Billionaire Cashback System: I Can't Go Broke!-Chapter 42: Bar Knockout

Ryan grabbed Mike’s arm.

Mike grabbed Danny’s arm.

Danny, to his credit, was already moving.

The three of them were up the stairs before the sound reached them.

They came out onto the street at a pace that wasn’t quite running but the closest it could be to it.

They went a block, turned, went another block, and stopped in a doorway.

All three of them breathing hard.

"Did he — " Mike started.

A single muffled sound from somewhere below and behind them.

All three of them looked at each other.

"The boar," Danny said.

"Not us," Ryan said.

"Not us," Mike confirmed.

They stood in the doorway for a moment.

"We lost five thousand dollars," Ryan said.

"You lost five thousand," Mike said. "I lost five hundred."

"I feel like that distinction matters less than it did an hour ago."

Danny was looking at something on his phone. "We’re four blocks from my old office."

Ryan looked at him.

Danny looked up. "My old boss. The one who took credit for the Kellerman project in front of the whole company. Eighteen months of work."

A pause.

Mike said, "What floor is his office."

"Third."

"Does the building have a loading dock entrance."

Danny looked at Mike. "How do you know about loading dock entrances."

"I grew up in this city," Mike said. "Does it or doesn’t it."

"...yes."

Mike looked at Ryan.

Ryan considered all the implications of being a responsible adult with a company and employees and a meeting with the IRS.

He looked at Danny.

"We’re going to need spray paint," he said.

---

The loading dock entrance worked exactly as Mike said it would.

The building’s night security was one man at the front desk who was not at the loading dock, which was around the back and required climbing over a gate that was, technically, locked, but the kind of locked that was really more of a suggestion.

They found spray paint in a supply closet on the second floor. Red and blue. Mike took the blue. Ryan held the door. Danny stood at the third floor hallway entrance watching for the security guard.

Mike worked fast.

The office door said

*PETERSON — SENIOR DIRECTOR.*

Within three minutes it said *PETERSON — CREDIT THIEF* in large blue letters, with a moderately detailed illustration of a rat underneath it that Mike executed with surprising artistic confidence.

"You can draw," Ryan said.

"I was an art minor," Mike said.

"You never mentioned that."

"You never asked." He stepped back and looked at his work. "That’s good."

Danny appeared at the end of the hallway. "Security’s coming."

The three of them moved.

They made it to the loading dock before the light from the security guard’s torch reached the third floor corridor. Over the gate, across the back alley, onto the street, walking normally because running was conspicuous and walking fast was invisible.

Half a block away Mike started laughing.

Then Danny.

Ryan lasted another fifteen seconds before he went too, the three of them walking down a New York street at nine PM laughing at nothing they could fully explain to anyone who hadn’t been there.

Sophie’s text came at 9:23.

*We’re at a bar on Bleecker. Come find us when you’re done doing whatever you’re doing.*

Ryan showed it to Mike and Danny.

"What do we tell them we were doing," Danny said.

"Nothing," Ryan said. "We tell them nothing."

"They’ll know something happened."

"They’ll suspect. Suspecting isn’t knowing."

Mike nodded. "We took a walk. Saw some of the city. Had a drink."

"Exactly," Ryan said.

"Nothing else happened," Danny said.

"Nothing of note," Ryan agreed.

---

The bar on Bleecker was warm and close, Friday-level busy for a Tuesday, a place that didn’t need to try. Sophie and Iralis were at a table near the back, both looking considerably more relaxed than they had at noon, which Ryan attributed to the spa situation.

Sophie looked at the three of them when they arrived.

"You look weird," she said.

"Long walk," Ryan said.

"You’re all sweating."

"Cold out," Mike said. "We walked fast."

Iralis looked at them one by one, noting data points. She said nothing, which was enough to know she thought everything.

They ordered drinks. The table expanded to fit six.

Liam had reappeared like he never left.

He quietly disappeared around the time they followed Gerald’s tin down to the lower level — he’d gone to the bathroom, came back to an empty table, and made a series of reasonable decisions that the other three did not make.

