As for the jeering from the crowd while leaving, Stan heard every word but didn't bother turning around.
'A house.' He almost laughed.
He could afford a house. He could afford the entire complex if he felt like it. Four Seasons Garden was an upscale residential complex on the north side of Inksea, and by his rough math, dropping a few million on a unit there wouldn't even register against his current balance.
What nobody around him understood was how much of a gift Sophie Youngs had just unknowingly handed him.
Under normal circumstances, Stan would have written off the entire encounter the moment she'd said no.
He wasn't about to chase a woman who wasn't interested, he'd learned that lesson the hard way.
But Sophie was now a bound consumption target in the Supreme Rebate System, and the system only worked if he spent money on his targets.
Without a natural excuse to direct funds her way, she would have been functionally useless to him.
