Billionaire Cashback System: I Can't Go Broke!-Chapter 21: Six Thousand Reasons

The place two blocks up was called something Ryan didn’t catch because the sign was the kind of understated that was essentially just a suggestion, small letters on raw stone, the type of branding that said ’if you need to read the sign you might not be who we’re for.’

He was definitely not who they were for.

Zara walked in like she was.

Ryan followed.

This one was different from the others — less structured, the clothes arranged more like an installation than a retail display, each piece given room to exist independently. The lighting was warm and directional. Somewhere low a speaker was playing something that had no business being as good as it was.

A woman at the back of the store looked up, recognized Zara with a smile that was genuine rather than performed, and gave them the specific nod that meant ’take your time, I’m here if you need me’ without actually saying it.

Zara moved through the space carrying the same focused ease as the previous stores, fingers reading fabric, eyes cataloguing quickly. Ryan followed at a slight distance, holding the accumulated bags from the last two hours and feeling like a very fashionable pack mule.

He watched her work.

She had a system, he’d noticed — she moved through a space in a rough perimeter first, quick overview, then doubled back to the things that had actually caught her.

She touched things before she looked at them properly. She held items away from the rack before bringing them close. It was methodical but didn’t look it.

She pulled a jacket out and held it toward him. Dark brown, soft structure.

"Don’t say the price," he said.

"I wasn’t going to."

"You had the look."

"I don’t have a look."

"You get a specific expression right before you tell me to try something on that costs more than my rent."

Zara tilted her head. "Your rent is quite low."

"Try the jacket Ryan," he said, in a passable imitation of her tone.

She pointed at the changing room.

Minute’s later.

"Well?" she said.

"It’s good," he said. Which was an understatement significant enough to be almost dishonest.

They kept moving.

---

The fifth store was larger, which Ryan found reassuring after the gallery-as-shop situation of the last one. It had the younger energy of the third place — not loud exactly, but more alive, more color in the rails, more variety.

Zara moved like she was having a conversation with the clothes that Ryan wasn’t invited to follow.

He drifted.

He found himself near a section toward the back of the store — women’s, he realized a beat after stopping — and was about to redirect when he noticed Zara had come to a full stop nearby.

She was looking at a coat.

It seemed diffrent from the moving-through-looking she’d been doing all afternoon. Her hand came up and touched the lapel once, turned it slightly to see the lining, then let it go.

The coat was a deep burgundy, structured at the shoulders. The lining was a pale gold that caught the light when the lapel moved.

Zara stood there a moment longer. Then she stepped back and kept walking toward a rack of shirts she’d apparently intended to show Ryan.

She wasn’t here for herself.

He looked at the coat. Looked at her retreating. Looked at the coat again.

He checked the size, then checked the label.

He put it over his arm and kept shopping.

---

At the register, Ryan put his items on the counter. The shirts, the knit from the third store that he’d been carrying separately, the jacket from the quiet living room store that Elena had wrapped like someone handling an artifact.

Then he put the burgundy coat on the counter.

Zara looked at it, then at him.

"Ryan—"

"You looked at it," he said simply.

"That’s a women’s coat."

"I’m aware of that."

"You can’t wear it."

"I know." He nodded at her. "But you could."

She stared. Something crossed her face that she appeared to be managing carefully.

"Did you check the price?" she said.

Ryan looked at her. "You told me not to check prices."

"Ryan."

"Those were your rules. I’m following them."

"Ryan, I said that for ’your’ clothes—"

The cashier, who seemed to have witnessed many versions of this conversation, began scanning items with quiet efficiency.

Zara stepped slightly closer to him, lowering her voice. "You genuinely don’t have to do this."

She was close enough now that he could smell her perfume properly — the same one from the gallery, understated, the kind that didn’t announce itself until someone was near enough that it mattered.

Her voice had dropped into something that wasn’t quite soft but was close to it, the armor down slightly.

And from that distance, with that voice, with that smell — the number on the tag became very genuinely irrelevant to Ryan in a way that was difficult to explain logically.

"I know," he said. "I want to."

The cashier finished scanning.

"Your total today is six thousand, three hundred and forty-five dollars."

Ryan did not move, yet his heart did something far too similar to a cardiac arrest to be medically safe.

But he showed no visible reaction.

He looked straight ahead at the card reader with the expression of a man receiving information he was choosing to simply accept.

Zara was still close to him. He could feel it.

"Homelessness," he said, producing his card, "isn’t as bad as people make it out to be."

He tapped the card.

It went through.

He exhaled through his nose, slowly, quietly, in a way he hoped was not audible.

The cashier began bagging.

Zara was looking at him with an expression he hadn’t seen from her yet — something unguarded in it, the composure she carried like a second coat slightly disrupted. She looked at the burgundy coat being folded carefully into a bag and then back at him.

She didn’t say anything.

Which, Ryan was learning, was sometimes how she said the most.

---

They came out onto the pavement loaded with bags, Ryan now carrying enough to qualify as a small shipping operation.

He looked up at the sky.

The afternoon light had changed. The gold was gone, replaced by flat and grey moving in from the west, the particular color of sky that meant it was considering its options.

"Might rain," Zara said, looking up.

"Might," Ryan agreed.

He looked at the bags. Looked at the sky. Took out his phone and opened a text to Mike.

’I need you to do something.’

Mike’s reply came in thirty seconds: if it’s illegal I need more context

’It’s not illegal. I need you to come to Madison Ave and take some bags back to my apartment.’

A pause.

’...you want me to be your bag guy’

’I want you to be my bag guy yes’

’Ryan I have a master’s degree’

’I’ll pay you’

’How much’

’Mike!’

’Fine. Sending location. You owe me.’

Ryan pocketed his phone. "My guy is coming."

Zara raised an eyebrow. "Your guy."

"I have a guy now apparently, yeah."

"You called someone to carry your bags."

"Our bags," Ryan said.

She shook her head, the almost-smile back.

They moved slightly off the flow of the pavement and waited, the bags arranged around their feet. The sky had made up its mind about the grey and was committing to it now, the light going flat and cool.

Mike arrived eleven minutes later in an Uber, climbed out wearing a jacket that suggested he’d been doing nothing in particular when the text arrived, looked at the bags on the pavement, and then looked at Ryan with the expression of a man recalibrating his understanding of his job description.

"This is a lot of bags," Mike said.

"Thank you Mike."

"I have a master’s degree," Mike said again, but he was already picking them up.

He clocked Zara approximately two seconds after that and his entire demeanor reorganized itself.

"Hi," Mike said.

"Hi," Zara said.

Mike looked at Ryan with an expression that communicated about fourteen different things in rapid succession, all of which Ryan ignored.

"Apartment," Ryan said. "Please."

"Yeah." Mike was still looking between them. "Yeah, absolutely." He gathered the bags with significantly more willingness than thirty seconds prior, nodded at Zara with the specific nod of someone trying to seem casual, and got back in the Uber.

As it pulled away Ryan caught Mike’s face in the window, turned back to look at them, mouthing something that Ryan chose not to try and interpret.

"Friend of yours?" Zara said.

"Coworker actually."

"You sent a coworker to carry bags."

"He volunteered enthusiastically."

Zara laughed, and they started walking again, lighter now, the city moving around them in that particular late afternoon way.

They made it half a block.

"Zara."

The voice came from their left, and with it the sharp mechanical click of a camera shutter, once and then again, rapid.

Ryan turned. A man with a long lens, half behind a parked car, already repositioning.

Zara’s hand found Ryan’s arm in the same instant.

"Run," she said.

Not a suggestion.

Ryan ran.