Rebate King: Every Beauty I Spoil Makes Me a Billionaire-Chapter 16: The Bicycle That Didn’t Belong

"What do you think you’re doing?" Maya’s cold voice resounded in the place. She was dressed for her own party, something elegant and pale that caught the afternoon light and accentuated her curves, and her expression was not pleased.

Upon seeing her, Kyle’s posture changed so fast it was almost comical.

The snarling predator of five seconds ago instantly evaporated, replaced by a smiling young gentleman caught mid-conversation.

"Maya! Nothing, nothing. Just saying hello."

"Stan Harrison is a guest I personally invited," Maya said coldly, her eyes never leaving Kyle’s face. "If you disrespect him again, you’re disrespecting me. Are we clear?"

"Y-yes. Of course. Completely clear."

Kyle nodded with a strained smile, the cash still scattered across the floor between them like evidence at a crime scene.

Maya turned away from him without another word. Her entire demeanor softened the instant her eyes landed on Stan. She stepped forward, slipped her hand into his with easy familiarity, and gently tugged him toward the hotel doors.

"Come on. Everyone’s already inside."

Kyle’s pupils contracted.

Holding hands. In front of him. In front of everyone. She was actually holding his hand.

If looks could kill, the glare Kyle sent at the back of Stan’s head would have left him in a thousand pieces across the lobby floor.

A bike-riding nobody. No money. No name. No family. No car. Kyle ran through the list in his head like a prayer, reassuring himself.

He was better than Stan Harrison in every conceivable dimension. The idea that some broke college kid was going to walk away with Maya Zimmerman in front of him was beyond absurd, it was an insult to the natural order of things.

He pulled in a sharp breath, smoothed his jacket, and followed them inside without bothering to pick up his money.

The banquet hall was already full when they stepped in, soft lighting, a string quartet in the corner, waiters circling with champagne flutes.

The guest list looked like a who’s who of the city’s second-generation rich, draped in designer everything.

"Everyone, I’d like you to meet someone," Maya announced, her hand still resting lightly on Stan’s arm. "This is my friend, Stan Harrison."

Heads turned. The implication of the introduction was clear enough, this is someone I’m personally vouching for, so treat him accordingly.

A handful of the closer guests stepped forward with polite smiles and the automatic social grace of people who’d been raised to at least pretend to welcome anyone Maya Zimmerman endorsed.

"Pleasure to meet you."

"Welcome, welcome."

"Any friend of Maya’s is a friend of mine,"

"Stan Harrison," Kyle Jennings cut in loudly from the back, his voice pitched just high enough to carry across the entire room, "is your bicycle okay out there? You locked it up properly, right? I’d hate for someone to steal it."

He drew the word bicycle out like a blade.

The effect was immediate.

A ripple of confusion moved across the room, followed by a second ripple, sharper, colder, more amused, as the meaning sank in.

"Bicycle?" someone murmured.

"Yeah, that’s right," Kyle said helpfully, grinning now. "He rode here on a bike. Parked it out by the valet stand."

It was a small word. A harmless word. But in this particular room, in this particular crowd, it landed like a dropped tray.

The warm, polite smiles of a moment ago started to slip. Several of the guests who’d been reaching out to shake Stan’s hand took small, almost imperceptible steps backward, as if bike-riding was a communicable condition.

"Wait. He actually came here on a bicycle?"

"What era is this supposed to be? It’s practically the Gen Alpha era, who still rides a bike to a five-star hotel?"

"Maya," another woman cut in, her tone edged with genuine disapproval, "you can’t just invite anyone to something like this, come on."

Maya’s jaw tightened.

"Stan might ride a bicycle," she said evenly, "but that doesn’t mean anything. He’s genuinely impressive. You don’t know him the way I do."

"Impressive?" Kyle scoffed, loud enough to carry. "Impressive how? Impressive at pedaling? What’s impressive about pedaling a bike."

A few of the guests actually laughed.

"He’s just some broke kid. No car. No name. Average looks. What exactly are we supposed to be impressed by?"

Stan’s look was anything but average, he’s really handsome but everybody wasn’t willing to admit that fact after knowing his status.

"I’m telling you, Maya, you need to be more careful about the people you associate with. Reputation matters." Someone chipped in from a corner

The verdict was already in. In this particular crowd, riding a bicycle to a party like this wasn’t quirky or humble, it was a social disqualification.

It marked Stan as someone from a completely different world, someone who didn’t belong, someone who didn’t even understand what he was supposed to be aspiring to.

The guests who had stepped forward to greet him now turned back toward their own conversations, their expressions cooled into something between disinterest and open disgust. A few of them didn’t even bother to lower their voices.

Kyle Jennings wore the expression of a man watching a plan unfold exactly the way he’d designed it.

This was what he’d wanted. Not a fight, not a confrontation, public humiliation.

The kind of public humiliation that clung to a man and followed him around for months. The kind that made a woman quietly reconsider whether she wanted to be seen with him ever again.

’Try to take a woman from me on a bicycle, will you?’

Maya tried, valiantly, to push back. "Stan’s really a good person, he’s,"

"Good? How is he good?" another guest shot back, openly skeptical now. "What’s good about a broke kid who shows up to a five-star hotel on a bike?"

The more Maya tried to explain, the less anyone believed her.

At a certain point, she could actually feel the explanation making things worse, every defense she offered sounded, in this crowd, like an excuse. Like she was the one who needed to justify herself.

Eventually she stopped trying.

There was no point. Even if she told them the truth, that Stan was a major shareholder of Wanhai Group, that his bank balance had more zeros on it than most of the people in this room combined, not a single one of them would have believed her.

They would have assumed she was lying to save face. That she’d been charmed into defending some pathetic nobody.

So she closed her mouth, slipped her arm a little more firmly through Stan’s, and let them think whatever they wanted to think.