Chapter 27: Meeting With Underground Brand

Marcus let out a loud laugh, shaking his head. "I love it. They ignored us, now they’re going to pay through the nose just to bid for a piece of the action."

"Exact same thing applies to the media," I added, glancing out the dark-tinted windows of the tour bus as we pulled back into the city limits. "No interviews, no exclusive leaks, no statement. We let the internet spin out completely over the ’Mystery Runner’ in the black suit."

May laughed, leaning back against the leather cushions and pulling her gold medal up to look at it under the soft bus lights. The relief and joy on her face was total. For the first time, she didn’t have to worry about sponsors, strict corporate mandates, or holding back her potential.

She was the undisputed fastest woman alive, and we owned 100% of her rights.

By the time we pulled up to the penthouse garage, the city lights were glowing brightly.

Chloe was waiting by the private elevator, rushing out to pull May into a massive hug the second the doors opened.

We ordered a massive spread from the best kitchen in town, turned off all our business phones, and spent the entire night celebrating inside the penthouse—completely unplugged from the media frenzy blowing up outside.

---

Early the next morning, while the penthouse was still quiet and everyone was fast asleep from the night of celebrating, I poured myself a black coffee and pulled up May’s official account.

The app almost crashed the second I unlocked it.

The notification counter was completely broken—hundreds of thousands of new followers, millions of views on her race clip, and tens of thousands of direct messages flooding in every minute. She was trending #1 globally. The front page of every major sports network had a picture of her in that jet-black suit, running headlines like: "WHO IS THE MYSTERY RUNNER?" and "WILL SHE CLAIM HER OFFICIAL WORLD RECORD PLAQUE?"

I scrolled past the flood of corporate giants—Nike, Adidas, Puma—all sending frantic, desperate automated emails offering blank checks just to set up a meeting.

Then, tucked deep in her requested inbox beneath the sea of multi-million dollar corporate logos, one specific message caught my eye.

It wasn’t a massive corporate powerhouse. It was a small, overlooked, independent athletic brand that had taken a leap of faith and shot their shot. They didn’t offer a cookie-cutter corporate contract or demand exclusive control over her image. Instead, their founder had written a short, direct proposal: they wanted to manufacture her custom, unbranded performance line under her own independent label, giving her 100% creative ownership and a major percentage of direct equity.

They were small, hungry, and willing to build her empire instead of buying her out.

I took a slow sip of coffee, a dark smirk spreading across my face as I flagged the email.

The corporate giants wanted to buy a piece of May. This small brand was offering to give her the entire foundation to build her own billion-dollar athletic house.

I hovered my thumb over the screen to text the founder, but paused. Today was the day. Chloe’s final exams were scheduled for this morning, and her $500,000 Academic Transformation Reward was still hanging in the balance, waiting for that final GPA lock.

I closed the app, put my phone away, and walked down the quiet hallway toward Chloe’s room.

I pushed the door open softly. She was still fast asleep, tangled up in her sheets, exhausted from both the late-night studying over the past few weeks and yesterday’s celebration.

I walked over, sat on the edge of the mattress, and gently shook her shoulder. "Hey, sleeping beauty. Time to wake up."

Chloe stirred, rubbing her eyes with a sleepy murmur. "Hmm... five more minutes..."

"Exams are today," I said smoothly.

Her eyes snapped wide open. The sleepiness vanished instantly.

"Wait—what time is it?!" she gasped, practically bolting straight up in bed. She grabbed her phone from the nightstand, checked the clock, and let out a dramatic squeak. "Oh my god! My legal framework paper starts in an hour!"

She threw off the covers and scrambled out of bed, wildly looking around for her clothes, her high-achiever panic fully kicking in.

I couldn’t help but laugh, standing up to calm her down. "Breathe. I’ve got the car ready down in the garage. Take ten minutes, get dressed, grab a coffee, and I’ll drive you straight to the university campus myself."

