The alarm went off at 6:15Chris was already half-awake, the deep sleep from after Sandra's call having eventually given way to lighter, more restless cycles. He checked Binance before he did anything else.Bitcoin was holding at thirty-eight thousand. The news apps were still running the story, analysts, commentators, and competing theories about cause and recovery timelines. He read enough to understand the shape of it, closed the apps, and opened his trust account communication channel.He typed the message to the fund manager while he was still sitting on the bed.“Good morning. I have approximately $400,000 in the trust account. Please allocate $300,000 toward beginning the dividend stock positions we discussed previously. Start with the three ETFs Marcus recommended as entry points. Hold the remaining $100,000 as a liquid reserve. I'll add more to the account over the coming days for further investment. The overnight BTC movement has confirmed for me that diversification is the

When school closed, the board meetings were over, and most of the cars had left the parking lot except for a few cars, which Chris immediately identified as that of Hargrove, Brooks, Rodriguez and two other board members.Chris texted Sandra when Marcus dropped him at the hotel.“Court done? How did it go?”No reply immediately.He went upstairs, set his bag by the desk, and lay down on the bed. He was asleep in under five minutes.He woke to his phone buzzing.It was a message from Sandra "Just got out. Come to the office if you can. Jessica is here. We will brief you.”He checked the time.5:52 pm.He sat up, went to the bathroom, splashed cold water on his face, and changed his shirt. He opened a ride-sharing app, one of the habits he had developed in the last two weeks, using different transport services on different days, with no pattern, and booked a car.It arrived in four minutes.The building was almost empty at this hour.The lobby security guard was the same one who had be

Wednesday morning came in clean.Chris went through the routine that had become the week's routine: alarm, uniform, hotel breakfast, and Marcus at the curb by seven. The bus stop drop-off, the five-minute walk, the gate. The school is doing its daily assembly of itself around him.He went to class.He sat through the morning.His phone vibrated twice before lunch.He checked the first notification during a quiet moment between periods, a message from the Virell Academy administration portal. Official correspondence. He opened it, read the subject line, and put the phone away without reading the full contents.He would read it properly later.With Sandra.The second message came during the first lunch period, from the trust administration channel. He read this one in full.“Dear Client, The private ownership documentation for the Virell Academy Scholarship Endowment Fund acquisition is ready for signature. Your presence is required to execute the final document. Please contact us to ar

Thursday MorningThe alarm rang at exactly 6:15Chris reached for his phone before he was properly awake, the reflex that had developed over the last two weeks of checking the market before anything else. He opened Binance.Bitcoin: $35,000.Still falling.He sat up and looked at the chart. The seven-minute crash on Tuesday night had not been the bottom. The market was continuing to bleed, just a little bit slower now, a grinding downward movement rather than the cliff-edge drop, but consistent. The kind of sustained decline that suggested the original crash had shaken loose a larger sell-off that was still unwinding through the system.He thought about it for three minutes.Then he opened the conversion panel.Fifty percent of his Bitcoin balance. He typed the number, one million coins, and selected BNB as the target.He pressed confirm.The transaction processed.BNB balance updated. The number that appeared was enormous, reflecting the current BNB price.He looked at the Bitcoin b

Marcus dropped him at the usual corner, and Chris walked the remaining two minutes to Sandra's building.The fourth floor was its usual late-afternoon quiet. He knocked once and went in.Both of them were at the desk when he entered, Sandra with her laptop and Jessica with the case folder open and a pen in hand. The familiar configuration."The police suit," Sandra said as he sat down. "Filed this morning. The department received formal notification this afternoon.""How quickly do they have to respond?" Chris asked."Fourteen days to file a formal response," Sandra said. "Though we expect them to move faster than that. The department will want to manage this before it gets to press." She paused. "The identification of four named officers in the footage is the part that creates urgency for them. That is not abstract; those are real people whose careers are directly at risk.""Which means someone is going to start talking," Jessica said. "When liability gets personal, institutional