Chapter 444 | Not an Investor

Chapter 444: 444 | Not an Investor

Jordan had practiced this answer in the shower that morning while Chloe shouted corrections through the bathroom door.

"Streaming group. Content creation. We’ve got a partnership with a resort that handles sponsorship logistics."

"A resort."

"Onsen property in Ishikawa. Long story."

"I bet." Cassie didn’t blink. "And the girls. Chloe, Kumiko... anyone else?"

"A woman named Lila handles the streaming tech. Brooke does the financials."

"That’s the roster?"

"We’re not calling it a roster."

"But those are the principals."

"Yeah."

Cassie nodded slowly, processing this information the way she processed everything, turning it over and examining it for cracks. "Four women and you. Running a streaming company. Out of your apartment building."

"Out of 403, mostly. Kumiko’s got the studio set up."

"And you’re, what? The talent? The manager?"

"Both. Neither. I do music production for some of the streams, handle the business side with Chloe, show up on camera when we need a face."

"Interesting." Cassie set her cortado down and folded her hands on the table, and Jordan recognized the posture from childhood. It was the same way she’d sat when she was about to tell their parents he’d broken something valuable. "Walk me through the revenue model."

"Twitch subs. Donations. Sponsorship deals. Merchandise eventually, once we scale."

"And the resort partnership?"

"Provides capital in exchange for promotional content."

"How much capital?"

Jordan kept his face neutral. "Enough to cover operating costs."

"That’s not a number."

"Because you’re not an investor."

Cassie’s eyebrow rose half a millimeter. "I’m your sister."

"Who happens to work in finance and showed up at my apartment unannounced on Saturday morning to run a background check on my girlfriend."

"That’s a little dramatic."

"Is it? Because Chloe told me you found her scholarship records, her family’s dry cleaning business, and her high school GPA within four hours of leaving."

Cassie didn’t deny it. She just picked up her cortado and took another sip, her eyes never leaving Jordan’s face. "She’s interesting. I wanted to know what I was dealing with."

"She’s my girlfriend. Mother of my child. You’re dealing with family."

"I’m dealing with someone who appeared in your life six weeks ago and somehow turned you into a completely different person." Cassie’s voice stayed level, calm, the kind of calm that preceded very bad things in board rooms. "The Jordan I visited in December couldn’t make eye contact. Couldn’t string three sentences together without apologizing for existing. Couldn’t stop spending money on women who treated him like a ATM with legs."

Jordan’s jaw tightened.

"That Jordan," Cassie continued, "would have crumbled the second I walked in here. Would have volunteered everything I wanted to know before I finished my first sip. Would have been so desperate for my approval that he’d have given me the passwords to all his accounts just to make me smile."

She leaned forward.

"You’re not that Jordan. You haven’t been that Jordan since January tenth. And I want to know why."

The cafe noise filled the silence between them. Espresso machines hissing. Spoons clinking against ceramic. Two girls near the window whispering something that might have been about Jordan or might have been about the foam art.

Jordan met his sister’s eyes and held them.

"I got tired of being pathetic."

"That’s not an answer."

"It’s the answer I have."

"Bullshit." Cassie’s composure cracked for half a second, frustration bleeding through the professional mask. "I ran your credit statements. I saw the deposits. Irregular amounts, no consistent source, no paper trail that makes any kind of sense. You’re receiving money from somewhere, Jordan. A lot of money. And you’re spending it on things the old you would never have touched in a million years."

"Like what?"

"Like a gym membership you actually use. Like an aquarium setup that costs more than my first car. Like computer equipment for a streaming venture that didn’t exist two months ago." Cassie pulled her phone from her blazer and tapped the screen twice. "StellarNote Media LLC. Registered in Delaware. Single member. That member being Chloe Kim, who also happens to be an eighteen-year-old scholarship student from Koreatown whose family income wouldn’t cover the filing fees for a Delaware corporation."

Jordan said nothing.

"You transferred three thousand dollars to that company on January tenth. The same day you called Dad and apologized. The same day Mom says you sounded different on the phone for the first time in months." Cassie’s eyes bored into his. "What happened that day?"

"I woke up."

"From what?"

"From being someone who didn’t deserve to exist."

The words came out harder than Jordan intended, sharp enough that Cassie leaned back slightly in her chair. The two girls by the window had definitely stopped talking now.

"I hit bottom," Jordan said. "I spent two weeks in that apartment convincing myself that the ceiling was the most interesting thing in the universe because looking at anything else meant acknowledging what I’d become. And then one morning I woke up and I decided I was done being that person. That’s it. That’s the whole story."

"That’s not how people work."

"It’s how I worked."

Cassie stared at him for a long moment. Then she picked up her cortado, drained the last of it, and set the empty cup down with a soft click.

"I don’t believe you."

"I know."

"I’m going to keep digging."

"I know that too."

"And if I find something that explains this better than ’I had an epiphany and decided to stop being a loser,’ I’m going to want answers that actually make sense."

Jordan nodded. "Fair enough."

Cassie stood, smoothing her blazer with both hands. She looked at him for another three seconds, her expression unreadable, and then something in her face softened by a fraction of a degree.

"You really do look good," she said. "Whatever this is, wherever the money’s coming from, whoever’s helping you... you look like someone I can actually be proud of for the first time in eighteen years."

"Thanks."

"That wasn’t a compliment. It was an observation." She pulled a twenty from her wallet and dropped it on the table. "Coffee’s on me. Call Mom before she drives down here herself."

Then she walked out, heels clicking against the hardwood, and the cafe slowly returned to its normal volume.

Jordan sat alone in the corner booth with his cold swan latte and his racing heart and the absolute certainty that he had bought himself time but nothing more.

His phone buzzed.

Chloe: how bad

Jordan: 7/10. she knows the money doesn’t add up but she can’t prove anything yet

Chloe: what did you tell her

Jordan: that i woke up and decided to stop being pathetic

Chloe: and she believed that?

Jordan: no

Jordan: but she couldn’t disprove it either

Three dots appeared and disappeared twice before Chloe’s next message came through.

Chloe: come home. kumiko finished the overlay and lila wants to run a tech check before tomorrow

Chloe: also i need you to do the thing with your hands again

Chloe: the massage thing

Chloe: my lower back is killing me and you ruined every other form of stress relief for me forever

Jordan smiled despite himself, despite Cassie, despite the weight of everything that was about to come crashing down around them if his sister ever figured out the truth.

Jordan: on my way

He left the twenty on the table and walked out into the California afternoon, and somewhere in San Francisco, Cassie McKnight was already opening a new spreadsheet.