Angela sat in her apartment living room, scrolling through her phone with a fury that burned hotter each time a new photo loaded. Gory and Vera watched from the couch as Angela held up a picture of Charlie accepting a business card from a venture capitalist, confident and calm.“Look at him,” Angela spat. “Investment offers. For a student project. Meanwhile, I’m praying to keep a B average and worrying about loans.”“It’s maddening,” Vera said. “He walks around like he earned everything, but he’s clearly got Maxwell backing.”“Exactly.” Angela’s eyes glinted. “He pretends to be normal while sitting on unlimited resources. That’s not merit. That’s privilege playing dress-up.”Gory scoffed. “And he made you feel unreasonable for asking him to spend money. Meanwhile, he had Maxwell access the whole time.”“He was testing me,” Angela snapped. “Driving that junk car, living in that tiny apartment—he was judging whether I’d stay with him when he pretended to have nothing. Who does that?”“T

Wednesday rolled around, and Charlie’s countermove was finally set. Joseph White had worked his inscrutable legal magic, crafting a statement so polished and official it practically hummed with institutional authority. The Maxwell Foundation letterhead did most of the heavy lifting before a single word was read.The content itself was a masterclass in saying everything and nothing. It confirmed Charlie’s scholarship was legit, his role was earned, all that boilerplate. The real genius was tucked in the middle: a voluntary, third-party review for any future business assessments. It was a stroke of psychological judo. You can’t really yell about a lack of transparency when the guy just invited an auditor to the party. It showed humility, or at least a brilliant simulation of it.And just like that, the campus temperature shifted. It was like throwing a switch. The murmuring speculation hit the solid wall of an “official response” and dissipated. Cindy confirmed it that evening, looking

The final stretch of spring semester rolled by, weirdly quiet. Finals crept up, the library packed out, and all the campus gossip just sort of fizzled under the weight of everyone’s grade-point panic.On Tuesday, Charlie was already sitting in a conference room at Claire Corporation. Student in name only, really. Marcus Blackwood had called him in early to map out the summer.“You’ll bounce through four departments,” Marcus explained, pushing a schedule across the stupidly shiny table. “Two weeks each. Finance, Operations, Acquisitions, Strategy. The point is to see how the whole machine works, not to get stuck in one gear.”Charlie looked it over. The names listed as his bosses were all senior vice presidents—people who’d been in the game since before he was born. “This is a lot of access.”“It’s also a test,” Marcus said, not sugarcoating it. “These people don’t know you. To them, you’re the guy who held his own at the Grant thing and didn’t make a mess of that scholarship mess. The

By Thursday of his first week at Claire Corporation, Charlie understood why Emily Torres had a reputation for washing out interns. The work was very hard and draining. Three days of intensive reading and research had given way to his first real assignment: analyze Riverside Manufacturing's financial statements going back five years, which Emily gave when she dropped a thick folder on his desk Wednesday morning saying, "find what matters." What mattered, Charlie was learning, was buried under mountains of numbers, footnotes, and accounting jargon that made his Business Finance classes look like kindergarten math. He'd worked until 2 AM Thursday, went home for four hours of sleep, and was back at his desk by 7 AM. His apartment had become just a place to shower and change clothes. Meals were whatever he could grab from the building cafeteria between analysis sessions.Revenue fluctuations that seemed random at first started showing patterns when he cross-referenced them with industry t

The meeting with Riverside Manufacturing's CEO was scheduled for 2 PM Thursday. Charlie spent the morning triple-checking his analysis, preparing for every possible question. Emily reviewed his work at noon. She said nothing, just nodded and walked away. Charlie chose to interpret that as approval.They took Emily's car and drove forty minutes to Riverside's facility, a weathered brick building in an industrial area, far from Claire Corporation's glass-and-steel tower."Let me do the talking," Emily said. "You're here to observe and learn. If David asks you a direct question, answer it. Otherwise, stay quiet."David Christof met them in a conference room smelling of coffee and machine oil. In his fifties, with calloused hands and tired eyes, he looked like a man who'd built something from nothing and was watching it struggle."Ms. Torres," he shook her hand. "And this must be your associate.""Charlie Maxwell," Emily said. "He's been analyzing your financials. Sharp eye for detail."