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Fallon

I stared through the back window into the beautiful oasis that had been carefully curated for us by the not-so-hot construction crew that came in over the past weekend. Kelly was disgruntled there weren’t more hotties available to work with their shirts off. Despite the lack of eye candy, I was enamored with our newly installed hot tub and almost completed natural pool.

“These guys really knocked it out of the park over the weekend.” I took a sip of my hot coffee, snuggled in my favorite new pink robe.

Kelly stepped up beside me in her own blue robe. “The waterfall by the pool is going to be epic.”

“It’ll be especially great for whoever lives here next.” A silent lament that not all good things last. School wouldn’t last forever, and Kelly would move on eventually.

She sighed longingly. “Can we just stay here for, like, ever? No men, just us besties until the end of time?”

“I wish,” I scoffed. “I bet Evans would drag me out of here kicking and screaming to the concrete jungle of New York. You might want to look into getting a cat.”

I turned my attention to my bag that I packed my laptop and books into, hating that my future felt so...predetermined. By a bunch of men in a boardroom. By my mother. If she was still alive, would I still be facing the same future?

I shoved off the what ifs. She wasn’t here anymore. She left it all to me.

As for the boardroom suits, they were just doing their jobs. All very corporate, but still their jobs. Everyone had a family to feed.

The meeting on Sunday morning went far too quickly. My path to leadership was laid out very bluntly–no mention of the shenanigans that Sylvia got up to when I was under her care, but I figured that was a conversation for a different time. I was to be taking on meetings, listening to my bodyguard, and expecting someone to ‘drop in’ to deliver paperwork and catch me up to speed.

The drop ins were also their way of micromanaging me and ensuring I wasn’t acting out of line.

The meeting also wasn’t just a meeting. It was an intervention.

“Remember how those stuffy men told me I needed to change my major to something more appropriate for an up-and-coming CEO?”

She didn’t break her gaze away from the hot tub. “Yeah, why?”

“Well, I need to go get dressed and get to campus so I can lament my freedom of choice in my life with my advisor.” I set my cup down on the counter and threw my robe off and onto the couch. “I am going to need some serious ice cream therapy after today.”

Kelly mimicked my movements dutifully, “I am coming with you. Homework be damned!”

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T he student center was one of the largest buildings on campus, making one of those warehouse stores look like a boutique experience—minus the warehouse vibe. It spanned into more wings than I cared to keep track of, and the map for this place was so large you’d need a guided tour each time you came in. The wealthy loved two things: their architecture and their unnecessarily large buildings.

It was built to look elegant to impress the parents paying for it and the scholarship kids that attended here. The rest of us probably didn’t care as much. The neutrally bland color scheme said I have money and no personality. With an entrance that looked like Grand Central Station, I could have easily mistaken this place for an actual train station.

My stop?

Academic advising.

I smiled awkwardly at the receptionist who looked like she didn’t care about her job. She was half scrolling through social media and half looking at me expecting an answer. “I have an appointment with my advisor, Mrs. Matthews.”

She flipped out a tablet. “Name?”

“Fallon Montgomery.”

“Student key card?” She still hadn’t really given me proper eye contact.

I handed it over the counter and wondered what made her feel so lifeless at work. Would I turn into someone who didn’t even give someone a second glance? Or even a first? With how much respect my mother instilled in me, I also wondered if she embodied that at her company.

Sarah, or so it said on her name tag, pointed to a door as she went back to scrolling on her phone.

The hallway was thin and long, holding office after office. It felt too much like a conveyer belt in here, transporting the students from idealistic young adults to whatever got spat out on the other end. My room came up when I saw the sign for my advisor.

“What can I help you with today, Miss Montgomery?” At least there was a smile on the other side of the door.

I itched my arm and fidgeted with my bracelet. “I’m here to see about changing my major.”

Before my ass hit the seat, she was quickly typing up a storm and had a few sheets of paper printed out and displayed across her desk. At least she was efficient. “Before you do, let’s go over sophomore requirements for your undergrad in the first two years. You did more than full time last year, knocking out a lot of classes right off the bat. I’m impressed that you maintained a perfect GPA while doing one point five times the recommended full-time hours.”

She turned back to her desk to click clack away at her keyboard before printing even more papers to spread out in front of me. I aspired to type that quickly.

“These three classes align with your currently declared major. It looks like you are taking two out of four on campus–math and biology. Your online classes may be affected, which will have you spending more time on campus than previously expected.” She was drawing circles, doodling across the page in advisor style notations while my insides churned.

“Can we look at all possible options?” I was reeling from this entire semester already, and we were nowhere close to midterms.

Mrs. Matthews was perched and ready at her computer. “Of course! What are you thinking of changing to? Will you declare a minor as well?”

I fidgeted again. “I’d like to see my options for something business related.”

