Chapter 1 - The Weight of the Invisible
Ten years had passed since the day the classroom laughed. Julian Vance was nineteen now, standing in the marble-floored lobby of St. Jude’s Academy. He hadn't gotten in because of a zip code; he’d gotten in on a full-ride academic scholarship. But the invisible walls of class were thicker here than they had ever been in grade school.
Julian worked two jobs. By day, he was the top finance major in his cohort. By night, he scrubbed the floors of the very same university buildings where the elite children threw their catered parties. His mother was still cleaning houses, her hands rough and scarred, her back bent from years of carrying the weight of their survival.
It was during one of his night shifts that Julian overheard something he shouldn’t have.
Preston Sterling—the son of the investment firm owners from all those years ago—was drunkenly bragging to his fraternity brothers in the study hall. He was failing his senior project, a tech-finance algorithm that was supposed to secure his position at his father’s firm.
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"I'll just buy a project off some desperate scholarship kid," Preston laughed, kicking his feet up onto a mahogany desk. "That's what money is for. Buying the brains of people who can't afford to use them."
Julian, holding a mop in the hallway, froze. The same burning sensation he’d felt at age nine rushed to his cheeks. But this time, his jaw didn't just lock. It curved into a cold, calculated smile. He didn’t just have brains. He had a plan.
