Rebate King: Every Beauty I Spoil Makes Me a Billionaire-Chapter 24: The Perfect Excuse...

Stan heard every word but didn’t bother turning around.

’A house.’ He almost laughed.

He could afford a house. He could afford the entire complex if he felt like it. Four Seasons Garden was an upscale residential complex on the north side of Inksea, and by his rough math, dropping a few million on a unit there wouldn’t even register against his current balance.

What nobody around him understood was how much of a gift Sophie Youngs had just unknowingly handed him.

Under normal circumstances, Stan would have written off the entire encounter the moment she’d said no.

He wasn’t about to chase a woman who wasn’t interested, he’d learned that lesson the hard way.

But Sophie was now a bound consumption target in the Supreme Rebate System, and the system only worked if he spent money on his targets.

Without a natural excuse to direct funds her way, she would have been functionally useless to him.

And then, in front of a crowd of witnesses, on her own initiative, she had publicly named a price.

A million-plus dollar price tag with her explicit, if sarcastic, blessing.

It was the single cleanest spending justification a bound target had ever handed him. Better than Sarah’s debt. Better than Maya’s birthday. Better than Xenia’s livestream gifts.

Sophie had just green-lit a consumption event that was going to trigger a massive rebate, and she’d done it in front of fifty witnesses while thinking she was shutting him down.

As for how to actually contact her afterward, he wasn’t the least bit worried. A girl as famous as Sophie Youngs?

Once he had the deed in his hand and a reason to approach her again, finding her socials would take thirty seconds. Half the boys in this crowd probably already knew her dorm number.

Buy the house first. Everything else would follow.

Stan slid his hands into his pockets, let the evening breeze tug lightly at his jacket, and kept walking toward the dormitory. A small, private smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

’Thanks for the excuse, Sophie.’

Grayson Davies couldn’t sit still.

He’d been pacing the length of his office for the better part of an hour, hands clasped behind his back, the city sprawling indifferently beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows. The report on his desk hadn’t moved, but he’d read it four times already. Each time, the numbers said the same thing.

Thirty percent.

Someone had been quietly accumulating Wanhai Group’s shares for weeks, patient, methodical, invisible. And then, this morning, a final move: ten percent swept up in a single transaction from a cluster of smaller shareholders who hadn’t even thought to call him first. Just like that, a stranger named Stan Harrison held as much of Wanhai as Grayson Davies himself.

Thirty percent each. A perfect, unsettling mirror.

If Harrison picked up another twenty, he’d be the largest single shareholder in the company. More powerful than Grayson Davies in his own boardroom. The thought was difficult to hold without his jaw tightening. He had built Wanhai from nothing. He had bled for it. And now some name he’d never heard was sitting at the same table, uninvited, perfectly calm.

"Find me Harrison’s contact information," he said, not turning from the window. "I want to meet him today."

Stan had barely dropped his bag onto the dorm room floor when his phone buzzed.

He glanced at the caller ID and frowned. ’Grayson... isn’t he one of Wanhai Group’s shareholders?

He knew this because he had gone through the Wanhai files the system provided. His memory wasn’t the best, but he was fairly certain Grayson ranked among the company’s top shareholders.

A thought surfaced almost immediately. ’Is this about the additional 10% I just acquired, on top of my existing 30%?’

Stan’s gaze lingered on the screen for a brief moment, curiosity flickering in his eyes, before he finally accepted the call...

The voice on the other end was measured, polished, the kind of voice accustomed to being listened to. It introduced itself as the chairman of Wanhai Group and requested a meeting at his earliest convenience, suggesting this evening, Stan was a bit bored, and he figured he might as well meet up with Grayson before buying the Four Season Gardens house for Sophie...’

Sighing, Stan glanced at his bag, then at the ceiling.

"Sure," he said. "Now works."

Grayson arrived at the hotel entrance twenty minutes early. He stood at the top of the steps in a charcoal suit, watching the street with the focused stillness of a man pretending not to be anxious. His assistant hovered nearby, monitoring the approaching foot traffic.

"Sir." The assistant’s voice dropped. "That should be him. Coming up the drive."

Grayson Davies looked.

He’d constructed a mental image over the past hour, someone seasoned, guarded, with the unhurried bearing of old money. Someone who’d played this game long enough to know exactly what they were doing. The man walking toward him dismantled that image in about three seconds.

Stan Harrison was young. Not young in the way powerful men sometimes looked young, preserved, polished. Young as in: he could have been a graduate student. There was an ease about him, almost careless, entirely unbothered.

Grayson held the surprise off his face through long practice. Whatever this man was, whatever game he was playing, the forty percent of Wanhai stock in his name was not a coincidence and not a mistake. Nobody stumbled into that position.

He stepped forward, inclined his head in a gesture he reserved for very few people, and kept his voice warm and unhurried.

"Young Master Harrison. I appreciate you making the time."

Stan looked at him with mild curiosity, as though the title were slightly amusing. "And you are?"

"Grayson Davies." A brief, self-deprecating smile. "Just Gray, please." He turned, gesturing toward the lobby doors. "Please, come in. I’ve had a table set aside."

In all of Inksea, perhaps only Stan Harrison could draw such warmth from Grayson Davies.

The table stretched nearly two meters end to end, every inch of it claimed by steaming dishes and lacquered platters, a spread fit for a formal banquet, not an unannounced visit.

"Please, Young Master Harrison." Grayson gestured with an open hand, his tone carrying none of the stiffness it held for other men.