By the time I finally made it to Johnson Hall, dragged my squeaky suitcase up three flights of stairs, and located Room 247, I was exhausted, sweaty, and desperately hoping my roommate wouldn't turn out to be some trust fund princess who collected designer handbags like trophies.
I slid my key card into the door lock, praying it would actually work. After the day I'd had, I wouldn't have been surprised if the campus housing system had somehow managed to assign me to a broom closet.
The door swung open to reveal... actually, not bad. The room was bigger than I'd expected, with two beds, two desks, and a window that offered a decent view of the campus quad. One side of the room was already claimed—perfectly made bed with designer pillows, a desk organized with color-coordinated supplies, and enough skincare products lined up on the dresser to stock a small Sephora.
Great. I was rooming with a princess after all.
I was in the middle of unpacking my pathetic collection of belongings when the door burst open and a whirlwind of energy bounced into the room.
"Oh my God, you must be my roommate!" The girl was petite and gorgeous, with long black hair and the kind of effortless style that suggested she'd never had a bad outfit day in her life. She was carrying at least five shopping bags from stores I couldn't afford to window shop at. "I'm Emily Chen, and I am so excited to meet you!"
I blinked at her enthusiasm. "Lena Carter. Nice to meet you too."
"Lena! I love that name. Very mysterious and sophisticated." Emily dumped her shopping bags on her bed and turned to face me with the kind of genuine smile that made it impossible not to like her immediately. "How was your first day? Did you find everything okay? This place can be such a maze when you're new."
"You could say that," I said, thinking about my spectacular entrance into Ryan Hale's business meeting. "I may have gotten a little lost."
"Oh, everyone does that their first week. I remember when I was a freshman, I accidentally walked into a graduate seminar on advanced macroeconomics. Sat there for twenty minutes before I realized they weren't speaking English." She laughed, a bright sound that filled the room. "So where are you transferring from?"
I'd prepared for this question. "Community college in Ohio. Nothing fancy."
"Ohio!" Emily clapped her hands together like I'd just announced I was from Mars. "That's so cool. I've never been to Ohio. What's it like?"
"Flat," I said, which was true enough. "Lots of corn."
"Well, you're going to love it here. Westbridge has everything—amazing professors, incredible networking opportunities, and the social scene is absolutely insane." She paused, studying my face. "You know, you look familiar. Have we met before?"
My heart skipped a beat. "I don't think so. I just got here today."
"Hmm." Emily tilted her head, considering. "Maybe you just have one of those faces. Anyway, speaking of social scenes, you have to let me show you around. There are some unwritten rules about this place that they definitely don't put in the student handbook."
I was about to ask what she meant when her phone buzzed. She glanced at it and her eyes widened.
"Oh. My. God." She looked up at me with an expression of pure excitement. "Lena, did you happen to run into anyone important today? Like, anyone really, really important?"
My stomach dropped. "Define important."
Emily turned her phone screen toward me, and I found myself staring at a blurry photo that had clearly been taken through a window. It showed a tall figure in an expensive suit—unmistakably Ryan Hale—standing in what looked like the Business School conference room. And there, visible in the corner of the frame, was someone with dark hair who looked suspiciously like me.
"This is from the Westbridge Whisper," Emily said, referring to what I assumed was some kind of campus gossip blog. "Someone spotted the mysterious new transfer student having what they're calling a 'private meeting' with Ryan Hale. In his personal conference room. On her first day."
I felt the blood drain from my face. "That's not what happened."
"I know!" Emily practically bounced with excitement. "It's so much better than what happened! Tell me everything. How did you meet him? What did he say? Is he as intimidating in person as he looks in photos?"
"Emily," I said carefully, "I think there's been a misunderstanding. I didn't have a meeting with anyone. I got lost and accidentally wandered into the wrong room."
Emily's expression suggested she believed this explanation about as much as she'd believe me if I told her I was secretly a unicorn.
