Chapter 317: Something That Might Bring Him Down

Then the girls went live.

No long intro. No polished opening dance. Mia started the stream, Daisy angled the laptop, and Gracie sat with them like she had not just flipped a whole corner of the internet by appearing on camera. Within seconds, the viewer count started climbing hard.

Then it jumped.

Then it exploded.

Gifts began pouring in so fast the screen could barely keep up. Names flooded the chat. Notifications stacked over notifications. The numbers climbed past anything Daisy and Mia had pulled on their own, and kept rising. Men who heard Gracie Bonn was live left whatever they were doing and came hunting for the stream. Some opened TikTok first out of habit, realized she was not there, and immediately downloaded Switch. Others did not even hesitate. They went straight for the new app, created accounts on the spot, and started throwing gifts just to stay visible in the chat.

In offices across the city, grown men with serious jobs suddenly had urgent bathroom emergencies. Locked stall doors. Phones out. Volume low. Eyes fixed on four women on screen, but mostly on Gracie. A few got caught mid-stream by managers and still did not leave. One warning. Two warnings. Termination. Some of them stayed watching anyway, shoulders hunched over the phone like unemployment was a fair price for not missing the moment.

Daisy and Mia stared at the viewer count in pure shock.

They were not dancing.

Not gaming.

Not doing challenges.

They were just sitting there, talking, while the numbers went insane.

Meanwhile, across the city, Durnik was in a meeting with the main shareholders, the real backbone of TikTok Live. Serious faces. Serious money. The kind of room where every second was supposed to mean control and confidence.

Then the notification hit his phone.

Gracie.

Live.

His stomach dropped.

He unlocked his phone and saw it clearly.

Gracie was not on TikTok.

She was on Switch, smiling into the camera, talking easily, looking far too comfortable for a woman who had wrecked his office. Durnik’s pulse jumped. He needed faces. Names. A trail.

He kept the shareholder meeting running on his laptop and, right there on the same desk, downloaded Switch on his phone.

Signed in.

Opened the live.

Stared.

Gracie laughed at something one of the girls said. Another leaned into frame. A third stayed close enough for the camera to catch her. Durnik did not know them, but that did not matter. He started screenshotting their faces one after another, jaw locked, already treating every stranger on that screen like a possible route back to her.

What he forgot was simpler.

His phone was not on mute.

At first the sound was low. A soft female voice bleeding under the online meeting. Then Gracie’s laugh came through clear enough to cut across the call.

On his laptop screen, one investor stopped mid-sentence.

Another camera stayed on, but the man’s eyes clearly dropped away from the meeting and toward whatever he was hearing.

Durnik was still staring at his phone.

In the chat panel of the meeting, status bubbles started changing.

One shareholder left.

Then another.

Then two more within the same breath.

Durnik only noticed when the gallery on his laptop looked too empty. Out of the ten important faces that had been lined up for the call, only one remained.

He jerked his head up, phone still open in his hand, Gracie still live on the screen.

"I can explain~"

The last investor did not let him finish.

"Are you done?" the man asked flatly.

Before Durnik could answer, the final video tile vanished.

Call ended.

Durnik sat alone at his desk with the laptop showing a dead meeting and his phone still playing Gracie’s stream like nothing in the world had gone wrong.

"Fuck!"

He slammed his hand down hard enough to shake the desk. On the phone screen, gifts were still pouring in. Gracie was still talking. The girls around her were still smiling.

They all thought he was watching her out of the old sickness. Lust. Ego. Obsession. They did not understand he was trying to track her, to find the people around her, to recover control before the damage spread any further.

But with the meeting gone and the stream still running in his hand, none of that mattered.

He had lost the room.

And Gracie, miles away on Switch, was still collecting gifts like the day belonged to her.

The livestream ended as fast as it had exploded.

Mia closed the laptop with both hands and let out a breath she had been holding since the gifts started stacking. Daisy slumped back against the bed frame, still staring at the blank screen like the numbers might reappear if she waited long enough. They had not prepared for any of it. No set. No plan. No content schedule. Just four women talking, and the platform had lost its mind anyway.

That was exactly why they could not leave it there.

"We need to do this properly," Mia said.

Daisy nodded at once. "Next time we come ready. Lighting, angle, topic, everything."

Debbie was already thinking ahead, eyes bright with the same idea. The first stream had been an accident that turned into a gold rush. The next one could be controlled.

Before that, though, they decided to show Gracie more of the house.

They left the guest room together and headed downstairs. Mia pointed out doors as they passed. Daisy made a short comment about the kitchen. Debbie stayed close enough to watch Gracie’s reaction to the place, still measuring her even while playing host. The mansion was quiet in the late light, big rooms opening one after another, the kind of quiet that made every footstep sound clearer than it needed to.

Lucas was already back in the living room.

He sat with the laptop open, one folder after another moving under his fingers. The stolen files still had more to give, and he was patient enough to dig for it. He did not look up at first when the girls came down.

Gracie did not wait for the full tour to finish.

She broke from the three of them and walked straight toward him, faster than Mia, Daisy, or Debbie expected. Her steps were quick, focused, all the earlier ease from the stream stripped out of her posture.

"Are you still planning something against Durnik?" she asked.

Lucas finally lifted his eyes from the screen.

Gracie stopped in front of him.

"There’s something else," she said. "Something that might bring him down."

Behind her, the three girls slowed to a halt.

The house, which had felt loose and almost casual a minute earlier, tightened around that one sentence.