Chloe paused, taking a deep breath, and gave me a relieved, grateful look. "Okay. Ten minutes. I’m going to crush this."

I parked the car right outside the university’s main academic complex. As Chloe stepped out, her uncle—the Dean—was already waiting near the entrance steps, holding a clipboard and looking at her with a stern, cold expression.

Seeing that he could no longer control her schedule or pull her strings like he used to, he tried one last power play.

"Chloe," he said coldly as she walked up. "I hope you took this semester seriously. If your GPA drops even a fraction below a 4.0, you know the board rules. You’re out."

Old Chloe would have panicked, but her transformation had changed her completely. She didn’t fret at all. She just adjusted her coat, looked him straight in the eye, and gave him a calm, confident smile.

"Save the speech, Uncle," Chloe said smoothly. "I’m heading in to set the curve."

She turned, gave me a quick wave, and walked straight into the examination hall like she owned the place.

I leaned back against the car frame, watching her vanish into the building. Since I didn’t have any exams scheduled right now, I stood there reflecting on my own path. Dropping out had crossed my mind—especially with nearly $3 million sitting in my bank account—but throwing away a degree when I could easily breeze through it felt like a waste.

My phone buzzed in my hand. While Chloe was inside writing her finals, I finally opened the flagged email from that small, independent athletic brand to set our afternoon meeting.

I gave the small brand founder a quick reply to schedule a meeting for later that afternoon, then headed back to the penthouse to catch May while she was up.

She was in the kitchen pouring juice, still glowing from yesterday’s massive win. I pulled out my phone, sat down at the island, and slid the device across the marble counter to her.

"Take a look," I said. "While you were sleeping, your inbox basically exploded. Corporate giants are begging to drop millions, but there’s one small, independent brand in there that caught my eye. They aren’t offering a basic endorsement—they want to manufacture your line, give you total creative control, and build your equity."

May picked up the phone, scrolling through the endless wall of emails, blue-check messages, and high-dollar offers. She stared at the screen for a few seconds before sliding it right back to me with a soft sigh, shaking her head.

"Honestly? All these options just give me a headache," she laughed, leaning back against the counter. "A month ago I didn’t even have a single sponsor looking at me. Now every big corporation wants to buy my image, and this smaller one wants me to build a brand from scratch. It’s overwhelming."

She looked at me, her gaze completely steady and full of confidence.

"I don’t care about the big corporate logos, and I trust your judgment 100%. If you think this small brand is the play that gives us real power and keeps us independent, I’m all in. You call the shots, boss."

I grabbed my phone, a dark smirk pulling at my lips.

"Then we build the empire ourselves," I said, hitting send to confirm our afternoon meeting with the founder.

I set the meeting time with the founder for early afternoon, grabbed the keys, and had May hop into the front passenger seat.

"First stop," I said, pulling out of the penthouse garage, "we grab our star student."

We drove back over to the university campus, pulling up right by the entrance of the law building. Chloe was standing on the steps, chatting with a couple of her classmates. The moment she spotted my car, her face lit up. She gave them a quick wave, threw her bag over her shoulder, and strutted down to the car looking like a million bucks.

She popped open the back door and slid in, letting out a long, dramatic sigh of pure relief.

"Finished!" she cheered, throwing her arms up. "Every single question felt like a joke. Uncle was practically glaring at me from the back of the hall the whole time, but there’s no way I got anything less than an A on that paper!"

May turned around in her seat, grinning at her. "Congrats, Chloe! I knew you’d crush it."

"Thanks! So where are we off to?" Chloe asked, leaning forward between our seats. "Are we getting lunch to celebrate?"

"Even better," I said, pulling back into traffic and pointing us toward the meeting location. "We’re going to set up May’s brand empire. I locked in a secret meeting with the founder of that small athletic brand to lay down our terms."

Chloe’s eyes went wide with excitement. "Oh, I am so coming in as your legal consultant for this."