"Uh-huh," she said. "And Ryan Hale just happened to be there? In his private conference room? Having what looked like a very intense conversation with you?"
I sank down onto my bed, realizing that my carefully planned low-profile entrance to Westbridge University had just gone up in flames. "It really was an accident."
Emily sat down next to me, her expression softening. "Lena, honey, I've been at this school for two years. Ryan Hale doesn't have 'accidental' conversations with anyone. Especially not scholarship students from Ohio."
She said 'scholarship students' without any judgment, but the words still stung. It reminded me that no matter how much money I actually had hidden away in offshore accounts, to everyone here I was just another charity case.
"How do you know I'm on scholarship?" I asked.
"Educated guess," Emily said gently. "The student database isn't exactly secure if you know where to look. Plus, you have that careful way of talking that people get when they're trying not to reveal too much about themselves."
Great. If Emily could figure that out in five minutes, what would someone like Ryan Hale be able to discover if he actually started digging?
My phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number:
Welcome to Westbridge. Word of advice: stay away from things that don't concern you. - A friend
I stared at the message, my blood running cold. Someone was already watching me. Already warning me off.
"Everything okay?" Emily asked, noticing my expression.
"Fine," I said quickly, deleting the message. "Just my mom checking to make sure I arrived safely."
Emily didn't look convinced, but she didn't push. Instead, she pulled out her laptop and started typing rapidly.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Research," she said without looking up. "If we're going to be roommates, I need to know what I'm dealing with. The Westbridge social ecosystem is more complicated than international diplomacy, and you just accidentally wandered into the deep end."
I watched her navigate through what appeared to be an incredibly sophisticated network of social media platforms, student databases, and gossip sites that I'd never heard of.
"Okay," she said after a few minutes, "here's what I've found. First, the good news: you're officially the most interesting new student Westbridge has seen in years. The Westbridge Whisper post about your 'meeting' with Ryan has already gotten over 500 likes and 200 comments."
"That's the good news?"
"Trust me, anonymity is overrated here. Better to be talked about than ignored." Emily continued scrolling. "The bad news is that someone's already started a betting pool about whether you're Ryan's new secret girlfriend, a long-lost relative, or a corporate spy."
"A corporate spy?" I tried to sound amused rather than terrified.
"You'd be surprised how common that is around here. Half the student body are the children of major business leaders. Industrial espionage is basically a hobby for some families." Emily paused, frowning at her screen. "That's weird."
"What's weird?"
"Your financial aid information. Usually, scholarship details are pretty easy to find—which foundation funded it, what your financial need assessment looked like, that kind of thing. But yours is completely locked down. Like, military-grade security locked down."
My mouth went dry. "Maybe they just have better privacy protections now."
"Maybe," Emily said, but she didn't sound convinced. "Or maybe someone with serious influence made sure your information stayed private. The question is who, and why."
Before I could respond, Emily's phone rang. She glanced at the caller ID and her expression changed.
"I have to take this," she said, getting up and moving toward the window. "Hey, Marcus... No, I haven't forgotten about tonight... Yes, I know Sophie's going to be there..."
Sophie. Even just hearing the name made me pay attention. Based on the conversation I'd overheard earlier, Sophie was clearly someone in Ryan's orbit.
Emily finished her call and turned back to me with an apologetic expression.
"I'm sorry, but I have to run. There's this thing tonight—kind of a standing weekly dinner for some of the business school crowd. Normally I'd skip it, but my brother insists it's important for 'networking.'" She made air quotes around the word. "You should come with me."
"I don't think that's a good idea," I said quickly. "I'm not really the networking type."
"Lena," Emily said seriously, "whether you like it or not, you're already on everyone's radar. You can either show up and control the narrative, or you can hide in this room and let other people write your story for you."
She had a point, but the idea of walking into a room full of rich kids who were probably already gossiping about me made my skin crawl.
