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Chapter 1: Current Financial Status Irrelevant

Chapter 1: Current Financial Status Irrelevant

A Toyota Corolla rumbled to a stop in front of a modest three-story apartment building just as the afternoon sun began to mellow.

Adrian rested both hands on the wheel and let out a long breath, eyes lingering on the building through the windshield. Cream-colored walls. Narrow balconies with rusting railings. A parking lot that had clearly seen better decades.

Manageable. Not luxurious. Just quiet. For the first time in weeks, quiet sounded like the entire point.

The last month had been the opposite of quiet. His parents asking careful questions at dinner. His own head running the same loop at two in the morning. The same six hurtful words, the same face, the same second he’d laughed because he was certain she was joking.

She hadn’t been joking.

"Nope. Not today." He slouched back against the headrest for exactly two seconds. "Enough boxes to deal with already."

The memory backed off. Good. One problem at a time.

He killed the engine and let the silence settle around him. Oddly comforting. He rolled his shoulders, cracked the door, forced himself out of the car.

The sedan’s trunk was packed floor to top, most boxes sealed in a hurry with uneven strips of tape. Clothes. Books. Kitchen stuff. A cheap rice cooker his mother had insisted he take.

He stared at it for a second, hands on his hips, head tilted like the box owed him an explanation.

He reached past the smaller ones and wrapped both arms around the biggest box near the back. Not the smart move. The smart move would’ve been literally anything else. Too late. His arms had already committed before the rest of him had.

"...Argh." He pulled. It barely moved. "Heavier than you look."

More effort, jaw set, boots braced against the truck’s bumper. It finally slid free.

Get the hardest one out first before the fatigue hits in. Everything after gets easier after.

Box against his chest, chin tucked to see over it, he nudged the sedan’s trunk shut with his elbow and headed for the building.

No elevator. Just concrete stairs to the second floor, exactly as advertised by the manager and exactly as ignored by Adrian when he signed the lease.

He looked up. Looked at the box. Looked back at the stairs, already recalculating his life choices.

"...Never once considered stairs would be a problem. No wonder the rent was cheap." Muttered mostly to himself, mostly annoyed. "Movers weren’t such a bad idea after all."

Not much of a negotiation left to have. He climbed, one slow step at a time, shoulder brushing the wall on the tight turns.

By the second floor his arms were already burning. He kept going anyway, down the narrow hallway, breath coming a little rough now.

Apartment 206. His.

"Finally." He dropped the box’s edge against his hip to free a hand for the keys, fumbling them once before the right one caught. "Home sweet home. Sure."

He unlocked the door and stepped in.

The apartment was almost painfully empty. Small living area, compact kitchen. One bedroom, one bathroom. Plain white walls. Bare tile. Nothing about it stood out. Which was, more or less, exactly why he’d picked it.

Thud

The box hit the floor with a dull thud that echoed through the emptiness.

A dull burn ran through both arms from two flights of stairs and one deeply unreasonable box.

"That was one box."

He wiped his forehead with the back of his wrist and got moving again almost immediately. No point standing around admiring his own suffering.

Grabbed the box cutter off the counter, sliced the tape on the heavy ass box. Books. How the hell were did they weigh a ton.

The silence pressed in around the sound of cardboard tearing. No memories in this room yet. Starting today, it was just his.

He could work with this. But then. His hand stopped on the next flap of tape.

Her handwriting was still on the side of the box. An old label from when they’d planned this moment together, months before any of this. He hadn’t noticed he’d started with that one. Hadn’t noticed until right now, knife hovering over her own handwriting.

I think we should break up.

He’d laughed. Certain she was joking.

I met someone. A better match, apparently.

Funny. Wasn’t aware there’d been a competition running.

His jaw tightened. He cut the tape anyway, faster than necessary, and kept unpacking. Books and more books, stacked on the bare floor in a pile that didn’t need to be that neat.

One tear escaped before he caught it, wiped off fast with the heel of his palm, quick and almost angry, like he was erasing evidence mid-task.

"Fuck." A beat. "Get a grip, man."

That was that. He just had to live with the fact that she was a mistak...

The word didn’t make it out. Calling two years a mistake felt wrong. Dumb, even. She’d made her decision. Nothing he did now changed it.

He looked around the empty apartment for nothing in particular, sighed as he wiped the last stream of his tear off his cheeks.

Bzzz.

His phone buzzed against his leg mid-stride. He frowned, pulling it out without breaking stance, one hand still braced on the moving box.

"Hm?" He paused. "Shit. I forgot to call mom and tell her I’m good."

His eyes met an unfamiliar notification, dead center on the screen. A winged stack of emerald banknotes under a thin golden halo. And a title that read.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

THE BILLIONAIRE CASHBACK SYSTEM

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

"...Billionaire Cashback System." He turned it over once, thumb hovering, still half-focused on the box in front of him. "When did I install this?"

Curiosity won over the unpacking. He tapped it, straightened his posture, and let the box wait.

The screen went black. Gold letters bled slowly into view.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

BILLIONAIRE CASHBACK SYSTEM

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Host Candidate Confirmed.

Compatibility: 100% (Rare. You should be flattered.)

Initializing System...

[■■□□□□□□□□] 13%

[■■■■■□□□□□] 47%

[■■■■■■■■□□] 82%

[■■■■■■■■■■] 100%

Initialization Complete.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

He blinked. "Flattered." A short laugh. "Low-budget ad. I’m not in the mood for this right now."

He went back to unpacking with the phone still in hand, half his attention on the books, half on the screen he kept glancing back at.

Billionaire. What an eye grabbing word.

So there he was. A box at his feet, a wrecked chest cavity where his heart used to sit, and a phone informing him, with some confidence, that he was on his way to becoming a billionaire.

Yeah. This was definitely a scam.

He pocketed it and reached for the next plate. The buzzing didn’t agree with that decision.

Bzzzt.

Bzzzt.

Five minutes. That’s all he was asking for.

He pulled it back out, annoyed, reaching to uninstall whatever this malware was. Then. Something caught his eye this time. No ad banner. No payment request. No suspicious link asking him to verify his bank account.

Just more words.

Binding Successful.

Welcome, Adrian Hayes.

These scammers had his name now, apparently. That was a genuinely concerning amount of effort for a scam.

He set the plate down, actually paying attention now.

Current financial status is irrelevant.

Future value is all that matters.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

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~~~

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