Ryan saw the text at 11:47 PM.
He’d been half-watching sothing on his laptop, not really following it, the kind of evening that fills itself without much assistance. Sophie had left around nine, cab ho, a kiss at the door that lingered longer than a casual goodbye. The apartnt had settled into its quiet after that.
His phone lit up on the couch cushion beside him.
*Zara: There’s this thing my agency’s having friday evening, wanna co drop it off then?*
He read it once. Then again. Started typing a reply — sothing easy, a yes, a couple of words — and then stopped and looked at what he’d written and deleted it.
He pressed call instead.
It rang three tis.
"Hey Zara."
"Hi." Her voice had the slightly softer quality it got late at night, the professional edges of it gone. Not sleepy, just unhurried.
"Sorry about this morning," Ryan said. "I was a bit under the weather. Couldn’t really talk properly."
A small pause. "Mm. Doing better now?"
"Much better."
"Good to hear, Ryan."
He shifted on the couch, the laptop pushed to the side. Outside, the city was doing its late night thing — quieter than dayti but never actually quiet, always that low continuous hum underneath everything.
"You know that post," he said.
"What about it?"
"It won’t stop getting likes." He looked at the ceiling. "It’s my first ti having sothing about get over a hundred thousand likes."
"Technically no one knows it’s about you."
"Can you let have this."
A laugh, brief and genuine. "Sorry, sorry."
"Being even slightly famous must feel good."
She was quiet for a mont. Actually thinking about it rather than just answering.
"It gets exhausting quite fast," she said eventually. "Waking up and seeing public comntary on your private life before you’ve had coffee. People deciding who you are and what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with." A pause. "It’s a lot."
"I see that perspective," Ryan said. "But personally I quite enjoyed all the girls in the comnts calling handso."
"They saw the blurry back of a head."
"And from that alone they were able to deduce I was probably handso. Which I think says a lot."
"You’re taking whatever you can get."
"Absolutely. Unless—" he paused, "—you disagree with them?"
Silence on her end. The comfortable kind.
"Of course not," she said. "They have no idea it’s quite the gorgeous man behind that blur."
Ryan stayed quiet.
The smile arrived before he could do anything about it — wide and stupid and entirely involuntary, spreading across his face in the privacy of his own living room where nobody could see it, which was the only reason he let it stay.
"Oh my god," Zara said. "Are you blushing?"
He imdiately rearranged his face into sothing more neutral, which achieved nothing because she was on the phone.
"No. Of course not."
"I can feel you blushing through the phone, Ryan."
"n don’t blush." He said it with complete conviction. "Especially not ."
"Mm. Especially not you," she said, and there was sothing in it — less teasing, more like fond. "The manliest of n."
"I’m glad you can testify to that."
"I can."
The line went quiet again. Ryan cleared his throat once, which accomplished nothing. The smile had returned and he’d stopped fighting it.
"Ah yes," he said, switching lanes. "I saw your text."
"And?"
"It’s a yes. After careful consideration — I’ll go on a date with you."
"Not a date. It’s a get-together invite," she said. "I invited ten other people."
Ryan paused. "You just hurt my feelings."
She laughed. "For what it’s worth," she said, when it settled, "of everyone I invited — you’re the one I’m most looking forward to seeing."
Ryan looked at the ceiling.
"Well," he said. "Now I wouldn’t miss it for anything."
"Good. Don’t forget the coat."
"I won’t. Goodnight Zara."
"Goodnight Ryan."
The call ended.
He sat there on the couch for a mont with the phone in his hand and the stupid smile doing whatever it wanted on his face. Then he reached over, found the remote, and pulled up the Pistons ga he’d had queued since earlier.
He watched it with a smile.
He had never, in his entire life, watched a Pistons ga with a smile. It was a new experience. Mildly concerning as a developnt. He found he didn’t mind.
They lost by eight points.
That made him more happy.
He went to bed still smiling, which probably said sothing about the state of things.
---
He woke up Thursday to his phone buzzing on the nightstand.
It wasn’t the system. The system notifications had their own quality to them — that particular vibration pattern he’d gotten used to over the past few weeks, the one that ant money or a mission or a stat update.
This was not that.
He picked it up with the groggy automatic motion of soone not yet fully conscious, expecting a text, a group chat notification, sothing from the team about the presentation.
It was an email.
Official header. Governnt formatting. The kind of layout that existed specifically to make the reader understand this was not sothing to skim.
*Internal Revenue Service — Notice of Interview Request*
*Dear Mr. Ryan Russo,*
*You have been selected for an examination interview regarding recent financial activity associated with your personal account. Specifically, we have identified a pattern of recurring deposits that require clarification to ensure compliance with federal tax law...*
Ryan read it five tis.
Sat up slowly in bed.
The morning light was coming through the curtains — the cheap ones he still hadn’t replaced — making that pale stripe across the floor that he’d woken up to every morning for three years. Everything in the room looked exactly the sa as it always did. His apartnt. His floor. His life.
His bank account that had gone from $247 to $46,000 in three weeks with no employnt record, no declared inco, no paper trail of any kind that would survive five minutes of professional scrutiny.
He read the email a third ti.
The date they were requesting. The address. The formal language of a governnt institution that had noticed sothing and wanted to sit across from the person responsible for it and ask questions in a room designed specifically for asking questions.
Ryan sat on the edge of his bed.
Stared at the email, then at wall and back at the email again.
Outside a car horn. Soone’s voice briefly. The elevator in the building doing its grinding thing on the way to the third floor.
"I think I’m fucked," he said.
To the empty room, to the morning, to no one in particular.
He sat there with the phone in his hand and the email on the screen and thought about how three weeks ago his biggest problem was whether he could afford both electricity and food, and how that problem had been replaced by a significantly larger one that he had absolutely no idea how to solve.
The system was quiet.
No notification. No suggestion. No projected return or mission parater or stat update.
Just Ryan, and the email, and the morning light on the floor.
He put the phone face down on the bed and pressed both hands over his face.
Thought.
The money was real. The account was real. The deposits were docunted and traceable and followed a pattern that any accountant worth their billing rate would look at and imdiately recognize as sothing that required explanation.
Doubling deposits, weekly, from no identifiable inco source. No employer. No investnt firm. No business revenue yet from a company that had been registered for less than a month.
What exactly was he supposed to say.
’Well sir, there’s this app on my phone.’
He took his hands off his face.
Okay.
Panic wasn’t useful. He’d been in bad situations before — the gala, the park, $247 and a dead-end bank account — and panic hadn’t helped any of them. What had helped was thinking, deciding, moving.
He needed a paper trail.
He needed soone who understood the legal and financial architecture of what this looked like from the outside and could build sothing that explained it in terms the IRS would accept.
Sophie had been setting up an accountant.
And then there was Diana Lockridge.
He picked the phone back up, opened his contacts, and looked at her na. Venture capitalist. $340 million under managent.
He checked the ti. 7:42 AM.
He got up, went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror.
He was terrified.
He went to the kitchen, put the coffee on, and sat down at the table with his phone.
He had two days before Friday.
He had a presentation from his team coming.
He had a governnt institution requesting his presence in a formal interview room.
And sowhere in the city, Diana Lockridge was having breakfast with interesting people on Thursday mornings.
Ryan looked at her contact.
Pressed call.
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