Chapter 149: Out Of The Dark

I reached into my hoodie, pulled out a fresh, crisp corporate bank draft from my inner pocket, and placed it smoothly onto the wooden table between us.

"Here," I said, sliding a pen across the wood right next to it.

Benita stared down at the paper, her eyes widening as she read the gold-embossed watermark and the official seal of Hidden Gem Investments. She picked it up with trembling fingers, holding it as if it were made of thin glass.

"A... a blank check?" she whispered, looking up at me in absolute disbelief. "Is this... is this actually real? Like, legally real?"

"Every cent of it," I replied, leaning back against the edge of the table with my arms crossed.

Her eyes flickered between the pen and the paper, a nervous, breathless giggle escaping her lips as she shook her head. "So... if I write, like... ten thousand billion dollars on this... it will actually cash in?"

I couldn’t help but laugh out loud at the absurdity of the number. "Nope. That’s a bit too much, even for me. The bank teller would probably pass out before processing that."

"I was just joking!" she said quickly, her face turning bright red as she covered her mouth, her laugh rich and genuine for the first time since I’d met her.

She took a deep breath, hovering the tip of the pen over the blank amount line. Her hand hesitated for almost a minute, her brow furrowing as she wrestled with her own reality. Finally, with slow, deliberate strokes, she filled in the amount, signed her name at the bottom, and slid it back toward me with a nervous glance.

I picked it up and looked at the number.

$1,000,000.00

I raised an eyebrow, looking from the check back to her face. "Really? Just one million?"

"Just one million?!" Benita gasped, her eyes popping as she stared at me like I had lost my mind. "What do you mean just one million?! That is an insane, life-changing amount of money! I don’t even know what one million dollars looks like in real life! To me, that’s... that’s practically infinite!"

She buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with a mixture of sheer shock and overwhelming relief as the reality of her new freedom settled into her chest.

"To you, right now, it feels like infinite," I said softly, my voice filled with a calm, unshakeable certainty as I slid the certified draft into her sketchbook. "But to me, Benita... that one million is just the deposit on your first global fashion house."

I stood up straight, offering her my hand.

"Pack your drawings. We’re getting you out of this slum tonight."

Benita hesitated, looking around her tiny, dimly lit room one last time before fixing her gaze back on me.

"I’m... seriously still not sure about all of this," she admitted, her voice small as she clutched her battered sketchbook against her ribs. "This feels like a crazy dream. People don’t just walk into a slum and throw a million dollars at a factory girl."

"I get it," I said smoothly, stepping toward the door and holding it open for her. "Come meet Sarah back at the hotel. We’ll order some real food, sit down, and review the official contract."

Her eyes instantly narrowed with familiar, guarded caution. "Contract...?" she repeated softly, her voice tightening. "See, that’s what I’m scared of. What if it’s one of those predatory, lifelong contracts that traps me forever? What if you own my name, my drawings, my life?"

"Benita, look at me," I said, my tone dropping into a warm, unshakeable sincerity. "I’m not here to exploit you or lock you in a cage. I don’t build my empire on broken artists. I build it by elevating genuine genius."

"How can I even be sure of that?" she challenged, her voice trembling slightly as she searched my face for any hint of a lie. "I don’t know you. I don’t know your company."

"You can’t be one hundred percent sure," I answered honestly. "Sometimes, when you’ve been stuck at the absolute bottom for so long, the only way up is to take a leap of faith. We are a real, legitimate firm with infinite resources, and I see who you really are. But at the end of the day, you just have to trust me."

A heavy silence filled the small apartment as she weighed my words. She looked down at the gold-embossed black card still sitting on her wooden table, then at her walls covered in taped-up drawings, and finally back at me.

She let out a long, shaky breath, her shoulders dropping as the defensive wall she had built around herself finally crumbled.

"...Okay," she whispered, a small, genuine smile finally breaking through her exhaustion. "Okay. I’ll come."

Ten minutes later, we were in the back of the unmarked SUV, leaving the muddy, pothole-ridden streets of the industrial district behind.

When we walked into the hotel suite, Sarah was resting on the lounge sofa, sipping ginger tea. Her face lit up with a pale but warm smile as soon as she saw Benita step through the door behind me, carrying her worn denim bag and her precious sketchbook.

"You made it," Sarah said softly, setting her cup down and sitting up straight. "I knew he’d bring you back."

Benita looked at Sarah, her posture relaxing even further. "Are you feeling any better? He told me you got sick."

"Getting better by the minute, thanks to you two," Sarah replied with a gentle laugh, reaching over to grab a sleek leather binder from the table. "Now, let’s look at this contract together so you can see every single line with your own eyes."

As Sarah opened the master agreement—laying out an unrestricted creative allowance, 100% intellectual property protection for her designs, and a full corporate backing setup under Hidden Gem Investments—Benita sat down beside her, her eyes widening in pure amazement with every page turned.

The fashion prodigy was officially out of the dark.