The letter from Columbia arrived on a Tuesday.
I was sitting at Declan's kitchen island eating toast when Marcus set it in front of me — a cream envelope with the university seal, already opened. I looked at it, then at Marcus, then at the envelope again.
'He opened my mail,' I said.
Marcus kept his face very neutral. 'Mr. Webb wanted to ensure the enrollment was confirmed before informing you.'
'Before informing me.' I pulled the letter out. Full scholarship. Finance program. Spring semester start. 'He enrolled me in school.'
'He donated a research wing,' Marcus said, like that was a clarification rather than an escalation. 'The enrollment followed naturally.'
I set the letter down. I picked up my toast. I thought about it.
Declan appeared from the hallway a minute later, jacket already on, phone in hand. He glanced at the letter on the counter and then at me with an expression that was doing its best to look casual.
'You enrolled me in school,' I said.
'You needed a degree.' He poured coffee. 'The finance program is the best in the city.'
'You donated a wing.'
'It was a reasonable investment.'
'In a university.'
'In your education.' He turned and looked at me directly. 'You're my creditor, Emmeline. You should know how to calculate compound interest properly. It would be embarrassing for both of us if you couldn't verify my repayment figures.'
I stared at him. He held my gaze with complete composure, like he hadn't just bought a building to put me in a classroom.
'That's the most elaborate excuse I've ever heard,' I said.
'It's not an excuse. It's a rationale.'
'There's a difference?'
'Yes.' He picked up his coffee. 'An excuse is defensive. A rationale is simply correct.'
I looked at the letter again. Columbia. The same program Kendall Oliver was enrolled in — I'd already figured that part out. He hadn't mentioned it. He didn't need to. The point wasn't the school. The point was that Kendall had spent the last week treating Declan's penthouse like a territory she could reclaim by proximity, and Declan had just handed me a reason to occupy every room she thought was hers.
I needed the degree. That part was real. I had nothing — no credentials, no income, no leverage beyond what I was slowly building. A finance degree from Columbia was not nothing.
'Fine,' I said. 'But I'm keeping track of the tuition as a separate line item.'
Something shifted at the corner of his mouth. 'I expected nothing less.'
---
The first day was exactly what I'd prepared for and still managed to be unpleasant.
Kendall had been busy. I could tell within twenty minutes of walking onto campus — the way conversations stopped when I passed, the way eyes tracked me and then cut away, the way two girls in my first lecture moved their bags to block the seats beside them. Someone had done the work of making sure everyone knew who I was before I arrived. Or rather, who they thought I was.
Penniless. Homewrecker. Seduced her way into a billionaire's penthouse.
I heard it in fragments. A whisper near the water fountain. A comment just loud enough in the hallway. Someone photographed me outside the lecture hall — not discreetly, just openly, phone raised, like I was a spectacle worth documenting.
I let them look. I kept my posture straight and my pace even and I found a seat in the front row of every class, because the front row is where you sit when you have nothing to hide and no interest in disappearing.
I also started a mental list. The ones who were genuinely hostile — Kendall's inner circle, easy to identify by the coordinated coldness. The ones who were simply following her lead, waiting to see which way the wind shifted. Those were the ones worth watching. Social climbers don't have loyalties. They have positions, and positions change.
By noon I had a clear picture of the landscape. By two o'clock I was tired of it.
I found a café on the edge of campus and ordered coffee and sat down with my orientation materials and tried to remember why I was here. The degree. The leverage. The fact that Kendall Oliver was not going to own a single room in this city that I couldn't also walk into.
'You're Emmeline Gray.'
I looked up.
The girl standing across from me had dark hair pulled back in a knot and an expression that was more curious than hostile. She was holding a coffee and a folder thick enough to be a semester's worth of notes, and she was looking at me the way people look at something they've already made up their mind about — not with judgment, but with assessment.
'I am,' I said.
'Sophia Reeves.' She nodded at the empty chair across from me. 'Can I?'
I watched her for a second. No performance in it. No angle I could immediately identify. 'Go ahead.'
She sat down and dropped the folder on the table and took a long sip of her coffee. 'I've been watching the Kendall Oliver social media campaign against you since yesterday,' she said. 'It's exhausting. And transparent.'
I blinked. 'Campaign.'
'Three separate group chats. Two Instagram stories. One very pointed seating arrangement in the Econ lecture.' She raised an eyebrow. 'She's thorough, I'll give her that. But she's been running the same playbook since freshman year and everyone who's been here longer than a semester can see the mechanics.'
I looked at her. 'You're not worried about being seen talking to me.'
'I'm a second-year finance student with a 4.0 and no interest in Kendall Oliver's social calendar.' She slid the folder across the table. 'I took good notes in the morning lecture you missed. You can copy them.'
I looked at the folder. Then at her.
'Why?' I asked.
Sophia shrugged. 'Because you sat in the front row all morning while half the campus was staring at you, and you looked bored rather than scared.' She picked up her coffee again. 'I find that interesting.'
I pulled the folder toward me. 'I was bored.'
'I know.' She smiled — quick, genuine, no performance in it. 'That's why I sat down.'
Outside the café window, two girls from my morning lecture walked past and glanced in. I watched them clock Sophia sitting across from me, watched the small recalculation happen behind their eyes.
Positions change.
I opened the folder and started reading Sophia's notes, and for the first time since I'd walked onto this campus, the tightness in my chest loosened by a fraction.
One ally. That was enough to start.