She clicked around, printing out more pages to spread out and mark up. She rambled off a bunch of majors that sounded like no fun at all. “We have a general business degree that could encompass all aspects, or we have accounting, finance, marketing, international business, and business administration. There are some other niche majors if you are looking for pinpointing something within the business realm.”

The inside of my lip was going to be minced meat by the end of this conversation. “What happens if I can’t change my classes this semester?”

The reassuring look on her face told me that she’d handled many a situation like mine before. Parents demanding their kids change majors after they found out they were going for something unrelated to the family business, it felt like a normal occurrence here. “Your major change does not have to happen this semester,” she smiled. A warm smile. “Here, if you look, you can finish out this semester as is. These two classes here can be applied to your extra credit classes—the free credits as they call them. With your overtime work last semester, I think this puts you in a fine spot to finish this one out as planned.”

That sparked a little bit of hope inside my chest. That I would still get to feel like myself for one more semester before I was forced to concede and continue with the plan laid out for me.

“So, no immediate change is needed?” I asked.

“No immediate changes needed,” she said, collecting up the scattered papers on her desk into a neat pile. She paper clipped them for good measure. “Come back closer to when classes are about to open, and we can build out your schedule. Now, do you have an idea of which major you were thinking of changing to?”

“The general business degree.” I wanted to scream and cry that my life was ending, but I began to realize that I was a nepo baby. I’d just been shielded from that fact for a long, long time.

What the hell did my mother expect me to do as basically a declawed cat?

“Shall I get you squared away with a redeclaration?”

I nodded in response. If I were to try to speak, I might have cried.

It felt as though I held my breath through the rest of the conversation, admitting defeat and coming to terms with what my life really was. I was Fallon Montgomery, heir to The Montgomery Group International Real Estate Firm . What that even meant was beyond me. Mrs. Matthews—bless her soul—attempted to soothe my anxiety the entire time. By the time I left the office to go find Kelly, it was as if my view on the world began to change.

Not all of it did, though. Kelly waited patiently, sprawled across two chairs with her nose in one of those weird farming simulation games. Last time I saw her playing a game, it was a horse simulator.

“Hey, babe.” She looked up at me, tucking her game into her bag. “How’d it go?”

“I am ready to go get ice cream now and learn how to grow up.” I held up the paper stating a major change that I would eventually have to submit as proof to Evans when he came calling about it again.

She threw me a wicked grin. “Before that...a little birdie told me that the football team is going to start practice soon. If we want to be sad with ice cream, we could at least watch hot and sweaty men run around.”

We settled on getting bucket sized bowls of frozen yogurt. It was conveniently on the way to the sporting complex. I brought my body weight in cheesecake, birthday cake, and coconut flavored frozen yogurt to my seat in the stands to eat something yummy while watching something yummy.

“I read somewhere that froyo is actually better for you than ice cream. We are clearly being healthy while these guys workout.” Kelly plopped down next to me with a spoon in her mouth.

Sure enough, all the guys ran around the track in mostly their shorts. My too-large bucket of cold dessert mixed with this sight was distracting me temporarily from the cold corporate reality that awaited me.

“Does it count as a cold plunge if we eat ice cream out in the cold?” I pulled my large coat over me, briefly considering this may have been not the most well thought out plan.

“Yes! Dual health!”

Everyone’s phones around us started pinging rapidly. So did mine. So did Kelly’s. We exchanged a glance while pulling out our phones.

“What the hell could that be? Must be some emergency thingy...” she trailed off, unlocking her phone first and scrolling around to find the source. Her jaw went slack. “Fal, look at this.”

I leaned over to peek at the massive group text that had been sent out.

Six of your daddies are going to jail. Let the games begin.

My eyes almost fell out of my head. I was so done for this semester. Not only was I going to learn how the wealthy operated while paying catch up, but I was going to play some fucked up version of whodunnit,

Frozen yogurt wouldn’t solve this type of problem.

“Does it say who it’s from?”

She shook her head. “Nope. This semester is going to be a wild ride. I remember when something similar happened when I was younger. It wasn’t like this per se, but someone was bent out of shape about something and a few families had to deal with some pretty heavy legal trouble.”

Did this happen often or something?

We looked up to glance over at the guys on the field huddled around holding their phones. They whispered amongst themselves while pointing to their screens. Would we know whose families were involved, or was this a domino effect to get people to out each other?

The bleachers shifted slightly under the weight of someone sitting down next to me, their thigh touching mine. I looked up to see Brent and his usual confident smirk still in place.

“Wild news, huh?” His voice was low and edged with a more serious tone. Didn’t think he had a serious bone in his body before today, but I was learning a lot in the span of a couple weeks.

I nodded, giving him a suspicious sideways glance. “Uh huh.”