He found a chess board at the bar. Played three games against a retired professor who turned out to be genuinely excellent. Lost the first two, won the third. They talked about game theory for an hour.

He texted the group chat at 8:47 PM:

*Where are you.*

Nobody responded because at that point they were watching illegal boar fighting, then climbing a loading dock gate, and one was holding a can of spray paint.

He joined the girls at the Bleecker bar at nine, had two drinks, and was the most functional person at the table for the rest of the evening.

He still didn’t know what the other three were doing and has decided not to ask.

The conversation moved easily now — something about the afternoon had removed the last of the professional distance, the version of each person they’d been performing slightly for each other replaced by something more actual.

Iralis, it turned out, had strong opinions about competitive eating as a sport, which she delivered entirely seriously and which somehow held up under scrutiny.

Mike did an impression of the ramen place’s host that was accurate enough to make Danny choke on his drink.

Sophie told a story about a client from her freelance days that went in a direction nobody anticipated and that ended with her being accidentally cited in an academic paper about color theory.

Ryan sat back and watched his team be people.

This was what he’d wanted. Not a dinner where everyone said professional things about themselves. This — actual evidence that these five could share a table without agenda and leave liking each other more than when they sat down.

The two men appeared at 10:40.

They’d been at the bar, Ryan had clocked them earlier without paying much attention — late twenties, energy of men who’d had enough alcohol to feel invincible, which was a specific and recognizable quantity.

They’d been moving around the room and now they stopped at the table.

The taller one directed himself at Sophie with entitled confidence.

"You’ve been here a while," he said. "You should let us buy you a drink."

Sophie looked at him. "We’re fine, thanks."

"Come on."

"We’re with people," Iralis said, gesturing at the table with the flat patience while explaining something obvious.

"They can come too," the shorter one said, which didn’t logically resolve the situation.

Mike opened his mouth.

Ryan put a hand on Mike’s arm.

He looked at the taller one. "She said no. The second time is the last time I’m going to watch you hear that word and not understand it."

The taller one looked at Ryan as he recalibrated, deciding whether to escalate.

He decided to escalate.

"Mind your business," he said, taking a step forward.

Ryan stood up.

He was taller than the man by two inches, and the week of whatever the protocol had been doing to his general confidence meant that the standing up had a quality to it that wasn’t aggressive but was entirely immovable.

The man swung first, which Ryan had expected, and it was wide and telegraphed, and Ryan moved his head back two inches and let it go past, and then hit him once, clean and direct, and the man was sat down on the floor knowing he had made irreversible decision.

His friend looked at Ryan. Looked at his friend on the floor. Looked at Mike and Danny, who had both stood up at some point.

He helped his friend up and they left.

The bar had gone briefly quiet. Then it resumed.

Ryan sat back down.

His hand hurt slightly.

Sophie was looking at him.

"Do you usually knock guy’s out at bars?" she said.

"Not recently," he said.

Iralis picked up her drink and took a sip. "Your form was good," she said, and went back to the conversation as if she’d commented on the weather.

---

Twenty minutes later Sophie touched his arm and said she was going to find the bathroom and did he want another drink, he took as the question it appeared and said yes, same again.

She came back four minutes later when everyone else was too deep in conversation to notice and said the bathroom was through the back corridor and she’d got turned around and could he help her find it, which Ryan processed correctly.

The back corridor of the bar was narrow and dim, the noise from the main room muffled but present.

The bathrooms were at the far end.

Sophie stopped before they reached them.

She turned around.

"That was very hot," she said.

Ryan looked at her. The lighting in the corridor was low, it reduced everything to its essentials.

"The punching specifically or the general evening," he said.

"Both." She stepped closer. "All of it. The whole day. You, tonight."

The corridor was quiet relative to everything around it.

Ryan’s back found the wall.

Sophie’s hands found his jacket.

She looked up at him, her face close, the noise of the bar existing somewhere else entirely.

"Remember today is a work thing," he said.

"It is," she said. "We’re bonding."

And then she kissed him.