DESCENT OF THE ELITEAfter Robert was finally done with arranging the food in the fridge, he returned to the table.“It’s already noon; get your letters and go out there and start applying for jobs. You should be back in the next three hours, so we prepare for the Catering event tomorrow. The company that will supply the goods will be here in the next three hours to deliver the goods. I will need you here to come offload the items.” Linda saidEach of them clutched their stack of handwritten applications like shields, their faces set in harsh expressions of forced determination. They were prepared for the humiliation of the city, the heat of the pavement, and the rejection of the masses.What they were not prepared for was the sight in the circular driveway.The space where Linda’s sleek, metallic-black Mercedes-Benz S-Class usually sat, a car that whispered of old money and quiet power, was empty. In its place sat a ghost.It was a boxy, battered Ford F-150, its white paint oxidise

"Is there a problem here?" Chloe’s voice rang out, clear and melodic. She began walking toward the desk, her heels clicking with a terrifying, familiar confidence.The receptionist pointed toward Leslie. "Just a walk-in, Ms Vance. She was asking about a job." I told her we …""That is the General Manager," the receptionist whispered to Leslie, but Leslie wasn't listening.The world seemed to shrink until it was just Leslie and the impending approach of the woman she had once delighted in crushing. If Chloe saw her like this, clutching a handwritten plea for work, smelling of a rusted truck, rejected by a girl at a desk, Leslie knew she would never recover The story would be across every social media platform by dinner. The fallen queen begging for a job from the striver.Panic, raw and animalistic, surged through her.Before Chloe could look up from her tablet before their eyes could meet across the marble expanse, Leslie spun on her heel. She didn't walk; she bolted. She pushed

THE ARROGANT DROPOUTWhile Leslie navigated the jagged cliffs of her past and Robert marched through a funeral of his own dignity, Bernard Smith walked the city streets with a stride that did not belong to a man whose family was on the brink of a jail cell. He adjusted his silk tie, one of the few luxury items his mother hadn't yet snatched for the appraiser, and looked at the gleaming glass towers of Midtown with the eyes of an owner, not a petitioner.In Bernard’s mind, the last seventy-eight hours had been a glitch in the simulation, a temporary technical error in the grand design of his life. He was a Smith. He was a university student with a GPA that commanded respect and a lineage that, in his eyes, acted as a permanent VIP pass to the corridors of power. To Bernard, the idea of starting from the bottom was a metaphor for people with lesser surnames. He didn't see himself as a labourer; he saw himself as a CEO in waiting, currently enduring a slightly inconvenient intermissi

THE GOLDEN BOY, IN CHECKThey were broken. Robert was doubled over, his hands resting on his knees as he fought for breath. Bernard had collapsed against the side of the stone wall, his expensive shirt ruined by grease and salt. Leslie sat on the bottom step of the service entrance, staring at her ruined manicure with a hollow, wide-eyed gaze."Inside," Linda said, her voice showing no sign of the exhaustion that had claimed the others. "Now."She didn't lead them to the kitchen for water or to their rooms for a rest. She dragged them, metaphorically, though the weight of her authority felt like a physical chain, into the grand living room.The space was a skeletal version of its former glory. The rugs were gone, the art had been stripped from the walls, and the only furniture left was a single, long mahogany table and four mismatched chairs. The room felt massive and cold, an echo chamber for their collective failure.Linda sat at the head of the table She waited until the three