The Thirty-Million Dollar Wager Chapter 2

I expressionlessly closed the video, sat at my desk, and started making a meticulous plan.

I had spent the last few weeks intentionally making myself look ugly, using my "shy personality" as an excuse to avoid officially meeting them in person.

I spent three months—treating it with the same intensity as the SATs—digging up every shred of information on these vicious rich kids, and I even took extra acting classes.

The remaining month would be more than enough to deal with them.

I held up a picture from the club and cross-referenced it with my database.

Ezra had three close friends in his inner circle. They were all at the club last night.

The guy who called me a "blockhead" was Elias, Ezra's younger brother. He was a hotheaded kid with no ex-girlfriends, making him the easiest to manipulate and use.

But that was just his facade.

Chloe had used him as a stepping stone to get to Ezra. She thought she had succeeded, but she was really just playing the clown.

That night, Elias offered fake compliments to Chloe while constantly putting me down, calling me a blockhead at every turn.

Chloe laughed wildly, completely missing the disdain in Elias's eyes. No one respects someone who stabs their own friend in the back. Chloe had lost from the very beginning.

The guy making out with an influencer in the corner was Asher. He was Ezra's childhood friend, an extreme sports junkie with an endless rotation of bedmates but no actual girlfriends. He was the dirtiest of the bunch, always stirring up trouble. He was the one who had added me and invited me to the club last night.

I sent him a voice message: "Sorry, I was already asleep by 11 last night. I didn't see your message."

Then, I ignored his reply and tossed my phone aside.

A guy like Asher didn't need a complex strategy; he just needed to be ignored. If he was interested, he would come crawling on his own.

He was a playboy who had been with countless women. Looking for genuine feelings in his eyes was like looking for gold in a pile of shit.