough people that he’d stopped questioning them.

"A startup," he said. "What stage?"

"Early."

"Funding?"

"Being arranged."

Dominic nodded slowly. "What’s the product?"

"Still in development."

Another nod, slower this time. "So — concept stage, essentially. Pre-product, pre-funding." He smiled, pleasant enough on the surface. "Brave. Most of those don’t make it past the first year, statistically speaking. But someone has to try, I suppose."

"Someone does," Ryan agreed pleasantly.

Zara glanced at Ryan.

Celeste jumped in — just changing a subject they found uncomfortable. "And how do you two know each other?"

"We met at a gallery event," Zara said.

"I insulted the art," Ryan said at the same time.

Celeste looked between them.

"He did," Zara confirmed. "Loudly. In front of several people who’d paid significant money for the pieces."

"One piece specifically," Ryan said. "I stand by it."

"He was right," Zara added. "Which was the annoying part."

Celeste laughed despite herself. Dominic’s smile had become harder to read.

Later, moving away from that cluster toward a quieter spot by the windows, Priya reappeared with a glass of wine, she had clearly been thinking since the last conversation.

"So," she said to Ryan. "A tech startup. In New York. With no product yet and no funding confirmed." She tilted her head. "And you’re here because—"

"Zara invited me," Ryan said.

"Right." She sipped her wine. "And you two met at a gallery."

"We did."

"And went shopping."

"We did."

"And the bags ended up at your apartment."

"Some of them."

Priya looked at him for a moment. "You’re very calm for someone being interrogated."

"Am I being interrogated?"

"Priya," Zara said.

"I’m just asking questions," Priya said, perfectly pleasant. "It’s my job to ask questions. Zara is — she’s important. To a lot of people. And men who show up in her orbit with—" she gestured vaguely, "—startups and no product and bags in their apartment—"

"You can say what you mean," Ryan said. "I don’t mind."

Priya looked at him directly. "Fine. You seem nice. But you also seem like someone who’s a long way from being able to keep up with Zara’s world. And that’s not an insult, it’s just—"

"Priya." Zara’s voice had dropped a register.

"—math," Priya finished.

The three of them stood in the amber light from the windows, the party moving around them, the city twenty-something floors below going about its business.

Ryan looked at Priya. Took a sip of his drink. Set it down on a nearby surface.

"You know what’s interesting," he said, "about people who are very good at reading rooms?"

Priya waited.

"They get so comfortable reading the room they’re in," Ryan said, "that they forget to account for rooms they haven’t seen yet."

Priya’s expression didn’t change, but something behind it shifted.

"Have a good evening," Ryan said pleasantly.

He turned back to Zara.

She was looking at him with something he couldn’t fully categorize — somewhere between amusement and surprise.

Then her phone buzzed.

She looked at it. Looked at Ryan.

"I have to go say hello to someone," she said. "Don’t go anywhere."

She moved off into the room.

Ryan turned back to the window and looked out at Manhattan in the early dark — the lights coming on floor by floor across the grid, the city shifting from its daytime face to its nighttime one.

His own phone buzzed in his pocket.

He pulled it out.

A text from a number he didn’t have saved. Short, no greeting, just a name and three words beneath it.

*Unknown.*

*We are onto you Russo, it’s only a matter of time.*