Chapter 469: Plagued by Misfortune

Brandon Jacobs rushed to the police station. Just as he was identifying himself to an officer, a young woman with glasses and a world-weary look on her face charged at him, grabbed his clothes, and started screaming.

“It’s you? You’re that woman’s boss? You heartless monsters, you’re worse than animals! Why haven’t you gone to hell yet? Arrest him! Arrest him right now! They killed my dad and now I’m saddled with a mountain of debt! I want them dead! Arrest them!”

As she spoke, she tried to hit Brandon Jacobs, but an officer pulled her aside.

“Let’s talk this out calmly. No shouting, no getting physical. You need to calm down.”

“I can’t calm down! How could I possibly calm down? My dad never treated my mom this well in his entire life! He borrowed hundreds of thousands to give this woman as ‘gifts,’ and what was the result? He ended up jumping in a river and killing himself! Now debt collectors are at our door every single day. My mom and I have nowhere to hide. How do you expect me to be calm?”

“Look at him, so well-dressed! Look how well he’s living! Why do bad people get to live so well? Who knows how many people they’ve ruined? Arrest them! If you can’t give me justice for this, I’ll go to the reporters, I’ll post videos, I’ll expose you all online! I don’t want to live anymore, so none of us should get to live!”

She was extremely agitated and, as she spoke, seemed on the verge of fainting. Brandon Jacobs, having pieced together the general situation from her words, walked up to her.

“Rest assured, if this is our fault, I will absolutely not shirk my responsibility. Please, don’t be so agitated. Tell me the details of what happened.”

An officer took Brandon Jacobs aside and showed him the gist of the statement Donna Thorne had given.

“When I first got into this industry, I had a really hard time adjusting. I would just sit foolishly in front of the camera, not knowing what to say or do. I don’t have any special talents, and I can’t perform. But my boss said that as long as I was good-looking, it was enough. Even if I just sat there writing, drinking tea, or scrolling through my phone, I could make money. ‘I figured, anyway, I’d get paid 5,000 yuan for the first month whether I got results or not. I don’t have an ID right now and can’t find any other work, so I gritted my teeth and did it.'”

“On my first day, just over an hour in, a ‘Big Bro’ in the stream showed interest in me and even sent me gifts. That same night, my boss started teaching me the scripts—how to talk to men, how to keep them continuously interested in me, how to hide the amount others were gifting. He even filmed a ‘work vlog’ of me. Soon, that Big Bro became my top fan.”

“That’s how this industry works. Once you have fans, you have to create a fan group so they can get instant updates on the streamer’s activities. Other than announcing my stream times, I never said a word in the group, but Big Bro would still come to my stream every day and send me gifts every day. He also tried to add me as a private contact through the platform’s backend.”

“My boss told me not to add him, saying it was fine to just chat with him through the backend. Men who watch a lot of streams all get it—when a female streamer won’t add them as a contact or meet them in person, it just means they haven’t hit the spending target yet.”

“After about ten days of watching my stream, he asked in the group how much he needed to gift to get my personal contact info. Another fan answered him: 200,000. After the platform’s cut and the boss’s share, I’d only get a few tens of thousands. To be honest, everyone else understood the market better than I did. I was shocked when I saw that.”

“That night, Big Bro gifted me 200,000, and we added each other. He asked me why I signed with a company instead of going independent, saying that way he could just give all the money to me. I told him that I didn’t know anything when I first started and I’d already signed a contract. It was too late for regrets. Unless my performance exceeded the targets or my contract was up, I couldn’t afford the astronomical termination fee.”

“Big Bro said he felt sorry for me and wanted to take me out. I didn’t go. I said I had to move because the hotel was too expensive for me to stay in anymore, and I couldn’t rent a place without an ID. So, I moved into the studio and started sleeping on the floor. I even filmed a vlog about it.”

“The reason my boss agreed to let me live in the studio was because he thought it was a good way to sell a sob story and also play mind games. He didn’t want Big Bro thinking he could do whatever he wanted with me after spending just that little bit of money, so he required me to only chat with him online.”

“After a week of this, Big Bro got angry. He said he’d spent so much money without even getting to meet me in person, so he was deleting me and we shouldn’t contact each other anymore.”

“To win him back, my boss bought a watch and had me take a picture of it to send to him. I told him I had bought him a gift and was just about to ask him to meet up that day. Just like that, I had him coaxed back.”

“That night, we went to a high-end restaurant for dinner. The moment I saw him, I knew he wasn’t someone with high spending power. He wasn’t some rich heir or a big boss. He wasn’t young, and you couldn’t hide the air of a long-time laborer that clung to him.”

“You could tell he put a lot of effort into looking good at the restaurant. Toward the end of the meal, he grabbed my hand and wanted me to go to a hotel with him. But my boss was watching us from the next table. He had someone call me right on cue, telling me to come back for overtime. They said one of my fellow streamers was sick and couldn’t work that night, so I had to cover her sales quota.”

“Big Bro was furious and wouldn’t let me go back. I told him I’d lose my job and have to pay that astronomical termination fee. In a fit of rage, he deleted me. I really don’t know what happened after that. I swear.”

“Because once this top donor was gone, another one would just take his place. My job is to make people happy, so I really didn’t have time to think about what happened to him or why he would kill himself. I didn’t defraud him. From beginning to end, every cent he spent was given voluntarily, within the platform’s rules.”

“Officer, I guarantee every single word I’ve said is true. You can check if you don’t believe me. Whether it’s the chat logs from the platform’s backend or our WeChat history, I haven’t deleted anything. You can check whatever you want.”

The police did indeed check. Based on the available evidence, Donna Thorne’s actions did not constitute fraud.

However, her boss was suspected of fraud and money laundering in several other cases. The police couldn’t yet determine if Donna Thorne was connected to these matters, so she couldn’t be released just yet.

After hearing the full situation, Brandon Jacobs thought for a moment, then called a lawyer.

After some discussion, Brandon Jacobs spoke to the young woman with glasses.

He would help pay off her father’s online loans. With that, the matter would be closed.

As for the other matters, since there was no evidence connecting her to them, Donna Thorne was deemed uninvolved and subsequently released.

An officer led Donna Thorne out by the arm. When she saw Brandon Jacobs waiting for her outside, her expression turned awkward.

But Brandon Jacobs said nothing, simply turning and getting back into his car.

“Where do you live?”

Several minutes after he started driving, seeing that she remained silent, Brandon Jacobs asked curtly.

Her statement said she was currently living in the studio, but Brandon Jacobs had assumed that was just part of her persona.

Donna Thorne named an urban village she had heard about from someone else. Brandon Jacobs started driving in that direction.