Free Web NovelChapter 254: Chapter 204: The Prestige of "1.8 Billion Bro
He’d tied one on last night. Beer, red wine, hard liquor—he had no idea how much he’d drunk. The last thing Lin Chu remembered was a crowd of people going wild, and he thought he might have thrown up.
Fortunately, the alcohol was good quality. Now that he was awake, he didn’t have a headache.
His stomach just felt upset, and his calves were a little sore.
But it was still plenty uncomfortable.
’Hmm?’
’What’s going on?’
He was in a king-size bed in a hotel room. To his left was Gao Haitao. To his right were two girls dressed in maid outfits from a café.
The three of them looked like they’d pulled an all-nighter. They were exhausted but forcing themselves to stay awake. It was clear they’d been watching over him all night.
"What happened?"
Lin Chu opened his eyes and asked, a hint of confusion in his voice. He was baffled by the scene.
’He glanced under the covers. He was stripped down to his underwear, but it didn’t seem like anything had happened.’
Seeing Lin Chu awake, Gao Haitao’s face was a mixture of amusement and exasperation. He took a deep breath. "You drank way too much. You were clinging to one of the girls and wouldn’t let go. You scared her so much she cried. We ended up bringing you to the hotel and had one of her coworkers come along to keep her company. We’re counting it as overtime for them."
At his words, the cute, wide-eyed girl on his right, closer to the foot of the bed, blushed with shyness and embarrassment.
The other girl, however, couldn’t help but laugh. She looked at Lin Chu with an amused glint in her eye and teased, "President Lin, does your offer from last night still stand? You said you’d buy each of us a house, and then we’d both... keep you company?"
SMACK!
Lin Chu suddenly slapped his forehead.
’Blacking out wasn’t the scary part. The scary part was someone being there the next day to help you remember everything.’
He licked his lips, glanced at the three of them again, and took a deep breath. Lin Chu propped the pillow up behind him and leaned back against it. "What else?"
Gao Haitao hesitated for a moment.
He added, at a loss for words, "And before that, you opened your mobile banking app and showed everyone your balance. Now I know you have one billion, eight hundred thirty-nine million, and two hundred thousand."
Lin Chu: ...
’The buried memories suddenly came flooding back.’
’He practically imploded from the cringe.’
"There were still some sober people there. They were afraid you’d get into trouble, so they forced your phone off. They also sent me and these two young ladies to keep an eye on things—and each other. They were worried you’d be sick, and also worried you’d start transferring money to someone."
Gao Haitao delivered the final blow.
Lin Chu grabbed the bottle of mineral water from the nightstand and took a sip, the moisture soothing his parched mouth. He closed his eyes, the very picture of someone who had lost the will to live.
"Time to silence the witnesses."
"All of them."
Gao Haitao finally lost it, letting out a couple of strained, dry laughs.
The two young women couldn’t help but laugh as well.
’The whole thing was pretty wild.’
Everyone has gotten blackout drunk and done something embarrassing.
But an embarrassing moment on this level? That was something else entirely.
’And yet, it wasn’t really embarrassing.’
’Not in the slightest.’
’With 1.8 billion, even running naked down the street wouldn’t be embarrassing.’
"Alright, I’ll take them and go. You should get up and take a shower. What do you want for breakfast? I’ll have the hotel prepare something."
Now that Lin Chu was awake, Gao Haitao knew it was time to give him some space and prepared to leave.
"Yeah, give them both a bonus for their trouble."
Lin Chu said with a wave of his hand, his eyes still closed.
When the two girls saw him wake up, his vibe seemed to change in an instant. It was like a tiger waking up, its fangs bared.
The girl who had been teasing him just a moment ago didn’t dare say another word. She got up hesitantly, pulled her friend out the door, and couldn’t shake a faint feeling of a missed opportunity.
’A whole house!’
After the door closed, Lin Chu lit a cigarette. He exhaled a long plume of smoke toward the ceiling, a wry smile on his face.
’One must enjoy life to the fullest when things are going well.’
’Last night, he might have enjoyed it a little *too* much.’
’Maybe it was the work stress piling up.’
’Plus, he was still buzzing from pulling off that huge project.’
’And everyone there was one of his boys, people he trusted completely. That’s probably why he’d done something so over-the-top, why he’d flexed so hard.’
’Still, at least there were no real consequences. No harm, no foul. He didn’t even seem to have lost any face over it.’
He turned his phone on.
He quickly saw that in the group chats with his core crew, they’d been blowing up his phone. Hundreds of new messages.
"Fuck, it’s such a shame we forgot to get a video. It all happened too fast. Li Kai, pull the cafe’s security footage!"
"Fuck that! I’m afraid Brother 1.8 Billion will chop me into pieces and feed me to the dogs tomorrow morning."
Liu Junfeng changed the group name to: Brother 1.8 Billion and His Bros.
Lu Ming changed the group name to: Daddy 1.8 Billion and His Sons.
Wang Zhefei changed the group name to: One Big Happy Family.
"As long as we, the family, can live well, nothing else matters."
"..."
"..."
"That’s our Brother Fei! So smooth and natural!"
Then they started discussing how on earth you could possibly spend that much money before you die.
Assuming he lives to be eighty, that’s another sixty years.
That’s thirty million a year.
A little under three million a month.
A hundred thousand a day.
"Pfft, garbage. Only a hundred grand a day? That’s nothing! Forget it, guys, pack it in."
...
Reading all this, Lin Chu couldn’t help but smile. He climbed out of bed, went to the bathroom for a long, hot shower, and finally started to feel human again.
’The whole thing was completely absurd.’
’But hey, what’s done is done. He couldn’t give less of a shit.’
’They were all his people, anyway.’
Wrapped in a bath towel, he sat on the sofa and continued to read other messages on his phone.
Aside from the reports in various work group chats and other business-related messages, one particular message caught Lin Chu’s attention.
It was from Zhang Shuai, the owner of the second-hand consignment shop he’d met a few days ago.
Lin Chu had previously tasked him with collecting all the parting gifts from that dinner party, liquidating them into cash, and giving the money to Hu Ping’an. It was a way of throwing some business his way.
