I'd been away from the dorm for one month. That was all it took for my roommate to start renting out my bed to strangers at thirty dollars a night.

My toiletries, my sheets, my comforter, even candid photos of me taken without my knowledge, all of it bundled up and listed on eBay at bargain prices.

I was famous now, apparently. The whole campus knew me by a single label: “the thirty-dollar-a-night gold-digger.”

I came back furious, ready for a fight, and the only thing I got was a question tossed at me like I was the one who owed an explanation.

“You spend every night out there hooking up with men and selling yourself, and you still have the nerve to sleep here? We don't want to catch whatever you've got.”

I stared at them, baffled, and my roommate shoved a photo into my face. Taken yesterday, right after class.

In it, I was stepping out of a luxury car with a smile on my face. Behind me, still seated in the back, was the blurred figure of a middle-aged man.

“You really will do anything for money, won't you? Latching onto some greasy sugar daddy like that.”

And with that, she upended an entire bucket of kitchen slop onto my bed.

I was so angry I laughed.

My gaze dropped to the name badge pinned to her chest, and I went still.

I pulled out my phone and sent a message to the “greasy” middle-aged man in the photo.

“Dad, cancel the scholarship our family's been funding for the past ten years.”

——

I gripped my phone tight, my eyes sharp as I looked back at them.

Tamara Cooley's mockery didn't let up.

“Who would've guessed? You look so innocent, but behind closed doors you're a total slut.”

“Someone as talented as you? This dorm's way too small for a big shot like you.”

Tamara stroked the Van Cleef & Arpels bracelet on her wrist, sneering down at me.

That was when I actually looked at her. Head to toe, she was dripping in designer labels. A Chanel dress. An Hermès bag.

My brow furrowed.

I knew my father had devoted himself to philanthropy for years. He'd even established a dedicated charitable foundation through the school, pouring serious money into scholarships for kids who couldn't afford an education.

Tamara Cooley was one of those kids. A girl pulled out of poverty on a scholarship from the mountains.

I hadn't remembered her name before. It was only when I saw the scholarship badge on her chest that I realized she was the student my father had been sponsoring all along.

Our family had funded her for a full decade. Even after she'd gotten into college, we kept her scholarship active.

Every month, a generous stipend hit her account.

But she'd only been enrolled for half a year. Where was all the luxury coming from?

She must have noticed the way I was looking at her, because Tamara arched a brow, preening.

“I'm nothing like you. Sure, I'm on a scholarship now, but my boyfriend happens to be the richest man in the city. He's the one who's been paying for everything.”

“We actually have a real relationship. He told me he'll marry me after I graduate. Not like you, playing mistress on the side.”

The words hit me and I froze where I stood.

My mind went blank.

Then something sharp clawed its way out of my throat.

“You're saying the man who sponsors you is going to marry you?”

That was impossible. My mother had been gone for years, but I had seen with my own eyes how deep my father's love for her ran.

Every year on the anniversary of her death, he would spend an entire month at the temple, praying for her, hoping she was at peace wherever she was.

Relatives had urged him to remarry. He'd refused every time, swearing he would never take another wife.

Doubt crept in anyway, cold and unwelcome, and I fought it.

But the next second Tamara held her phone right up to my face, chat logs open, and everything I believed cracked apart.

Every illusion, shattered.

The screen was full of it. “Baby” and “love you” and all the nauseating pet names in between.

The location pin pointed straight to my family's gated community. The living room in the photos, the climbing roses by the front door, they were identical to mine.

A roar filled my ears, drowning out everything else.

My eyes went wide. The hand gripping my phone had started to tremble.

Because the WhatsApp profile picture was unmistakably my father's.

A nameless fury surged from somewhere deep in my chest, shooting straight to the top of my skull.

I pulled up his contact and called him, ready to demand an explanation.

The line wouldn't connect.

I paced in place, stomping my foot, my breathing turning shallow and fast.

I was about to give up.

Then I heard it: a rapid-fire string of notification chimes from Tamara's phone.

My gaze landed on that familiar profile picture, and my whole body locked up.

My heart dropped straight through the floor.

“My boyfriend literally can't go a second without me.”

Leaning past her shoulder, I saw a screen full of sweet nothings and a voice message over twenty seconds long.

Underneath the fury, a quiet doubt started to gnaw at me.

In all these years, my father had never once ignored my calls unless he was in an emergency meeting. Even if he really did have something going on with my roommate, he wouldn't deliberately leave me hanging.

And my father had never been the type to sweet-talk anyone.

Back when my mother was alive, she used to tease him for being the worst with words.

Unless the man chatting with Tamara……had stolen my father's identity.

The fire in my chest cooled, replaced inch by inch with something cold.

I looked at Tamara, my expression unreadable.

She tipped her chin up, face glowing with smug satisfaction, practically preening.

“My boyfriend said if you don't move out of this dorm, next time it won't just be a campus-wide disciplinary notice.”

“So if you know what's good for you, pack your crap and get lost.”

I stared at that self-satisfied face and let out a cold laugh before I could stop it.

