Episode 5

Chapter 5: Amber

The new apartment was on the seventh floor of a building with an elevator that actually worked. Two bedrooms, a kitchen with granite counters, a living room with windows facing south. Rebecca had found it, negotiated the lease, and furnished it in three days. The rent was four thousand a month, which Ethan's old brain still calculated as half a year's income and his new brain was learning to file under irrelevant.

Ethan had moved in yesterday and already the place felt both enormous and empty. His old apartment's furniture would have fit in the living room with room to spare. He'd bought a few things — plates, towels, a toothbrush that wasn't fraying — but the apartment still had the hollow echo of a space waiting to be lived in.

Marcus Torres stood in the middle of the living room and turned in a slow circle.

"Bro," he said.

"Yeah."

"Bro."

"I know."

Marcus ran his hand along the couch — real leather, not the peeling vinyl they'd grown up with — and sat down like he was afraid he'd break it. He was thick through the shoulders, tattooed from wrist to elbow, and he looked wildly out of place against the clean white walls. But he was grinning. Marcus was always grinning.

"So let me get this straight," Marcus said. "Your real dad shows up. He's rich."

"Yes."

"How rich?"

"Forbes list."

Marcus stared at him. "Forbes list rich."

"Number one in the state."

"Holy shit." Marcus leaned back and pressed both palms against his face. "Holy shit, E. You're telling me you went from eleven dollars to — what? What's the number?"

"You don't need the number."

"I absolutely need the number."

Ethan told him.

Marcus didn't speak for almost a full minute. He sat on the leather couch in the clean apartment with the south-facing windows and stared at the ceiling.

"I'm going to need a beer," Marcus said.

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They went to a bar on Kessler Street, two blocks from Marcus's old construction job site. Not a Goldcrest bar — a Northside bar, with sticky floors and a jukebox that only played country and a bartender who knew Marcus by name and tattoo. The neon sign out front was missing two letters. The pool table leaned. The whole place smelled like spilled beer and fried onions and nobody in it was pretending to be anywhere else.

Marcus drank two beers before speaking again. "So what now? You just — live rich? Buy a yacht? Marry a model?"

"I want to do something with it. Build something."

"Build what?"

"I don't know yet."

The waitress came by. Not the regular one — a girl their age, maybe a year older, with dark hair pulled back and a smile that arrived before she did. She set down napkins and said, "You guys eating or just drinking?"

"Just drinking," Marcus said. "Unless you're on the menu."

"I'm the most expensive thing in here," she said without missing a beat. "You can't afford me."

Marcus laughed so hard he almost knocked over his beer. The bartender shot them a look. The jukebox switched to something slow and twangy and the overhead fan pushed warm air in lazy circles. The girl — her nametag read AMBER — smiled at Ethan. "Your friend always like this?"

"Worse, usually."

She lingered. Not in a desperate way — in the way someone lingers when they're assessing. "You guys from around here?"

"Northside," Ethan said.

"Me too. Amber Cross." She extended her hand. Her nails were painted black and one of them was chipped. "I'm waitressing until my real career takes off."

"What's the real career?"

"Content creator. Social media. I've got thirty thousand followers on TikTok and I film everything on a phone with a cracked screen." She shrugged. "I need better equipment. And management. And basically everything. But the talent's there. Trust me."

She said it the way a mechanic says they know engines — not bragging, just stating a fact that happened to be true. Ethan had met people who talked big about themselves. Amber wasn't talking big. She was talking accurate.

There was something in the way she said it — not arrogant, not delusional. Confident. Like she'd looked at herself honestly and decided the investment was worth it.

Marcus elbowed Ethan under the table.

Later, walking home, Marcus said it. "You're thinking about it."

"About what?"

"Her. Not like that — I saw your face. You're thinking about the business thing. Managing influencers."

Ethan didn't answer right away. The night air was warm and the streetlights in Northside buzzed with that particular electric hum that meant half the bulbs were dying. Somewhere in his back pocket was a card with twenty million dollars on it, and somewhere in his head was a girl with thirty thousand followers and a cracked phone screen.

"What if I could make her famous?" Ethan said.

"Bro. You met her twenty minutes ago."

"And?"

"And you're already planning her career. That's either brilliant or insane."

"Why can't it be both?"

Marcus considered this. "Fair point."

"With what, though? You've never run a business."

"I've never had money before either. Didn't stop it from showing up."

Marcus shook his head. "You're insane. I love it." He threw his arm around Ethan's shoulder. "But if you're starting a business, you need muscle. Protection. Someone who looks scary in the waiting room."

"Are you offering?"

"I'm volunteering. There's a difference. Volunteering means I do it for free until you can afford to pay me, and then you pay me a lot."

"Deal."

"Also I want a title. Something intimidating. Head of Security. Director of Don't-Mess-With-Us. Something like that."

"We'll work on the title."

"And an office. With a door. Doors are non-negotiable."

"You've never had an office in your life."

"That's why it's non-negotiable, bro. I've been waiting."

They shook on it under a dying streetlight on the corner of Kessler and Third, two Northside kids with a combined net worth that defied the zip code they were standing in. Marcus didn't fully understand what had happened to Ethan's life. He didn't need to. He'd been Ethan's only friend since seventh grade, when he'd pulled two kids off Ethan behind the gym and said, "Find someone your own size. Actually, don't — find me." He understood loyalty, and that was the only math that mattered.

The night was warm and still. A siren wailed somewhere toward the river and faded. Ethan felt the weight of the card in his pocket — not heavy, not light, just present, like a second heartbeat.

Ethan's phone buzzed. Unknown number. He almost let it go to voicemail, but something made him answer.

"Ethan Ward?" A woman's voice — soft, tentative, nothing like Amber's confidence or Rebecca's polish. "This is Lily Chen. We were in the same English class sophomore year." A pause. "I heard you're doing well now. Can we talk?"

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