Billionaire Cashback System: I Can't Go Broke!-Chapter 8: Cheap Shirt

Ryan’s first thought was that this shirt cost $187.

His second thought was that he couldn’t say that.

"Cheap," he repeated, keeping his expression neutral.

"Mm." She glanced at it once, briefly, the way someone glances at something they’ve already fully processed. "I know a little about fashion. And compared to everything else in this room—" she gestured vaguely at the crowd, at the calculated Italian tailoring and the quiet Swiss watches and the shoes that cost more than most people’s rent "—yours reads differently. It’s not trying to say anything." A small pause. "Things that aren’t trying tend to glow a little. Hard to ignore."

Ryan looked down at the shirt. The charcoal button-down he’d spent forty minutes agonizing over in a store on Mercer Street that afternoon.

Cheap.

"That’s a strong compliment," he said. "You hitting on me?"

She considered this with the seriousness of someone consulting an internal document. "I wouldn’t know. I don’t usually hit on anyone."

"That explains why you’re so bad at it." He picked up the glass she’d bought him. "Either way I’d have to turn you down, love. I’m working the room."

Her brow went up. Just slightly. "Working the room?"

"Yes." He leaned an elbow on the bar, settling in. "Unlike most of this lot I don’t actually find enjoyment in standing around staring at self-obsessed art made by egotistical nepo babies who spent two hundred thousand dollars on an art degree only to be less talented than a random street painter who’ll never get the same opportunities because their uncle doesn’t own three galleries in New York."

She was quiet for a moment.

"It seems," she said carefully, "that you have some strong feelings about systematic unfairness in the art world."

Ryan scoffed. "It’s nothing like that. I’m quite complacent about it actually. The world isn’t fair. It never was." He turned the glass in his hand. "You can either cry about it or learn to play the game."

"And you being here tonight is playing."

"Now you get it." He gestured at the room with his glass. "If I only wanted to spend my evening somewhere this agonizingly dull, I’d have stayed home and plucked out my eyelids. Or watched a Pistons game."

She laughed — sharp and genuine, entirely unself-conscious. "I actually find the Pistons quite entertaining."

Ryan turned to look at her fully. "Don’t."

"I’m serious—"

"A terrible art take I could concede on. I’d walk away, think less of you, move on with my life." He shook his head slowly. "But I’ll be damned if I stand here and let someone praise a team I hate watch."

She laughed again, louder this time, one hand coming up briefly toward her mouth before she let it fall. It was the most unguarded he’d seen her all evening — loose, unperformed, nothing behind it except that she found something genuinely funny.

Across the room, three of the men who’d approached her earlier were watching with expressions Ryan chose not to look at directly.

She recovered, leaning slightly against the bar now, the careful distance she’d maintained all evening quietly reduced.

"So," she said. "What does working the room actually entail?"

"Connections. Contact. As many as I can make tonight." He glanced out at the crowd. "They might have the worst taste in art I’ve ever encountered in a concentrated space, but they’re still rich and powerful. That part’s useful."

She tilted her head, looking at him with something that was almost evaluative. "The cheap shirt gave it away, but I’m guessing you’re not particularly rich and powerful yourself. Not yet."

"Define rich."

She thought about it. "A couple million. Liquid."

Ryan set his glass down and raised both hands, fingers spread, moving them slowly through the air like he was working a calculation on an invisible screen. His lips moved slightly. He appeared to arrive at a number, reconsidered, revised upward, reconsidered again.

"So," he said finally, "where would — five hundred—" he paused, "—no, wait—" another pause, "—bucks put me?"

She laughed so hard she leaned forward, closing the remaining distance between them by another few inches, close enough now that he could smell her perfume properly for the first time. Something understated and expensive.

Then her eyes caught something across the room. A woman near the entrance lifting a hand in her direction.

She straightened.

"I have to go." She turned back to him, and the openness in her face hadn’t closed back up yet, which felt like it meant something. "I’m Zara."

"Ryan."

She held out her hand — not to shake, palm up, waiting.

It took him half a second. He handed over his phone.

She typed without rushing, handed it back.

"You’re funny, Ryan." Her eyes met his directly, and there was something in them that was almost a challenge. "I wouldn’t mind a call."

"Yeah?" He pocketed the phone. "And what exactly would we talk about?"

She lifted her glass, finishing the last of it. "How great the Pistons are?"

"Now I have to call," Ryan said. "Just to walk you through why that statement cannot be factually correct under any measurable criteria."

The smile she gave him then was slow and slightly wicked, the kind that arrived like it knew something you didn’t. She held it just long enough, then turned and moved through the crowd toward her friend.

Ryan watched her go.

His heart was beating unreasonably fast for a man leaning casually against a bar.

> MISSION UPDATE

> Target 2 of 3: SECURED

> Zara Osei — 13.2M followers

> Connection quality: Exceptional

> Method bonus: Unconventional approach — multiplier adjusted +0.5x

> Rapport score: 91/100

> Note: Target initiated contact. Rare outcome. Well done.

Ryan exhaled slowly through his nose and looked down at his phone.

Then at the room.

Then at his reflection in the dark glass of a nearby display case — the charcoal shirt, the easy posture, the face of a man who had just done something he didn’t entirely understand how he’d done.

"I cannot believe I pulled that off," he muttered.

One more.