I walked toward her, slow and unhurried, every step deliberate.

“And you're absolutely sure the person you've been chatting with is a billionaire and not a fraud?”

My other roommate, Kate Pruitt, cut in with a sneer.

“What, just because you had to sell yourself to land a sugar daddy, you think Tamara's the same kind of trash?”

I didn't bother responding to her. My eyes stayed fixed on Tamara.

I kept my voice light, almost offhand.

“So has he actually taken you to that mansion yet?”

The contempt in Tamara's eyes only thickened.

“My baby told me that's going to be our house after the wedding. He wants to keep it a surprise. Someone like you wouldn't get the chance to see a place like that in your entire life.”

“I'm about to become the richest man's wife, so I suggest you do as you're told. Otherwise I'll make sure you can't survive a single day on this campus.”

I had no intention of arguing with them any further. In less than a month, I'd be leaving for the University of London.

I shrugged, indifferent. I'd given her the warning. What she did with it was her problem.

I turned and headed for the door.

But as I passed the desk, my pupils contracted sharply.

Sitting on the surface was a crisp, untouched study-abroad application with my name printed clearly across the top.

Every muscle in my body went rigid.

I had submitted this application to my advisor just yesterday. How was it here, in the dorm?

And yesterday had been the final deadline.

I snatched the application off the desk and flung it in Tamara's face……

“You intercepted my study-abroad application?”

Tamara had been trimming her eyebrows with a razor, slow and leisurely. My outburst made her pause, annoyance flickering across her face.

“A gold-digger like you thinks she can use her dirty money to study abroad? Dream on.”

“All we did was tell the advisor about your little gold-digging career. She's the one who sent it back. And the campus-wide disciplinary notice? That should be coming down any day now.”

“You're about to be famous.”

Something inside me snapped. Every last thread of restraint burned away, and before I could think, I stepped forward and slapped Tamara across the face.

The crack echoed through the dorm room.

A welt rose on Tamara's cheek almost instantly. Her teeth clenched, her expression twisting into something feral.

“You have a death wish, Yvette? My boyfriend could make you disappear from this school with a single phone call.”

I let a slow, calm smile touch my lips.

“Then I'll be watching.”

The moment I walked away, I texted Lambert Mason.

【Freeze Tamara Cooley's supplementary credit card. And stop all future sponsorship payments to her.】

You could pour a lifetime of kindness into an ungrateful person and never tame them. So I'd simply take back what was never hers to begin with.

I ignored them after that and left the dorm alone.

I drew a long breath.

The school ran on my family's funding anyway. Worst case, I'd just get reassigned to a different room.

I called our family's attorney next and sent him the audio I'd recorded in the dorm.

A malicious defamation charge would be more than enough to ruin the rest of Tamara Cooley's life.

I wasn't going to let them take one more thing from me.

I started down the stairs, one step at a time.

My hand drifted to my wrist out of habit, reaching for my jade bracelet. My fingers closed around bare skin.

I stopped dead. My heart stuttered.

That bracelet was the last thing my mother left me before she died.

I must have taken it off in the rush and left it in the room.

Cold sweat beaded along my hairline, and a sick, frantic heat spread through my chest.

I turned and ran back up the stairs, back to the dorm, reaching for the handle.

The door was already locked from the inside.

“Tamara, open the door! I left something in there!”

Muffled, contemptuous laughter seeped through the door.

“Oh, so much for your pride. You lasted what, three minutes? Already crawling back to make nice? You were pretty tough when you hit me. Too late now.”

“Born spineless. No wonder older men love her.”

Then a video call from Tamara lit up my screen.

She was standing on my bed, shoes and all, her eyes glinting like a snake sizing up prey.

“Get on your knees and knock your forehead on the ground a hundred times within five minutes. Then maybe I'll think about letting you in to apologize.”

I didn't hesitate for a second. I hung up.

I went downstairs and found the RA.

When the door was forced open, Tamara let out a shriek.

She was on a voice call with her “boyfriend,” cooing “baby” into the phone between every other word.

I didn't spare her a glance. I just started searching, frantic, tearing through every corner for my bracelet.

A fist closed around my hair from behind and yanked. Before I could brace myself, I was shoved hard and sent sprawling to the floor.

My knees cracked against the concrete, white-hot pain searing up my legs.

I didn't look up. I stayed low, eyes locked on the ground, scanning desperately, every nerve screaming to find what my mother had left me.

I searched the entire room by touch, every surface, every gap. Nothing.

Tamara clicked her tongue, savoring the moment.

“You wouldn't happen to be looking for this, would you?”

I raised my head, stiff, slow.

A deep, luminous green bracelet sat quietly on Tamara's wrist.

I drew a breath and forced my voice level.

“Who told you you could touch my things?”

“A bracelet this nice? Don't tell me that old man of yours bought it for you. Could he even afford it? Probably fake.”

I clenched my jaw and lunged for it.

Tamara jerked her arm up high, dangling my mother's bracelet over the hard floor as if she'd let go any second.

I froze. My eyes burned until the edges of my vision went red.