Chapter 1 - KEEP RECORDING
They dumped garbage over my head, soaked me in red water, and laughed while half the campus recorded it.
Veronica Hale shoved her livestream camera inches from my face.
“People like you don’t belong here.”
I wiped the burning liquid from my eyes and stared into her camera.
“Keep recording.”
Her boyfriend, Chase Mercer, kicked a banana peel onto my shoe.
“Smile, Amelia. This is the closest you’ll ever get to being famous.”
Students crowded the marble steps of Westbridge University. Some laughed. Most filmed. Not one stepped forward.
Professor Lang stood near the business building with his jaw clenched. Two security guards watched from twenty feet away.
Nobody moved because Veronica’s father was Richard Hale, Westbridge’s largest donor.
Three months earlier, I had beaten Veronica in a national business competition. My financial model exposed flaws in her team’s proposal, and she never forgave me.
After that, my notebooks disappeared. Rumors spread that I slept with a professor for grades. Chase planted a stolen watch in my backpack.
The university called everything a misunderstanding.
This wasn’t.
What Veronica didn’t know was that my phone was recording from my pocket. So was the camera hidden inside my backpack button.
It had captured Chase stealing the garbage from a maintenance room.
It had recorded Professor Lang warning them that the industrial dye could damage my eyes.
And it had caught Veronica saying, “My father owns this school.”
At exactly eleven, thunder rolled across the sky.
A black helicopter descended toward the athletic field. A silver crest flashed on its side.
Sterling Global.
A forty-billion-dollar investment company.
Veronica smiled. “That’s probably here for my father.”
“No,” I said. “It’s here for me.”
The helicopter landed.
Nathan Sterling stepped out in a charcoal suit, followed by two attorneys and his head of security. He ignored the university president. He walked straight toward me.
Veronica’s livestream was still running when he removed his jacket and placed it over my soaked shoulders.
Then he looked at the garbage around my feet.
“Amelia,” he said, his voice dangerously quiet, “tell me who did this to my daughter.”
The courtyard went silent.
Veronica’s phone slipped from her hand.
Before it hit the ground, another voice rang out behind us.
“Mr. Sterling, your daughter is under investigation for fraud.”
I turned.
May you like
The man holding the arrest order was Westbridge’s chief of campus security.
And beside him stood my father’s oldest rival.
