Chapter 3 - The System

Chapter 3: Chapter 3 - The System

She sat down on the stool next to him just as the bartender set a martini in front of her.

"My name’s Samantha," she said. "Friends call me Sam."

Jesse realized he’d been staring at her for a solid ten seconds without saying a word. Smooth.

Shit! She must think I have not seen a woman before with the way I’m staring at her.

"Ahem." Jesse looked away and cleared his throat. "My name is Jesse."

"So, Jesse." She said his name slowly, like she was testing how it tasted. "You come here often?"

"No. It’s my first time, actually."

"A first-timer." She turned the stem of her glass between two fingers. "I like that. Means you don’t have a routine here yet. I get to be the interesting part of your night instead of some girl who is probably better looking than me."

Jesse almost laughed. He didn’t know what game this was, but there was a taller, better-dressed guy two stools down who kept glancing over, clearly hoping she’d notice him instead. She hadn’t looked his way once.

Why is she even talking to me?

Is this some bet she made with her friends?

He knew the answer his brain wanted to give him. Some version of she is just playing with you or wants something from you. He drank instead of listening to it.

He hadn’t always felt like the ugliest man alive. Before his father fled with half of Wall Street’s money, Jesse had been a normal, handsome kid who had girls swooning.

Then the victims’ kids—who happened to attend his elite private school—decided to make Jesse pay for his father’s crimes.

They broke his nose until the cartilage became crooked. But Rudy Mazer had delivered the permanent blow: holding Jesse’s head underwater in a toilet bowl until he nearly drowned. He survived, but nerve damage left his eyes permanently crossed.

The school didn’t expel Rudy or any of his offenders. They forced Jesse to drop out instead.

"Rough day?" she asked, tilting her head at him like she could read it off his face.

Jesse came back to this reality after having been lost in thought for a moment.

"Uh, yeah. It’s been a rough week. Actually a rough month, honestly, if I’m being generous with the timeline."

"Tell me all about it."

He didn’t know why he did it. Maybe it was the whiskey. Maybe it was that nobody had asked him that question and actually waited for the real answer for longer than he could remember.

"I buried my mother yesterday," he said.

Whatever she’d been expecting, it wasn’t that. The playful edge dropped out of her voice completely. "God. I’m sorry. What happened?"

"Cancer." The word still didn’t sit right in his mouth, even after months of saying it. "She fought breast cancer for two years and lost."

"Two years." She said it softly, and for a second something crossed her face that looked less like practiced sympathy and more like she meant it. "That’s a long time to watch someone fight."

"Yeah." Jesse turned his glass in a slow circle on the bar. "It was."

She didn’t fill the silence right away, which he appreciated. When she did speak again, her hand had found his forearm, resting there like it belonged.

"I’m sorry you’re carrying all that. You shouldn’t be sitting in a bar alone with it."

"It’s better than sitting at home with it."

That got a small, real laugh out of her, which felt like a strange thing to be proud of.

He studied her for a second, grateful for the excuse to change the subject. "Can I ask you something?"

"Depends what it is."

"The accent. Are you British?"

She smiled like he’d caught her at something. "Oh. You noticed that."

"It’s hard not to."

"Yes. I am from London, actually. Well." A small pause, gone before he could examine it. "Originally."

He liked it. Jesse had always had a thing for the British accent.

He liked a lot of things about her that he had no business noticing tonight, one of them being her big breasts. Those things were definitely bigger than Tatiana’s but the accent was the one he let himself admit to.

"Are you a tourist or do you live here?"

Samantha took a sip of her martini. "Well, I have been in New York for two years now so I won’t call myself a tourist."

"No, you are not a tourist. Some might even call you a New Yorker now," Jesse said.

Samantha chuckled and her hand went back to his arm, she smiled at him as he took another sip of whiskey. But then she moved on from his arm. She moved unhurried, to his thigh, like it was the most natural progression in the world.

Jesse went very still.

It had been a long time since anyone touched him like that. Longer than a long time. Two years with Tatiana and exactly two attempts at anything past a kiss, both of which ended with her wincing and telling him his dick was too big, that it hurts.

After the second time he’d stopped trying. Work ate the rest of him anyway. His mother’s illness ate whatever work left behind.

He’d forgotten what wanting something felt like until right now, with a stranger’s hand two inches from proving she already knew exactly how big a problem that was for him.

She noticed. Of course she noticed. Her fingers moved higher, deliberate, and found his hard rod not so far from his thigh through the fabric.

Her eyes widened and Jesse couldn’t tell if she was excited or horrified.

Jesse’s brain, which had spent most of his interaction with Samantha doing an admirable job keeping his worst thoughts at bay, simply switched off.

