"You have a very loud mouth, Mark," Nathan said, his voice dropping an octave, resonating with a authority that made the students in the back of the crowd go silent. "But you should be careful. The new heir of the Walters Empire is... let’s say, not particularly pleased when people speak about his father so demeaningly. Or when they act like vultures circling a man who isn't even dead yet."Mark froze for a second, then burst into a fit of jagged, mocking laughter. "The heir? What heir? I just told you, the man is alone. There is no son. There is no one coming to save you, Walters. You’re just a janitor with the same last name as a god. It’s a coincidence. A cruel joke of fate. Your stupid ass can dream all you want but reality is a fantasy for mad men like you!""Mmm… Is that right?" Nathan didn't raise his voice. He just took a half-step forward, stepping right through the invisible buffer zone Mark’s money usually bought him."You talk a lot about your dad's reach," Nathan said, hi

"The document," Nathan repeated, entirely unmoved, diverging back to the topic at hand, as if totally unthreatened by Mr. Epstein. “Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act," Nathan said, in a conversational tone, "a student named in a formal institutional complaint retains the right to review any documentation pertaining to disciplinary proceedings affecting their enrollment status. That is federal law, Mr. Epstein. Not Braxton policy. Federal."Epstein looked at the boy in the faded shirt sitting across from him –the boy who swept and mopped his floors at four PM on Thursdays, who had, in the last forty-eight hours, gotten a tenured professor fired, and was now citing FERPA in a disciplinary meeting with the posture of someone who found the whole proceeding mildly interesting.Something deeply wrong was happening, and Epstein could not identify precisely what it was. It was like trying to locate a sound in a building. You could hear it clearly, but every time you tracked

The silence that followed was absolute. It was the kind of silence that precedes a car crash.Amanda gasped, taking a step back. Mark looked completely lost. The rest of the goons stared at Calloway, waiting for the punchline, waiting for their leader to laugh off the insane accusation.Calloway didn't laugh.Internally, his world was collapsing. His heart slammed against his ribs. ‘How does he know? The servers were encrypted. It is impossible to hack the site. Nobody knows.’ He felt a cold sweat break out on the back of his neck. He looked at Nathan’s flat, dead eyes and realized, with horrifying clarity, that the boy wasn't guessing. He knew. He knew everything.But pride is a fatal disease. Calloway was the second king of Braxton. He was the son of a millionaire. He couldn't let a peasant break him in front of his court.Calloway forced a loud, jagged laugh. It sounded a little too shrill. "You are completely psychotic! Listen to yourself, Chicken Boy! You’s a fucking janitor who

Every other bystander began to sneer, cursing Nathan under their breath, looking at him not as a victim of theft, but as a truly horrible, vindictive stalker trying to destroy successful people out of pure jealousy.Watching the crowd turn, watching Mark play the hero, Nathan felt a profound, clarifying coldness settle into his bones.The very tiny, pathetic flame of pity he had been holding onto for Amanda was extinguished. Completely.A minute ago, he had foolishly been hovering on the edge of giving her a chance at redemption. He had been letting the ghost of "them" soften his edges. But looking at her now, hiding behind Mark's lies, playing the victim after destroying his life... the truth was undeniable.Amanda was eighteen years old. She was legally an adult. That meant every choice she made, every lie she told, every betrayal she executed, she made out of her own free will. He wasn't missing anything. He wasn't wrong.She was a monster.A person who would stand by and watch ano

Nathan stood perfectly still, the flashing red and blue lights washing over his unblinking face. He looked at Sheriff Don and Detective Ryan, who were both still holding their formal, respectful bows.A cold spike of adrenaline, sharper than any fear, pierced Nathan’s chest.‘How?’ He had routed the data dump through a decentralized web of offshore proxy servers. He had spoofed the MAC addresses. He had used an encryption key that would take a standard supercomputer a decade to brute-force. He had literally been a ghost.Nathan leaned forward just an inch. "How did you know?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper above the idling engines of the police cruisers.Detective Ryan straightened up, glancing nervously at the surrounding crowd before stepping in close. He leaned down, his mouth right next to Nathan’s ear."Your entire process was incredibly good, Young Master," Ryan murmured, his tone laced with genuine professional awe. "Your code was spotless. Your tunnels were practically u