Story code: ST-001919
Part 2: The Leo Project
The heat from the studio array hit my face like an open oven. I stood paralyzed, the grease-stained canvas of my old mechanic’s jacket crushed against my chest, while Chase’s fingers dug deeper into my collarbone.
“I wasn’t going to show you this,” Chase murmured, pitching his voice perfectly so the lapel mic picked up a manufactured, heavy emotion. He didn’t look at me; his eyes were locked in a dead stare with the primary lens. “But the universe works in mysterious ways, doesn’t it? Guys, this is Leo.”
On the secondary monitor off-camera, I watched the subscriber count briefly freeze, then accelerate. Eighty thousand viewers. The chat box became a frantic, illegible waterfall of text. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Sarah, the teleprompter operator, sitting frozen at her laptop in the shadows. She typed a string of frantic question marks onto the prompter screen, asking Chase for direction. Chase ignored the screen entirely. He was freestyling.
“Leo is exactly where I was ten years ago,” Chase continued, his voice dropping into a solemn, reverent register. He reached across my chest and firmly pried the mechanic’s jacket from my rigid, sweating hands. “When I found him, he was sleeping in a broken-down sedan. Freezing. Scared. Thinking the world had no place for him.”
My jaw locked. He hadn’t found me in a car. He had hired me through a gig app to sort his recycling, and I had only told him about the car because he caught me crying in his pantry after a collection agency called my burner phone.
Chase shook the jacket out, holding it up by the shoulders so the harsh studio lights caught every fray and dark smear of oil. “I kept this jacket to remind me of my rock bottom. And today, I’m passing it on.”
With a swift, practiced motion, Chase swung the heavy canvas over my shoulders. The familiar, suffocating smell of stale motor oil and my own past despair instantly enveloped me. The dark grease stain on the left sleeve wasn’t from hard labor in a startup garage; it was from the night my alternator died in a frozen Walmart parking lot, the night I thought I might actually freeze to death.
“Leo’s been working for me, learning the system from the ground up,” Chase said, pacing back to the center of the frame and dragging me with him. His grip on my neck was iron-tight, a physical warning not to pull away. “But he’s still struggling with the mindset. The poverty mindset. It’s a disease, and it’s hard to break. Isn’t that right, brother?”
He squeezed my neck. A sharp jolt of pain shot down my spine. I offered a stiff, barely perceptible nod. I was trapped. If I ripped the mic off him and screamed the truth, I wouldn’t just be fired. I had signed a mountain of non-disclosure agreements and a blanket ‘name, image, and likeness’ release on my first day, thinking it was just legal protection in case I walked through the background of his daily vlogs. Chase’s lawyers would bury me. I would be back in that car by midnight.
Chase sensed my paralysis and leaned into it. “In fact, I’m making an executive decision right now on this live stream.”
He stopped pacing. He squared his shoulders to the camera, his eyes gleaming with the predatory thrill of a fresh upsell.
“We’re going to do something unprecedented. If you buy the Genesis Tier today-ten grand, limited to the next five hundred action-takers-you aren’t just getting my modules. You’re getting a front-row seat to The Leo Project.”
My stomach hollowed out. The monitor caught the spike in viewers: ninety-five thousand.
“For the next ninety days, I am going to apply my wealth system to Leo, live on camera,” Chase declared, his voice rising to a crescendo. “We’re going to livestream his bank accounts, his daily habits, his entire life. You’re going to watch me take this broke, broken kid, and turn him into a millionaire. You get to watch the Genesis Protocol work in real-time, on a real charity case. Or I refund every single penny.”
A digital chime echoed through the studio’s hidden speakers. *Ding.* Then another. *Ding. Ding. Ding.* They were Genesis Tier sales notifications. At ten thousand dollars a pop, he was clearing hundreds of thousands of dollars in seconds, all by monetizing my humiliation.
Chase leaned in close to me. “Tell them, Leo. Vulnerability is power. Tell them how much you have in your checking account right now.”
I stared at the blinding ring light. My mouth was dry as dust.
“Tell them,” Chase whispered, his thumb pressing sharply into a nerve at the base of my skull.
“Forty-two dollars,” I rasped, the words tasting like ash.
“Forty-two dollars!” Chase echoed, projecting to the digital stadium. “And tell them who owns the jacket you’re wearing, Leo. Tell them who saved you.”
I looked down at the frayed canvas covering my chest. I knew exactly where the faded tag was stitched on the inside breast pocket. My name-*LEO*-was written on it in faded black marker. All I had to do was grab the lapel, flip it open for the high-definition camera, and his entire empire of lies would collapse on live television.
I twitched my hand upward. Chase saw the microscopic movement. He instantly stepped half a pace in front of me, his broad shoulder seamlessly blocking my hands from the camera’s view, while his grip on my neck tightened until I gasped.
“He’s overwhelmed, guys,” Chase said smoothly, flashing his million-dollar smile. “But he’s ready to change his life. Right, Leo? You’re going to commit to the Genesis Protocol?”
Chase reached over to the glass desk, unclipped a heavy handheld microphone, and forced it into my trembling palm.
“Say yes to your new life, Leo,” Chase commanded, his eyes flat and dead behind the smile as the sales chimes rang like a frantic alarm. “Say it into the mic.”