1: 1
On the class graduation trip to Miami, Jill Cobb slid my black card across the front desk.
"My treat today. I'm upgrading everyone to ocean-view villa suites."
She was beaming, and she turned to murmur in my ear,
"Lena, we'll just run it on your card for now. I'll pay you back when we're home in New York."
I was standing right behind her, about to speak, when the clerk pushed the bill toward me.
"Ma'am, we'll need an eighty-thousand-dollar deposit first. The cardholder needs to sign."
The old silver bracelet on my wrist, the one my grandmother left me before she died, suddenly went hot.
The next second, images flashed through my mind like a spinning lantern.
The doorway of my home splashed with red paint from debt collectors, and me, driven to my death, falling from the twenty-third floor.
A wave of suffocation hit me, and I snatched the black card back.
But my boyfriend, Julian Weiss, pressed his hand down over mine.
"Lena, Jill's already said it out loud. Don't embarrass her in front of everyone."
"Twenty thousand's nothing to you. I'll make it up to you later."
That grim scene I'd just seen shattered the filter my lovesick brain had been living behind.
I was already Athena Baxter 2.0. I pried Julian's fingers off my hand.
"If she's the one treating, why is it my card getting charged?"
......
"Sorry, everyone. I'm exhausted today. I'm heading up to my room."
I turned and walked off while the whole class stared, mouths open.
"Athena Baxter, you stop right there! What is wrong with you today?"
Julian's demand followed me as I strode into the elevator and hit the close-door button.
What had just happened turned everything I believed on its head. I still remembered what my grandmother once told me, that this bracelet could shield me from three disasters.
Four years ago, not wanting to be chained down by the rules that came with being the family heir, I hid who I was in college.
Moved by the bowl of hot wontons Julian brought me on a snowy night, I fell into a relationship with him.
Jill Cobb, the roommate I'd helped on a whim, told me with red-rimmed eyes that I was her one true friend.
After that, the three of us went everywhere together.
I naively believed Julian was the boyfriend I'd freely chosen, and Jill was my best friend.
For the little utopia the three of us would build together, I poured in my money, my resources, everything I had.
Back in the ocean-view room, I opened my mobile banking app and pulled up three months of activity on the supplementary card.
Jill, holding the supplementary card off the black card I'd opened for Julian, had spent a full one hundred and eighty thousand dollars.
A twenty-eight-thousand-dollar limited-edition perfume, a forty-five-thousand-dollar gown, all charged under the banner of building a professional image for the startup.
Every time, Julian had filed the bills under team entertainment expenses.
My eyes stopped on the last line, a thirty-two-thousand-dollar transfer to a fine jewelry brand.
That was half a month ago, on my twenty-second birthday. That day Julian handed me a bunch of dried flowers, the kind that go for ten bucks with free shipping.
"Lena, I don't have money right now, but I'm giving you my whole future."
My heart had ached for him, and I'd quietly covered six months of studio rent for us.
Only now did I know that three hours before I blew out my candles, he'd taken my card to Fifth Avenue and bought Jill a solid gold bracelet.
I closed the supplementary card screen and opened the [Surf Club Startup Fund] account Julian and I had set up together.
I'd put in eight hundred thousand to open that account; he'd put in two hundred thousand.
The statement was full of a string of withdrawals, ranging from five thousand to twenty thousand each.
Every note read [venue survey fee] or [equipment deposit].
But every receiving account was Jill's personal account.
My fingertips moved across the phone screen.
Supplementary card authorization: freeze immediately.
Black card payment password: reset, with facial-recognition dual verification enabled.
Joint startup fund account: submit to the bank a [shareholder rights dispute, request for risk hold on payments].
By the time I'd finished all of it, the class group chat had lit up with over a hundred messages.
Downstairs, the front desk was pressing for payment of the villa suite deposit.
Julian couldn't get anywhere with me, and rather than lose face in front of the whole class, he pulled out his own credit card on the spot to pay the deposit.
Now the group chat was nothing but people cheering him on.
Sports rep: [That's our man Jules, real class. That's a real man right there!]
Arts rep: [Don't be upset, Jill. Athena's probably just got her period today, in a bad mood. Jules is a good guy for stepping up.]
Jill sent a crying, pitiful cat sticker.
[Thank you all for being so understanding, and thank you, Jules, for saving me. I'll transfer you the money the second we're back in New York.]
I opened my photo album and screenshotted everything, all the supplementary card charges, the joint account transfer details, and the group chat, and saved them all.
My screen lit up. A private message from Julian.
[Athena Baxter, you humiliated me completely today. If you don't apologize to Jill in front of everyone tomorrow morning, then you and I are done.]
I read it, turned off my phone, and went to sleep.
