Chapter 492 | Golden Parachute

Chapter 492: 492 | Golden Parachute

He had no idea which her she meant, and Chloe didn’t give him time to work it out. She grabbed his wrist and pressed his hand flat to her lower stomach, where nothing showed yet, and held it there while she rode him. Her voice broke into gasping Korean, then into his name. "Jordan, Jordan, ahhh, don’t you dare stop!"

He didn’t. He drove up into her hard enough to rock her forward, and she cried out against his throat. She locked around him as she came, shaking, thighs clamped on his hips, teeth in his shoulder so she wouldn’t scream at the full volume of a girl who now had two thousand followers. That tipped him over. Ceaseless Discharge arrived with all the subtlety of a burst water main, and Chloe made a wrecked little noise into his skin as he filled her in long pulses.

"Ohhh, oh my god, that’s so much, you absolute fire hydrant of a man."

"You keep asking for it."

"I keep asking for it, mmh, yes, I know. I’m a crime against my own spreadsheet."

She collapsed onto his chest and lay there breathing hard, him still inside her, harbor light painting orange bars across her back. Through the brick, nothing. Kumiko was either writing page forty-six or holding a pillow over Alexis’s face. Jordan decided not to think too hard about which.

Chloe traced a slow circle on his chest. When she spoke, the edge was gone.

"I’m going to be bad at sharing her."

Jordan grinned at the ceiling, wildly pleased with himself. "Relax, babe. There’s plenty of me to go around. That’s basically my entire stat sheet."

"Not you, idiot." She lifted her head. Without her contacts her eyes were dark and wet at the edges, and she didn’t bother hiding it. "Kumiko."

The grin slid off.

"She came to me first," Chloe said. "Orientation week, she cried in my bathroom because a girl in her building said her ita-bag was childish, and I sat on the floor and taught her to breathe in for four. She’s been mine since September. You’ve been mine since January, and I share you fine, because I planned it on a legal pad. I didn’t plan for her."

"She dragged Alexis out of here like a puppy she found in a parking lot."

"And she didn’t look back once, and she gave her the dumpling." Chloe pressed her forehead to his collarbone. "Nobody has ever got the dumpling, Jordan. I slept over in November. I got the regular pillow."

He opened his mouth to say something helpful. Her finger landed on his lips.

"Don’t fix it. Rule five says I don’t get to lie, so now it’s on the record. That’s all I want from you tonight."

"Can I say one thing that isn’t a fix?"

"One."

"You got the regular pillow because she wasn’t trying to impress you. She already had you."

Chloe was quiet for a long time. "That’s a fix," she said finally, into his collarbone. "It’s a terrible fix. Shut up." But her fingers curled against his chest and stayed there.

So he didn’t fix anything else. He wrapped both arms around her and held on. The crack she’d shown him sat between the three of them, thin and real, the place the weight would land if somebody leaned too hard. Knowing where it was counted for something. Bridges only failed where nobody had bothered to look.

Chloe fell asleep twenty minutes later, diagonal across the mattress with the entire duvet around her legs. Jordan lay on the wall side in the cold and listened to the brick.

At 1:07 his backup phone lit up on the nightstand.

kumiko: she’s still awake jordan-kun

kumiko: she said she has never slept in a room with someone who didn’t want something from her

kumiko: like ever, not even at boarding school in switzerland

kumiko: i told her i want something too

kumiko: i want her to eat breakfast

kumiko: she laughed and then she cried a little bit and now she’s asleep on the dumpling

kumiko: please don’t tell chloe i’m texting after ten

kumiko: ok actually you can tell her, rule five, but tell her gently

kumiko: goodnight jordan-kun ????

He read it twice. Then he looked at Chloe, mouth open, hand resting on her stomach, who hadn’t gotten a single one of those messages. He put the phone face down without answering and decided breakfast was his job. Eggs and rice for four, with nine extra bites hidden in somebody’s bowl.

He must have dozed. The next thing he registered was gold light crawling across the ceiling.

The real phone lay on the floor by his sweats, face up. He was sure he’d left it face down. He leaned over Chloe’s ankle and picked it up. 3:12 AM, above a panel pulsing in slow, patient beats.

?? HIDDEN QUEST UNLOCKED ??

GOLDEN PARACHUTE

Target identified: Alexis Van Der Berg

Classification: Apex social asset, emotional dependency critical

Alexis Van Der Berg has never purchased her own meal, filed her own paperwork, or made a single financial decision that was not pre-approved by Donovan Van Der Berg’s estate management office. Her entire identity, from the clothes on her back to the table she occupies every Tuesday afternoon, is collateral held against her compliance. She is the wealthiest person you know and she owns nothing.

Fund her independence. Establish a financial safety net sufficient to sever her dependency on the Van Der Berg family trust without requiring her to sacrifice her living standard or her pride.

OBJECTIVES:

[ ] Identify the total monthly cost of Alexis Van Der Berg’s current lifestyle independent of family subsidies

[ ] Establish a funding mechanism she will actually accept (Note: She will not accept charity. She will not accept pity. She will barely accept a compliment that does not also reference her appearance. Get creative.)

[ ] Achieve financial separation from the Van Der Berg family trust for a minimum of six consecutive months

COMPLETION CONDITIONS:

Alexis Van Der Berg must be able to sustain her independence voluntarily. Coercion, guilt, and dramatic ultimatums do not count. She has to choose it.

REWARD:

Instant registration to Slot 3 at 75% Chemistry

Cashback Rebate Multiplier: x5.00 for 30 days

20 Quest Tickets ??

(System Note: You are an eighteen-year-old business economics major attempting to financially liberate a girl whose father could buy your apartment building with the interest from his checking account. Proceed anyway.)