Eyes trailed him the entire walk down the hall. Whispers followed close behind — how had he actually won King of Campus? Who had even voted for him?Daniel didn't let it settle on him. His mind was already somewhere else, turned toward the evening ahead and the one job he couldn't afford to fail: win that auction, no matter the cost.His thoughts scattered the moment he spotted Rachel.She stood with her usual circle of friends, laughing easily at something one of them had said. But the moment her eyes landed on him, the laughter died on her face. She looked at him the way someone looks at a stranger wearing a familiar face — like she couldn't quite make the two versions of him line up in her head.Daniel felt a small, unwelcome twist in his chest. He pushed past it. Whatever they'd had was finished. If she wanted to stand there looking confused about the man she'd walked away from, that was her problem now, not his.He started to move past her when her voice caught him off guard."Da

The following Monday, school reopened and lectures carried on as if nothing had changed. No one knew that Daniel now owned buildings worth two billion dollars, or that he was managing a redevelopment project that would reshape an entire section of the city.All anyone on campus seemed to care about was simpler, smaller: how had the school's unclaimed dog risen overnight to become King?"Good morning, Daniel!" a girl chirped as she passed, flashing a smile that would've been unthinkable two weeks ago."Sup, Dan," a guy he didn't recognize said, clapping him on the shoulder like they'd been friends for years."Hi," Daniel managed, the word coming out stiffer than he meant it to.After an entire year of being hated, avoided, ostracized by nearly everyone in these halls, the sudden warmth felt more disorienting than waking up a trillionaire. If anything, he found himself almost missing the silence — at least back then, he hadn't needed to smile at strangers who'd never once bothered to le

"Robert, I understand you're thrilled to have your son back," Grace said, settling further into her chair, "but don't you think you're moving a little fast? The boy clearly isn't ready for something like this." Daniel caught himself before his surprise could show any further and cleared his throat, forcing his shoulders to relax. "I gladly accept, Dad." He kept his voice steady. "I'll admit the timing caught me off guard, but I want to be clear — that has nothing to do with my competency." He let his gaze settle on Grace as he said it. In truth, he was quietly unraveling. He had six months left before graduation, and stepping into a company this size felt less like a step and more like a cliff edge. Worse — it meant stepping into public view as the long-lost son of the Raines family, and he wasn't remotely ready to have that many eyes on him at once. But he'd already learned, in just these few short weeks, that the fastest way to hand someone a weapon was to let them see you flinch.

The gigolo rumor kept spreading across campus, gathering weight with every retelling, until half the school seemed convinced Daniel had been lying about everything from the start."After acting so righteous, I can't believe he'd actually do something like this.""Explains how he paid for everyone's drinks at the party, doesn't it?" another student agreed, nodding like they'd just solved a mystery.One thing about Crestmont students Daniel doubted he'd ever fully understand was their complete lack of shame about talking behind someone's back — and directly to their face, often in the same breath. He genuinely couldn't decide if that made them bold or simply cruel.Walking down the hall, he caught someone calling him a prostitute loud enough to carry, and he nearly laughed out loud at the sheer audacity of it. No one stopped him as he passed. No one pointed. They just kept talking, openly, without a shred of discretion, like his name belonged to the public record now.Rachel was the onl

The next morning, Daniel's phone wouldn't stop buzzing with notifications from the school blog. It had been going off since seven a.m. He didn't bother checking because he already knew exactly what it would be about.By noon, sitting in the cafeteria with a plate he hadn't touched, curiosity finally won out over dread. The headline hit him before anything else: “CRESTMONT'S UNCLAIMED DOG SLEEPS HIS WAY TO CAMPUS KING.”Beneath it sat a photo of him and Lily, taken the day she'd picked him up from the police station.The article claimed their relationship had started that very day, that they'd been sleeping together ever since, and the comment section had exploded into a feeding frenzy of speculation. Some insisted it had been going on even longer. Others painted Lily as some kind of predator, someone who trawled prisons and back alleys for younger men to use and discard, paying them off once she was finished.The angrier he got, the harder it was to stop reading. If the school blog ha