Chris sat at his desk after dinner with his laptop open and his Binance app running on his phone beside it.He had the plan written out in front of him. Clear, simple, already decided. Convert a portion of the Bitcoin holdings into three other strong assets, Solana, Ethereum, and BNB. Spread the risk the way Marcus had explained. Keep the portfolio moving in multiple directions so a single market swing doesn't hit everything at once.He started with Ethereum.He entered the amount, confirmed the conversion rate, and pressed execute. The transaction processed in under thirty seconds. ETH balance updated. He looked at the BTC column.He blinked.The number had not moved.He looked at the ETH again. It was there, the full converted amount, sitting clean in his Ethereum wallet. Transaction confirmed, timestamp recorded, everything showing as completed.But the Bitcoin side looked exactly the same as before he had made the move.He assumed it was a display delay. Binance sometimes took a

His phone screen lit up on the desk.A notification.He picked it up slowly, half-expecting another Binance alert, another number that had grown while he wasn't looking.It was not Binance.It was a text message. Unknown number. No contact name. But he knew who it wasThree words.“We need to talk.”Chris stared at the screen.His thumb hovered over the message.The apartment was completely silent around him.Chris looked at the unknown number on his screen for a long time.Then he locked his phone and turned it face down on the desk.He was not ready for that conversation. Not tonight. Not without knowing more about what he was sitting on and who else might know he was sitting on it.He pushed the message to the back of his mind and thought about the wallet.The obvious move was to find someone who understood crypto at a deep technical level. He knew a few names, YouTube educators he had been watching for months, people who broke down blockchain mechanics and wallet infrastructure

Ryan was the first one Chris saw when he came through the main entrance.He was leaning against the wall just inside the door, bag over one shoulder, waiting with the patient energy of someone who had been there a few minutes already. Jordan was beside him. Zoe a step behind. "You were not here yesterday," Ryan said. No accusation in it, just fact."Had things to handle," Chris said. "How was it?" He askedJordan shrugged. "Quiet. Which was strange.""Tyler?" Chris asked."Barely saw him," Zoe said. "He was off campus during both breaks. Lunch too. His people were around, but Tyler himself was basically a ghost the whole day." She paused. "Nobody even heard him say anything in class."Chris nodded slowly.Caleb and Jade arrived together from the direction of the east corridor, slightly out of breath, with the look of people who had hurried to catch up."We saw you come in," Jade said. "You missed yesterday.""He knows," Ryan said."Tyler left you all alone?" Chris asked."Compl

Chris leaned forward in the chair."What have you found about that? Show me," he said.Sandra turned the first page of the document toward him. It was a copy of the amended scholarship charter, the public version, filed with the directorate. She pointed to a clause near the bottom of the second page, marked with a small pencil line in the margin.Chris read it.The language was dense, but the meaning was clear enough once he worked through it. Any acquisition bid on the fund would remain private, not listed, not publicly disclosed, until a qualifying offer had already been submitted. Only after that would the bidding open to the public.He sat back."What does that actually mean in practice?" he asked. "Walk me through it."Sandra turned to face him directly."It means that if nobody knew to submit a bid, the fund would never go public," she said. "The distressed classification would sit quietly in the directorate's files. No announcement, no open bidding, no outside parties gett

Chris leaned forward in the chair."When I own the board," he said. "What exactly can I do with all of this?"Sandra straightened the documents on the table into a neat stack before answering."The first thing you can do is bring in a private auditor," she said. "Independent, no connection to any of the parties involved. They go through every account, every transaction, every grant application and the corresponding fund usage going back as far as the records exist." She paused. "Once the audit confirms what the public documents already suggest, you have a documented case. At that point you take it to the relevant authorities.""Which authorities?""Federal, given that some of the grants came from federal education programmes." She picked up her pen. "Misappropriation of federal grant funds is a serious charge. Add the fraudulent grant applications, claiming funds for programme expansion while deliberately contracting the programme, and you are looking at wire fraud, mail fraud, an