Just two days had passed since the humiliating incident with Edmund, and Chance was still reeling from the memory. He was seated in his father’s study, sifting through a stack of documents recently handed over by the family lawyer. These papers detailed the various companies in which the O’Connor family held significant shares.As Chance flipped through the pages, one document in particular caught his eye."Williams Corporations – Silent Investment Channel."The title alone was intriguing, but what truly made him pause was the name listed as the company’s chairman: Bianca Williams. The same Bianca who had been Edmund’s girlfriend—the one who had publicly insulted him at the restaurant just days ago. The coincidence was startling.Curious, Chance read on. The file contained a comprehensive shareholder report, filled with financial data, ownership breakdowns, and performance metrics from the last few quarters. What stood out most was the ownership structure:Shareholder A: O’Connor Capi

The announcement was expected, yet when it came, it still hit like a punch to the gut.Williams Corporations had just thirty-six hours of liquidity left.Lionel sat at the head of the long, glass conference table, stone-faced, staring down a wall of blinking monitors and damning figures. The boardroom was heavy with silence, broken only by the occasional buzz of a phone or the hushed murmur of legal advisors. The empire he had spent decades building was disintegrating—and there was no one left to blame but time, ambition, and miscalculation.Bianca sat across from him, no longer the storm that had once commanded rooms. Her power suit looked too polished for the defeat in her eyes. She was no longer crying—just quiet, absorbing the weight of the headlines already going live:"Williams Corporations on the verge of Collapse. Final Holdings Set for Auction."She still couldn’t believe her eyes that the striving company she had inherited from her father was already slipping away from their

It was a quiet Thursday morning, the kind where the golden sunlight filtered through the city haze and made everything look just a bit too cinematic to be real. The bookstore café just off-campus, Reed & Velvet, wasn’t particularly loud—only the rustling of pages and the soft hum of low jazz playing in the background.Chance had always liked the place. It wasn’t as pretentious as most spots around ESU—no flashing selfies or influencer ring lights—just shelves of real books, aged wood counters, and a stubborn espresso machine that sputtered and hissed like an old man with opinions. He was flipping through an art architecture volume, its title embossed in worn gold: Structures of Empire.After successfully putting Edward and Bianca in their place, he was thinking of stepping into the O’Connor legacy fully and reclaiming whatever his father had that was still illegally tied to the possession of the four kings.He had met up with Fredrick the day before just to get to know more about his

The late afternoon sun cast a warm, golden glow over the ESU volleyball courts. Students lounged on the sidelines, laughter drifting through the air as the familiar sound of bouncing balls and shouts of encouragement echoed across campus.Chloe stood in the center of the sand court, her hair tied back in a neat ponytail, her breath steady as she spiked the ball over the net. Her teammates—Nora, Sophie, and Beauty—cheered as it landed just inside the boundary.“Nice one, Chloe!” Sophie called out, tossing her a high-five.“Remind me never to get on your bad side,” Beauty teased, brushing sand from her knee.Chloe smiled faintly, but her heart wasn’t truly in the game. The smiles she gave were hollow, her laughter strained. She'd been moving like this all week—smiling, playing, and chatting—yet doing everything she could to avoid Chance.She hadn’t replied to a single one of his texts nor had she picked up a single call.Because she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know how to explai

It started with a ping.Then another, and another, and then it went viral!Phones vibrated. Group chats exploded. Screens lit up with a flurry of notifications. The gossip blog "ESU Chronicles" had posted something—something massive.“A Prince, A Girl, and A Dark Secret: Who Is Chance Franklin Really?”Attached to the post were three blurry images—one of a sixteen-year-old Chance Franklin at what looked like a high school prom, wearing a navy tuxedo; the second showed a girl in tears being led away by staff; and the third—a security footage still—displayed a panicked scuffle in a hallway corner.The captions were brutal.“Prom Night Scandal: Gina Adams was allegedly assaulted at Willow Heights Academy’s Spring Prom. Isn't this the same Chance Franklin at Elites' University?”“Why was this swept under the rug? Who protected him? Sources claim his mother made the entire case disappear.”Students gasped in hallways. Whispers turned to shouts. Some scrolled through the hundreds of reposts