When it was finally his turn, he didn’t even look at the woman at the register. He simply slid his black card—titanium, a symbol of supposedly limitless spending—through the reader. He expected the familiar approval sound, the tiny click that let him keep moving through his life of wins.
But it didn’t come.
Instead, a sharp, ugly beep cut through the air.
The cashier, a middle-aged woman with a face hardened by years of underpaid work and little patience for men in expensive suits, looked at the screen and then at him.
“Declined,” she said flatly—loud enough for the people behind Ethan to hear.
Ethan frowned. It was an expression that usually made executives tremble.
“Impossible. Try again,” he ordered, in that voice that expected reality to bend.
The woman scoffed, rolled her eyes, and ran the card again with slow, deliberate sarcasm. Same result. The error beep rang louder in the sudden silence that swallowed the line. The screen flashed a cruel message in red:
INSUFFICIENT FUNDS / DECLINED.
For a moment, Ethan’s world stopped.