"Besides," Emily added with a grin, "if Ryan Hale is going to be there—which he definitely will be—don't you want to see what he does when he sees you again?"
Before I could answer, there was a knock at our door. Emily and I exchanged glances.
"Expecting someone?" she asked.
I shook my head and went to open the door. Standing in the hallway was an older woman in a crisp business suit, carrying a tablet and looking extremely official.
"Miss Carter?" she said. "I'm Janet Morrison from the Dean's office. I need to speak with you about your housing arrangement."
My heart started pounding. "Is there a problem?"
"Not a problem, exactly," Janet said, consulting her tablet. "But there appears to be some confusion about your payment status. Our records show that your housing fees were paid in full this morning by wire transfer from an account we don't have on file for you."
Emily and I stared at each other. I definitely hadn't paid my housing fees yet—I'd been planning to do it later in the week.
"I think there might be a mistake," I said carefully.
"That's what we thought," Janet said. "But when we tried to trace the payment to return it, we discovered that the account it came from is... well, it's rather heavily protected. Our financial aid office has never seen anything quite like it."
The anonymous text message suddenly made a lot more sense. Someone wasn't just watching me—they were actively protecting me. But who?
"What does this mean?" I asked.
"It means you don't owe us any money," Janet said with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. "But it also means we need to verify that this payment is legitimate. The Dean's office doesn't like mysteries when it comes to large financial transactions."
She handed me a business card. "Please call this number tomorrow morning and speak with our financial aid director. We'll need to resolve this before the end of the week."
After she left, Emily and I sat in stunned silence for several minutes.
"Okay," Emily said finally, "now I'm really curious about you."
"Join the club," I muttered.
My phone buzzed again. Another text from the same unknown number:
Don't ask questions about the payment. Some things are better left alone. - A friend
I showed the message to Emily, who read it with wide eyes.
"Lena," she said slowly, "what exactly did you do before you came here?"
"Nothing," I said, which was both true and completely false. I hadn't done anything illegal or dangerous—I'd just spent ten years planning the perfect revenge against the people who destroyed my family. Apparently, someone else had been watching that planning process.
"Well," Emily said, standing up and smoothing down her skirt, "whatever's going on, you definitely can't hide in this room anymore. You're coming to dinner tonight."
"Emily—"
"No arguments. If someone's pulling strings for you behind the scenes, you need to figure out who and why. And the only way to do that is to see how people react when you're in the room."
She was right, of course. I'd come to Westbridge to investigate the families responsible for my parents' deaths. I couldn't do that by hiding in my dorm room.
"Fine," I said. "But if this turns into a disaster, I'm blaming you."
Emily grinned. "Honey, if this turns into a disaster, it's going to be the most entertaining disaster Westbridge has seen in years."
As she headed for the door, I caught sight of myself in the mirror. The girl looking back at me looked young and uncertain—nothing like the confident businesswoman I'd trained myself to become. But maybe that was good. Let them underestimate the scholarship girl from Ohio.
They had no idea what was coming.
My phone buzzed one more time. This time, it was a text from a number I recognized—the same one Ryan Hale had been using during his business meeting.
Dinner tonight. 7 PM. Blackstone Club. Don't disappoint me. - RH
I stared at the message, my heart pounding. How the hell had he gotten my number? And what did he mean by "don't disappoint me"?
Emily poked her head back through the door. "Ready to go shopping for tonight? Because if you're going to make an entrance, you need to look the part."
I looked down at my clearance-rack clothes and then back at the message from Ryan Hale.
"Emily," I said, "I think I'm going to need more help than I thought."
She grinned. "Now you're talking. This is going to be fun."
As we headed out of the dorm together, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was walking into something much bigger and more dangerous than a simple dinner party. Someone was pulling strings behind the scenes, someone with enough power to make wire transfers appear and disappear at will.
The question was: were they trying to protect me, or control me?
And what did Ryan Hale know that he wasn't telling me?
One way or another, I was about to find out.