Chapter 70: Familiar Places And Familiar Faces
The new balance was $1,595.87.
Adrian noticed it the moment he settled back into the driver’s seat. The parking lot outside Vessel Grill had gone quiet, leaving only the faint ticking of the engine as it cooled.
He looked at the number again.
A week ago, he probably would’ve been satisfied with it.
Now it mostly looked like a limit.
There was nothing wrong with $1,595.87. It was enough for food, transportation, and the usual expenses. Enough to keep him comfortable for a while without having to watch every dollar disappear.
But he’d started noticing the difference between having money and having enough money to actually move with.
The System could create opportunities. It could return money, reward investments, and put things in front of him that would’ve been impossible a few weeks ago.
It couldn’t change what a specific amount of money could actually do.
And right now, $1,595 didn’t give him much room.
Adrian leaned back against the seat.
’So I’m still poor. Just less inconveniently poor.’
He almost smiled at that.
His eyes shifted toward the separate amount he’d kept untouched since the Regret Investment Module had given it to him.
$20,000.
That was different.
He’d left it alone because it had come attached to the Maya objective. At the time, keeping it separate had made sense. The money had a purpose, and there hadn’t been a reason to interfere with it.
But the more he thought about it, the less convincing that reasoning became.
The objective hadn’t changed.
The money hadn’t changed.
His situation had.
Adrian looked at the balance on his phone again.
Leaving the money untouched wasn’t protecting the objective. It was just following an old decision because he’d already made it.
He opened the account.
The transfer took only a few seconds.
[Transfer Complete.]
[Available Balance: $21,595.87]
Adrian stared at the notification for a moment.
That was a considerably more useful number.
It didn’t suddenly make him rich. Twenty-one thousand dollars wasn’t enough to solve every problem that might come his way.
But it changed the range of choices available to him.
That mattered.
His thoughts shifted to Jenna.
She’d messaged him earlier about the studio opportunity. More importantly, she’d actually said she was willing to try it.
Before, he would’ve gone into that conversation with an obvious limitation hanging over it. He could listen to her, ask what she needed, maybe help where he could.
But eventually, they’d have to confront the same problem.
Money.
Now, at least, that problem wasn’t automatically a dead end.
He still didn’t know what Jenna actually needed. The studio might require almost nothing from him, or it might require considerably more than he expected.
He wasn’t going to guess.
He could sit down with her first.
Listen.
Then decide.
The money didn’t change what she wanted. It simply meant he wasn’t walking into the conversation with a wall already behind him.
Adrian locked his phone and let his head rest against the seat.
There was one other person he’d been meaning to check on.
Dina.
She’d reached out about her plans after arriving in Northgate, then gone quiet.
It wasn’t long enough to be alarming.
Probably.
Still, it sat strangely.
Dina had only recently arrived in Northgate. She’d been the one to reach out first, which made the silence feel slightly less ordinary than it would’ve otherwise.
Adrian picked his phone back up and opened their conversation.
No new messages.
He scrolled through the last few exchanges, not because he expected to find some hidden meaning, but because looking at the conversation was easier than trying to reconstruct it from memory.
Nothing stood out.
No missed question.
No obvious reason for her to suddenly stop responding.
He stared at the screen for another second.
’I’m not doing this.’
He closed the conversation.
There was no point turning a few hours of silence into a problem that didn’t exist yet.
But he was already in the car.
And Sin’s Peace wasn’t far out of the way.
That made the decision easier.
Adrian started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot.
The drive took him through a quieter part of the city, several streets removed from the polished surroundings of Vessel Grill. The contrast was noticeable without needing much commentary.
A few minutes earlier, he’d been sitting in a restaurant where one meal had been enough to make him pay attention to his remaining balance.
Now he had more than twenty thousand dollars available to him.
And somehow, the first thing he wanted to do with it wasn’t buy anything.
He just wanted to know whether Dina was okay.
Adrian turned onto the next road.
Sin’s Peace was ahead.
:
The store looked the same. Moderately busy, the counters arranged the way he remembered. He moved toward where Dina usually worked and knew before he reached the counter that she wasn’t there.
Different person. Younger. Still moving with the uncertain rhythm of someone who hadn’t been there long.
Adrian waited until she finished with the customer, then stepped forward.
He gave her Dina’s first name and explained that she used to work there. He didn’t have a last name.
The girl recognized it immediately.
"Dina? She quit."
Adrian nodded. "Do you know where she went?"
"No."
Her answer came without hesitation, and there was no point pressing her. She looked like someone who’d only recently learned where everything in the store was, let alone what had happened to the people who’d worked there before her.
That was it. Whatever had happened before she started wasn’t something he expected her to know.
He thanked her and stepped back.
The answer hadn’t helped much, but it had changed the question. Dina hadn’t simply been away from the counter tonight. She wasn’t working at Sin’s Peace anymore.
Outside, Adrian pulled out his phone.
Maryann was the obvious next step. If anyone knew what Dina had been doing after leaving, it would probably be her.
Drew was the easiest way to reach her.
He opened their conversation and typed.
[Adrian: You have Maryann’s number?]
The reply came quickly.
[Drew: Why?]
[Adrian: Trying to reach Dina. She quit Sin’s Peace and I can’t get hold of her.]
There was a short pause.
[Drew: You went there?]
[Adrian: I’m outside.]
[Drew: Of course you are.]
Adrian ignored that.
[Drew: Give me a minute.]
He slipped the phone back into his pocket.
Drew wasn’t going to make a joke out of it forever. The teasing was mostly habit; once he’d understood there was an actual reason behind the question, he’d help. Adrian had known him long enough to recognize the difference.
A minute later, the phone buzzed.
[Drew: Maryann doesn’t have Dina’s number either.]
Adrian frowned slightly.
Another message appeared.
[Drew: She was actually going to ask you about her.]
[Adrian: When did she last hear from her?]
[Drew: Sunday. Tried twice since then. Nothing.]
Adrian looked at the screen for a moment.
Sunday.
Adrian let the word sit there for a moment.
That was enough to make the silence feel different.
Not necessarily dangerous. Not yet. There were too many ordinary explanations for that, and he wasn’t interested in choosing the worst one just because it was available.
But strange.
That part was harder to dismiss.
[Drew: That’s it?]
[Adrian: That’s it.]
Drew didn’t answer after that.
Adrian put the phone away and started the car.
He wasn’t going to turn a missing reply into a crisis. Maryann had already tried twice, and there was nothing useful he could add by doing the same thing.
Still, Dina had been the one to reach out first after arriving in Northgate.
Now she was gone from work, unreachable, and apparently hadn’t spoken to Maryann since Sunday.
He kept that somewhere in the back of his mind as he drove home.
What came forward instead was Jenna.
The studio conversation would’ve been different now.
A couple of hours ago, Adrian would’ve been listening while calculating what his balance could survive. Now he had enough room to actually hear what Jenna wanted before deciding whether he could help.
That didn’t mean he was promising her anything.
It meant he could afford to listen.
And he’d find out what she needed when they talked.
By the time his building came into view, the Dina situation had settled into something he could leave alone for the night.
He parked, went inside, and took the stairs.
Voices drifted down from above.
He barely noticed them at first.
Then one voice separated from the others.
Adrian stopped.
He looked up.
Maya was standing outside Apartment 201.
For a second, he simply stared.
His first reaction was disbelief, followed closely by the hope that he had somehow identified the wrong person.
He hadn’t.
He’d gone out of his way not to knock on Rose’s door because she’d told him Maya was coming over. And after that, Rose had said Maya never showed.
Well, that was definitely bullshit.