She smiled at him like she owned the moment, because she kinda did.

"Let’s get out of here," she said.

"Where?" Jesse asked, his heart racing.

"Somewhere I can make you happy." Her mouth was close to his ear now. "Somewhere private."

He should have asked more questions. He didn’t have it in him to want to. With Tatiana’s betrayal maybe getting it on with Samantha is what would help him heal.

He threw enough cash on the bar to cover both drinks and followed her out into the night.

She led him two blocks over, into an alley that swallowed the streetlight the second they turned into it. He barely registered the smell of garbage and old rain before her hands were on his belt.

Then a shadow peeled off the wall behind him, and Jesse was slammed face-first into brick before he understood what was happening.

Samantha stepped back, unbothered, like she’d been expecting exactly this.

The man pinning Jesse’s arm behind his back was enormous, the kind of big that came from a gym or a cell block, maybe both. He looked past Jesse at her.

"Have you gotten a hold of his phone yet?"

"No. That’s what I was about to do," she said, but this time her British accent wasn’t strong anymore.

There it was. The whole night, laid out plain. Jesse almost admired it, in the same distant way he might admire a magic trick after someone explained the mechanism.

He just wished he had at least got to meet the insides of Samantha’s mouth.

"So this how this is going to go, tall guy," the big man said, close enough to Jesse’s ear that he could smell cigarettes on his breath. "The easy way or the hard way. How you act will determine how this will go. We are taking all the money in your account."

All the money Jesse had in his account was two thousand dollars. It was the only thing standing between him and actual, literal homelessness once his mother’s family took the house.

Samantha slipped her hand into Jesse’s pants pocket and took out his phone while he remained pressed against the wall.

She held the phone up to his face to trigger the facial recognition, it unlocked. She then began to scroll and clicked on his bank app.

"Now choose the easy way and tell her the passcode," the huge guy said.

Jesse stayed silent almost as if he didn’t hear what he said.

"Please just do it. Tell me," Samantha said. And it sounded almost like she was trying to help him.

"No."

The man laughed, short and humorless. "So it’s going to be the hard way, then huh. Fine by me."

The first punch landed in Jesse’s stomach hard enough to fold him in half.

Before Jesse’s lanky body could touch the ground the brute grabbed him and slammed him against the wall.

The impact made Jesse begin to rethink his stance. His body was way too frail to handle whatever this beast had in mind for him.

"Please, just give me the passcode and end this," Samantha pleaded and it felt genuine.

As if on cue, The brute squeezed both of Jesse’s wrists behind his back with one massive hand. With the other, he reached down and grabbed Jesse’s groin, squeezing hard.

Jesse screamed, his eyes nearly bulging out of their sockets as agonizing pain shot up his spine.

"317496! 317496!!" Jesse shrieked, breaking completely.

Samantha’s fingers flew across the screen. The brute released his grip, letting Jesse slump against the wall, wheezing as he clutched his groin.

"It’s done. He only has two grand in his account," Samantha said, putting the phone back in Jesse’s pocket.

"Really?!" The man asked. "I did all that for two grand?"

Samantha gave him an indifferent shrug—it is what it is.

"Well, I get to kick his ass. I can console myself with that," he turned his attention to Jesse who gritted his teeth as he held on to his groin like he was keeping it from tearing open.

Jesse pulled his phone out with trembling fingers.

A push notification blinked back at him: [Debit Alert: $2,000.00 - Account Balance: $0.00].

His last shield against homelessness, gone.

His heart sank, Jesse couldn’t believe this had truly happened to him.

Tears found their way out of his eyes, he couldn’t hold them back.

"You really should have chosen the easy way," the brute snickered, stepping away.

"You bastard!" Jesse yelled, something inside his mind snapping completely. "You cum guzzling bastard!!"

The man stopped in his tracks. The smirk vanished from his face, replaced by a dark, dangerous scowl.

"What did you just call me?"

Before Jesse could open his mouth, a brilliant cyan screen materialized right in front of his eyes.

[Ding!]

[Limitless Cashback Harem System Activation Requirement Met!]

[System Binding In Progress...!]

Jesse rubbed his hands on his eyes, then blinked but the cyan screen was still there.

"What the fuck?" He muttered to himself.

The big man came closer to Jesse without him realising. "Answer my question, dipshit. What did you call me?"

Jesse’s pulse quickened and his breathing fastened. The fear was gone, replaced by pure, reckless fury.

"You are a cum guzzling bastard," he screamed into the man’s face.

The man grinned wickedly. His fist swung out, driving straight into the exact same spot on Jesse’s gut that he had punched earlier, sending him crashing onto the cold alley floor—and then the kicks started coming.

And that’s how Jesse got himself in a dark alley, coughing up blood.