Billionaire Cashback System: I Can't Go Broke!-Chapter 9: Three For Three
Ryan gave himself five minutes.
He found a quiet corner near the back of the gallery, away from the main crowd, and just stood there with a fresh glass and let the noise wash over him. Two connections in one night, one of whom had bought him a drink and handed over her number unprompted. The system was quiet for once, no notifications, no projected returns, just the ambient sound of expensive people pretending to care about art.
He needed the five minutes because he could feel the adrenaline sitting in his chest like something fizzing, and he’d learned enough in the last week to know that walking into a third conversation running hot was how you fumbled it.
He looked out at the room.
The crowd had thinned slightly at the edges but thickened toward the center where a new piece had drawn attention – something large and angular, steel maybe, catching the light differently depending on where you stood. Ryan watched people move around it, each finding their angle.
His eyes kept moving.
Then he saw her.
She was alone at the far end of the room near the exit that led to a small outdoor terrace, the door slightly open behind her letting in a strip of cold air that she didn’t seem to mind. Mid thirties. Dark blazer over a silk top, dark trousers, the kind of put-together that wasn’t about the event but just about how she moved through the world generally. A glass of red wine held low, almost forgotten in her hand.
She wasn’t looking at the art.
She was looking at her phone with the expression of someone receiving information they’d been half-expecting and didn’t particularly want.
The system flickered.
> TARGET IDENTIFIED
> Processing...
Ryan didn’t wait for it. He pushed off the wall and moved through the crowd, unhurried, picking up a fresh glass from a passing tray on the way.
He stepped out onto the terrace.
The cold hit him immediately, sharp and clean after the warm density of the gallery. She looked up from her phone.
"Sorry," Ryan said, nodding at the door behind him. "Needed air."
She looked back at her phone. "Me too."
He stood at the railing a few feet away and looked out at the street below. A cab stopping. Someone walking a dog that was in no hurry. The particular quiet of a Tribeca side street at 10pm that felt like a different city to the one twenty blocks north.
He didn’t say anything for a while.
She put her phone in her pocket.
"Bad news?" Ryan asked. Not pushing, just acknowledging.
She considered not answering. He could see the consideration.
"Complicated news," she said finally.
"Worse in some ways."
She looked at him sideways. Something in her expression shifted slightly, the way a door doesn’t open but unlocks.
"Yeah," she said. "Exactly."
They stood there a moment in the cold. Ryan looked back through the glass doors at the gallery, the moving shapes of people inside, the warm yellow light.
"You don’t seem like you’re enjoying yourself in there," he said.
"I never enjoy these things."
"Then why come?"
She turned to look at him properly now. "Why does anyone come to things they don’t enjoy?"
"Obligation. Visibility. Free champagne." He paused. "Usually one of those three."
The corner of her mouth moved. "Visibility," she said. "You?"
"Connections." He turned to face her. "Ryan."
"Claire." She shifted the wine glass to her left hand and shook his. Her grip was firm, decisive, the handshake of someone who ran things. "What kind of connections are you looking for?"
"Depends on what’s available." He leaned against the railing. "What do you do, Claire?"
"Media." She said it the way Diana had said venture capital earlier – accurate, compressed, the full picture available on request. "Publishing, mostly. I run an independent house."
"Fiction or – "
"Everything." A pause. "We’re small but we’re not precious about category. If the writing is good and we believe in the writer we’ll find a way to make it work."
Ryan nodded slowly. "That sounds like an exhausting way to run a business."
She blinked. Most people said that sounds incredible or that sounds so fulfilling.
"It is," she said, and something in her voice had a different quality now. Like she’d been waiting for someone to say the obvious thing. "It’s the most exhausting thing I’ve ever done and I’ve been doing it for nine years."
"But you’re still doing it."
"But I’m still doing it."
Ryan looked at her. "So you love it past the point of reason."
"I’m just too stubborn to quit.."
Ryan laughed, genuinely. She smiled into her wine glass.
They talked for twenty minutes on that terrace. About the publishing industry, about New York, about the particular kind of stubbornness it took to build something independent in a city that respected scale above almost everything else. She was sharp and a little tired and completely without pretense, the most straightforwardly honest conversation he’d had all evening.
At some point the cold stopped being noticeable.
When her phone buzzed again she looked at it, sighed once, quietly, then put it back.
"I should go back in," she said.
"Visibility."
"Visibility." She finished the last of her wine and looked at him with a kind of frank appraisal. "You’re easy to talk to, Ryan. That’s not as common as it should be."
"I’ve been told."
She reached into her blazer pocket and produced a card. Simple, cream colored. Claire Ashworth. Ashworth Press.
"If you ever want to continue the conversation," she said. "Or if you know any writers who are good and broke and too stubborn to quit."
Ryan took the card. "I might know the type."
She smiled at that, said goodnight, and went back inside.
Ryan stood on the terrace alone for a moment, the cold finally registering now that the conversation had ended. He looked down at the card, then up at the street, then back through the glass at the warm interior of the gallery.
His phone buzzed.
> MISSION COMPLETE: HIGH SOCIETY
> Connections secured: 3 of 3
> Diana Lockridge – Lockridge Capital ✓
> Zara Osei – 13.2M followers ✓
> Claire Ashworth – Ashworth Press ✓
> Total investment: $487
> Base return: 2x
> Performance bonus: Connection quality exceeded expectations across all three – 3.5x total
> Final return: $1,704.50 in 24 hours
> Reputation: +31 (now 51)
> Power: +2 (now 5)
> New contacts added to network
> ESCALATION PHASE 2: Now unlocked
Ryan read through it once, pocketed his phone, and looked back out at the street.
It didn’t feel that long ago he had $247 and nowhere to be.
And now he had Diana Lockridge’s breakfast invite, Zara Osei’s number, Claire Ashworth’s card, and $1,912 becoming $3,616 by tomorrow morning.
He straightened his cheap shirt, pushed open the gallery door, and walked back into the warmth.
