Chapter 1The Titans Most Valuable Investment

My roommate hurled her old smartphone onto my bed with an exaggerated huff.

She announced that her thirty-five-year-old online fling was getting on her last nerve. Not only did he demand daily vocabulary quizzes and reading summaries from her, but he also had the audacity to lecture her about going to clubs on the weekends.

To her, it was just a casual online game. But his controlling nature, she complained, was suffocatingly paternal. Still, for the sake of the five hundred dollars he wired her for living expenses every month, she decided to generously "gift" the account to me, the designated charity case of the dorm.

I was staring down at my textbook, too exhausted to engage, when a string of bizarre, glowing text suddenly began scrolling across my field of vision.

[Keeley has no idea she’s playing games with a billionaire venture capitalist. That "controlling" vibe? He's literally grooming her to the standards of a corporate titan's wife.]

[Just wait until the billionaire flies back to the States and realizes there’s been a bait-and-switch. He’s going to absolutely decimate the doomed stand-in, Maeve, before launching into an epic, agonizing grovel to win Keeley back.]

I picked up the discarded phone, looked up at Keeley, and gave her a flat smile. "Sure. I’ll take this 'burden' off your hands."

A doomed stand-in? An epic groveling arc? None of that mattered to me.

Right now, all I wanted to know was if this corporate titan could give me a shortcut to a top-tier Ivy League business school.

* * *

Right in front of Keeley, I changed the phone number linked to the messaging app and handed her actual device back to her.

She took it, shooting me a sideways, pitying glance. "This stingy old man might drop a few dimes, but his demands are psychotic. He acts like a high school principal. Have fun with that."

It made sense. The trust-fund frat boys at the business school bought her designer bags worth thousands on a whim; a five-hundred-dollar allowance was chump change to her.

Once Keeley fluttered out the door for her date, the cramped dorm room fell silent. I opened the chat thread with the user who had no profile picture.

The last messages were from last night.

[Read the front page of this week’s Wall Street Journal. Write a brief on it and send it to me.]

[Why aren't you replying?]

[You need to fix your attitude and take this seriously. I don't have time to indulge your tantrums.]

My eyelid twitched. I scrolled back through six months of their chat history.

They had met on a professional networking forum. Keeley had been fishing for a young, elite tech bro, playing the role of the eager, impoverished straight-A student. This man, under the username G, had answered a few of her industry questions, and one thing led to another until they exchanged numbers.

Their conversations contained zero flirting. It barely qualified as an online romance.

It was strictly: What book did you read today? How many vocabulary words did you memorize? Have you looked at the latest inflation data?

It was painfully obvious that he genuinely wanted to help her.

Keeley’s English was good, and at first, she actually played along. But as time wore on, she started faking illnesses, whining, or just copy-pasting AI-generated garbage to brush him off.

Initially, he had patiently corrected her mistakes. Lately, sensing her apathy, his tone had grown frigid.

Yet, like clockwork, he still sent that five hundred dollars on the first of every month.

To Keeley, five hundred dollars wasn't enough for a decent dinner downtown. But to me—a broke student juggling four part-time jobs just to afford dining hall meals and used textbooks—it was a windfall.

The phantom text began scrolling across my vision again:

[G is Gideon Wright, the absolute legend of the Wall Street elite. A single crumb of insider info from him could feed a normal person for lifetimes, and Keeley just tossed him away?]

[Does Maeve, the sacrificial lamb, actually think she hit the jackpot? Gideon despises being lied to. When he finds out she’s a fake, he will ruin her.]

I ignored the malicious glowing words, my eyes locking onto the message demanding a reading summary.

I was an ordinary finance major at a middle-tier university. Because my family was buried in debt, I couldn't even afford the basic prep courses for grad school. I had known since I was a child that education wasn't a privilege; it was a lifeboat. It was the only way out.

For five grueling hours, I hunched over my desk. I devoured the previous week's financial journals, cross-referenced a mountain of historical market data, and typed up a comprehensive brief.

After running a rigorous grammar check, I hit send.

[I'm so sorry. I just had a tonsillectomy a couple of days ago, hence the delayed reply.]

Fifteen minutes later, he responded: [Did you write this report yourself?]

My heart seized in my chest. [Yes.]

...Another agonizing stretch of silence.

Then, a notification popped up on the screen. A wire transfer.

$8,000.

[Your angle is incredibly refreshing. It's leagues ahead of the hollow, buzzword-filled nonsense you've been sending me lately. Consider this a bonus.]

[If you're recovering from surgery, prioritize your rest. Goodnight.]

Keeley’s "stingy old man" had just casually dropped eight grand?

I stared at the zeros, my fingers trembling uncontrollably.

The floating comments immediately turned sour:

[What the hell? The side character's luck is insane! Eight grand for one crappy essay?]

[Gideon only gave it to her because he values Keeley's underlying potential. Maeve is just leeching off the female lead's aura!]

[Take it, go ahead. The more she takes now, the worse her destruction will be later. Gold diggers never get a happy ending.]

I gritted my teeth, tapped the screen, and refunded the money.

G sent back a single question mark: [Not enough?]

[No, it's not that. It's just that, more than money, I want an opportunity.]

[I want to apply to a top-tier business school. I don't have a mentor to guide me, and I don't have access to premium industry data.]

[...Is it too greedy of me to ask if I could borrow a Bloomberg Terminal login from you?]

I sent the message. It sank like a stone in the ocean.

Half an hour passed. Nothing.

I stared at the screen, a cold sweat breaking out across my palms.

The comments ramped up their mockery:

[Overplayed her hand! Tried to play hard to get, and now she's out eight grand!]

[Who does she think Gideon is? A titan like him sees right through this cheap manipulation.]

[Exactly. A nobody student trying to get into an Ivy League? Does she think Gideon runs a charity?]

Just as I was thoroughly convinced I had pushed too hard and severed my only lifeline, the phone buzzed.

[Send me your full academic portfolio.]

I immediately attached the dossier I kept constantly updated. I scrubbed it of my name and personal details, leaving only my GPA, my coursework, and my track record in national mock-trading competitions.

The next morning, I received a call from an unknown number.

"Good morning. I am Mr. Wright's executive assistant, Mr. Davis."

The voice on the other end was brutally corporate.

"My employer has instructed me to meet with you to evaluate your current standing. Are you available this afternoon?"

I swallowed the spike of adrenaline in my throat and forced a cool, professional tone. "Yes. Name the time and place."