"Here, boy. Sit." Dimas dangled a crumpled dollar bill between two fingers, waving it just above William's head the way a man might tease a dog with a scrap of meat. Around them, half the dormitory lounge had gathered, phones already raised, already recording, the fluorescent lights overhead buzzing faintly against the low murmur of anticipation.William stood frozen by the vending machine, arms full of soda cans he'd been sent to fetch twenty minutes ago on Dimas's orders, his feet rooted to the tile floor by something heavier than fear — a bone-deep, familiar humiliation that no longer even surprised him. He could feel the cold aluminum of the cans pressing into his chest, the condensation soaking through his shirt, and somewhere underneath it all, a small, tired voice reminding him that this, too, would end eventually, the way it always did."I said sit," Dimas repeated, voice syrupy with mock patience. "Come on. One dollar. That's more than your scholarship's worth, right? Free mo

"Hold him down!"William's world had narrowed to fists.They'd cornered him behind the old gymnasium after dark, six of them this time, Dimas leading with a wild, almost euphoric grin, like tonight was a celebration rather than an assault. The first punch caught William across the cheekbone and sent his glasses skittering into the dirt, shattering one lens with a small, almost delicate crunch that seemed absurdly loud in the otherwise quiet night. After that, the night became a blur of impact — knuckles, knees, the hard edge of a shoe finding his ribs again and again until he stopped trying to shield himself and simply let his body absorb what it could, folding inward the way he'd learned to fold, making himself as small a target as possible."Please," he managed to gasp at some point, though he could no longer tell if the word made it out of his mouth or only echoed inside his own skull. "Please, stop—""Stop?" Dimas crouched down to his eye level, breathing hard, grinning wider, swe

"Where's William? What happened to him?"Dimas laughed into his phone, sprawled across his dorm bed like a man with nothing to fear in the world, one hand tossing a stress ball idly toward the ceiling and catching it without looking. "William? That loser probably transferred out of shame. Or drowned himself somewhere, who even cares."He didn't notice the golden shimmer pulse faintly in the air of the empty room, invisible to him, utterly invisible to anyone who wasn't its intended recipient — because two floors up, in a suite he'd rented under a name nobody would think to question, Alexander Kane sat with his eyes closed, listening to a live feed no human ear should have been able to hear, watching a small notification bloom silently across his vision.[LIE DETECTED. MALICE LEVEL: HIGH — CALLOUS DISREGARD FOR HARM CAUSED.][REWARD: $85,000.00][CURRENT BALANCE: $121,460.00]Alexander opened his eyes slowly. Outside, the campus courtyard was bathed in the ordinary gold of late afterno

"I don't want to be your friend."Natasya said it flatly, without looking up from the book in her lap, sitting alone on the same library steps where William used to eat lunch by himself before the days when even those steps stopped feeling safe. The late afternoon light caught the edge of her hair, turning it faintly gold, and Alexander found himself staring a half-second too long before catching himself.Alexander stood a few feet away, hands in his pockets, momentarily thrown off balance by the simple, unwavering force of her rejection. He had approached carefully — a casual excuse about a misplaced textbook, an offer to walk her to her next class — and been shut down within ten seconds flat, with a precision that suggested she'd had plenty of practice turning people away."I wasn't asking to be your friend," he said carefully, though the truth was he had been hoping for exactly that, in whatever twisted, secretive form he could manage. "I just noticed you sitting alone.""People si

"You shouldn't have touched her."Alexander's voice cut through the warehouse before his footsteps did, low and utterly calm in a way that somehow made every man in the room take an involuntary step back. He walked in flanked by four men in dark suits — private security whose retainer alone cost more than Berta's family had ever made in a good year — their presence silent, unhurried, absolute, boots echoing against the concrete in a rhythm that felt less like an entrance and more like a countdown.Berta's bravado cracked instantly. "This isn't — you don't understand, I just wanted to talk to her, I wasn't going to—""You don't get to lie to me," Alexander said, and something in the words made the air itself seem to still. "Not here. Not about this."He didn't need the system to tell him what she was about to say next was false; he could see it in the frantic calculation behind her eyes, the same look he remembered from years of watching people decide, in real time, exactly how much of