He leaned in closer, lowering his voice to a whisper near my ear. A shiver ran through my body before I could try to suppress it. The effect he had on me was more than irritating. “Want to get out of here? Just you and me?”

With our two escapades fried into my brain permanently, I didn’t dare delve into questioning his motives. Lucky for me, I didn’t come alone, and I sure as hell wasn’t leaving without Kelly.

She was still fixated on the screen, furiously typing away and swiping around unbothered by the interaction I was having. Her brow was furrowed which meant her attention was a tunnel. I turned back to Brent and shook my head. “Nope. I’m with her and I’m sure as hell not ditching her. If it’s truly life or death, you know where I live. Don’t bother me otherwise.” I jerked my thumb in Kell’s direction to my right.

He stared at me a moment, his expression blank. Probably because he wasn’t used to hearing the word “no.” For a second, I thought he might try to pull another kidnapping stunt telling me to come with him or else, but he didn’t. Instead, he sighed and leaned back, stretching his arms across the seats behind him. He looked slightly defeated. “Alright, babe. Chicks before dicks. But,” his eyes darkened “don’t be surprised when I take you up on that offer. I’ll be seeing you later.”

Excuse me, what? I raised an eyebrow at him wondering what the hell he was on about. He sighed and stood up like it was the hardest task he had to date. He threw me a wink before disappearing into the shadows as usual.

Kelly began giggling. “Babe?”

I held up a hand to stop her right there. No way was I about to talk about Brent. “Don’t even. We’re going down there to find Garrett and see what’s going on since it looks like practice is done because of that wild text.”

Our footsteps rang out on the metal bleachers, thrusting the sound out into the otherwise eerily quiet area. The noise settled down after the text, only allowing for hushed conversations. The air was visibly full of tension, and I could see Garrett standing off to the side with a few of his teammates. Clustered together and whispering amongst themselves like the rest of the campus I assumed,

“Bet you they’re talking about this,” Kelly said, holding up her phone.

I tried to remain casual. It didn’t feel like it was working, but I tried anyway. “Only one way to find out.”

Garrett met my eye contact as we got closer to the group. He forced a smile on his face before backing up a bit from the group of guys. “Hey Fal. Kelly,” he nodded at us. His voice was also not quite right, kind of like that smile he was forcing.

Bad sign .

“Hey you,” I smiled, ignoring the weird looks and tone. “You guys look like you got some big game-winning secret going on.”

One of the guys shifted uncomfortably. Garrett shot him some look before turning back to me. “I wish. Some crazy news is spreading through campus like wildfire.” His voice and body language felt weird. “Apparently, some students’ parents are caught up in some scandals. Money laundering, embezzlement, organized crime. You name it. Some people are losing it.”

Kelly and I exchanged a knowing glance. Her eyebrows shot up when she read my mind. “For real? That sounds like an insane movie plot!”

She overshot it with her terrible acting skills.

He shrugged and his eyes couldn’t quite meet mine for a moment. “Yep. Pretty crazy. No names have dropped yet, but the gossip train has a way of getting information out. Legal teams be damned when you have a large number of young adults running around together. You two should be careful since people might be on edge.”

I nodded along with him as if I was absorbing the information. “Thanks for the heads up. We’ll try to stay out of trouble.”

“Maybe we should head back home?” Kelly nudged me with her elbow. It was a sign that said she wanted to gossip about everything.

“Probably a good idea,” he agreed. My chest tightened with nervousness at the sound of his voice. The words were weighted in a different way.

I gave his hand a small squeeze. “We’ll be fine. I’ll shoot you a text later and we can plan a real movie night this time.”

He smiled, but it never made it past his lips. “Sounds like a plan, beautiful.”

“Start blanket shopping now,” I called out as Kelly all but dragged me away.

He never replied, going back to low conversations with his friends.

Kelly and I sighed in unison once we were safely locked in the car. Our shared look said everything.

“One,” she started. “Garrett was definitely off. Two, he knew way more than what that message told us. Three, Brent suddenly acting like a bestie is also not normal.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at the last part while backing out of the parking space. “Agreed. Garrett’s hiding something or, at the very least, withholding insider info. He mentioned crimes that makes me wonder what his sources are and how connected he may be to the wealthy web of shit these families get into. As for Brent, I don’t know what to say about that man. He does as he wishes, and I don’t even know what to do with him.”

Kelly clicked her tongue and pulled out her phone. “This year is turning out to be wild. We need to keep an eye on this.”

While playing Nancy Drew to solve the mystery sounded fun, she could do that on her own and report back to me safely tucked away at home. “I just have this weird sinking feeling in my stomach.”

She was busy typing away and looking into a mystery, but I was fixated on the road wondering if the bogeyman was going to jump out at us.

Because why wouldn’t he?