Chapter 3 - The Frozen Throne
The marble floor of the dean's office felt like ice under Arthur's worn sneakers.
He ignored the dean entirely and stormed out of the room, leaving a stunned Julian behind.
Arthur sprinted across the campus lawn, ignoring the heavy rain that had just begun to fall.
He ducked into an empty chemistry lab and immediately dialed his private banking concierges in Geneva.
The automated voice on the other end of the line was cold and utterly mechanical.
It stated that all Sterling family accounts had been indefinitely frozen pending a federal investigation.
Arthur slammed his fist against a heavy wooden lab table, sending a beaker crashing to the floor.
Someone with immense power had just completely severed his access to a hundred billion dollars.
He was suddenly no longer playing the role of a poor, struggling college student.
He had actually become one, trapped in a city surrounded by enemies who hated his fake persona.
The lab door creaked open slowly, and Julian stepped inside, his designer suit soaking wet from the rain.
Julian wasn't smiling anymore; his face was pale, and his hands were trembling visibly.
Arthur braced himself for a physical fight, tightening his fists and assessing the room for weapons.
Instead of attacking, Julian reached into his pocket and threw a thick, manila envelope onto the table.
Julian admitted that he had hired a private investigator to look into Arthur's background months ago.
He wanted to find some dirt to publicly humiliate the charity case in front of the whole school.
The envelope did not contain the fake poverty records Arthur had so carefully planted.
It contained highly classified financial documents belonging to Julian's own billionaire parents.
Julian confessed that someone had used Arthur's name to drain the Vance family fortune completely dry.
Julian believed Arthur was an international corporate spy sent to destroy his entire bloodline.
Arthur opened the documents, scanning the offshore transfer codes with a practiced, predatory eye.
He immediately recognized the digital routing signature hidden in the corrupted code.
It was the exact same algorithm his ruthless Uncle Silas used to launder money through Eastern Europe.
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Uncle Silas was orchestrating a massive, bloody coup to steal the Sterling empire from Arthur.
Suddenly, the chemistry lab windows shattered inward as a tear gas canister bounced onto the floor.
