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. 1 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." 2 That afternoon, I changed into my only crisp, clean blazer and arrived exactly on time at Mr. Davis's Manhattan office. He gave me a swift, sweeping glance, a flicker of surprise passing through his stoic eyes. The comments arrived right on cue to tear me down: [This country mouse is so out of her depth. She showed up to meet Davis looking like she sells discount life insurance.] [He’s Gideon’s right-hand man. He’s going to see right through this imposter in a heartbeat.] My palms grew clammy. I braced myself for the interrogation, for the mask to slip. But surprisingly, he only flipped through my academic files. He didn't dig into my identity at all. "My employer believes you have a decent foundation, but you are miles away from the standards required by top-tier institutions." I nodded, maintaining eye contact. "It's because of that gap that I need mentorship. Give me the resources, and I will close the distance." "My employer does not hand out resources lightly." Mr. Davis snapped the folder shut. "He is willing to provide you with the terminal access, and he will even assemble a team of Ivy-caliber private tutors for you. "The condition is: you must submit entirely to the curriculum. You must hit every single performance metric we set." "I accept," I answered, without a second of hesitation. He nodded once. "Then, starting today, your schedule and your entire academic life are under our management." 3 Three days later, I moved out of the cramped dorm room and into a sprawling penthouse suite in the heart of the city. The space was stripped of distractions. It had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, a state-of-the-art laptop, and three elite private tutors on standby. Every morning at six sharp, I woke up to listen to global financial news. At eight, the grueling, boot-camp-style lectures began. The afternoons were dedicated to high-pressure mock interviews and ruthless dissections of corporate case studies. And every night, without fail, I reported my daily progress to G. His replies were always surgical. Sometimes it was a simple Read, and other times it was a long, cutting paragraph that dismantled the flaws in my logic. He really was like a strict headmaster, using immense pressure to completely rewire the way my brain worked. But the cold, clinical text on the screen never made me feel belittled. Instead, a thrilling rush of adrenaline coursed through me. So, this was how the apex predators operated. No sugar-coating. Only competence mattered. One morning, G sent me a rare message. [You've made significant strides recently. Take half the day off.] A compliment. I couldn't stop the corners of my mouth from lifting. I decided to swing by the campus to grab a few reference books I had left behind. The moment I pushed open the dorm room door, I collided head-on with Keeley. She was dripping in designer labels, a luxury bag hooked over her forearm, practically radiating smugness. She eyed my plain white T-shirt and let out a sharp, mocking laugh. "Well, if it isn't the valedictorian. What happened? Did your creepy old sugar daddy finally dump you?" "No, he's actually been tutoring me," I replied honestly. "Tutoring you? Oh my god, hilarious." She threw her head back, laughing like I had just told the joke of the century. "Maeve, is your brain rotting? A broke loser you met on the internet who can't even afford to buy you a decent gift—what could he possibly teach you? "How to survive on five hundred bucks a month?" She poked the spine of my textbook with her freshly manicured acrylic nail. "Trent is stepping up as Vice President at his dad's firm next month. He promised to set me up with a cushy, no-show job. "I'd advise you to wake up to reality. Working hard is for ugly girls; marrying well is the real career. What's the point of burying your nose in these stupid books? You're still going to end up a corporate slave, eating dirt like everyone else." I sidestepped her hand, my voice perfectly level. "Everyone has their own path. Five hundred dollars is fine. Working is fine." If this is what 'eating dirt' feels like, I want to eat it for the rest of my life. Right on cue, the 'female lead's' presence agitated the scrolling comments: [If Keeley knew she just threw away a billionaire titan, she would literally throw up!] [Wait, is she actually the female lead? Why is she acting like such a cartoonish villain? She acts way more like a gold digger than the side character! I can't wait to see her face when the male lead comes back and puts her in her place.] [Shut up, traitor! The male lead belongs to the female lead, that's the law of the genre!] [Just watch. When the time comes, the male lead is going to strip Maeve of all these resources and leave her in the gutter!] I completely ignored the text, grabbed my books, and walked out. Strip me of my resources? Was he going to physically extract the knowledge from my brain? Over the next two months, my progress was exponential. And G's attitude toward me shifted in subtle ways. It was no longer just one-way directives. Occasionally, in the dead of night, he would send a candid photo from an international site visit—a foggy London skyline or a blurry shot of a tarmac. 4 But late tonight, after reviewing my latest case brief, he suddenly sent a chilling message. [Keeley, your writing style has changed recently. You are much more analytical and emotionally detached than you used to be.] My heart slammed against my ribs. The comments immediately threw a parade. [He’s suspicious! Oh my god, the reveal is finally happening!] [Brace yourself, side-character. The hurricane is coming...] I steadied my breathing, my fingers flying across the keyboard: [I'll take that as a compliment. People have to grow up eventually. Right now, I'm entirely focused on moving upward.] A long time passed after I sent the text. Then, G sent an audio message. "Good. Keep that ambition. Keep that hunger." It was the first time I had ever heard his voice. It was deep, textured, vibrating with an undeniable magnetism—and carrying a faint, unmistakable trace of amusement. "I am flying back to the States the middle of next month. I’m hosting a private, closed-door gala. You will attend as my plus-one. It is time for a practical exam." My fingers curled tight around the phone. The day of reckoning was finally here. [MAJOR SCENE INCOMING! The collision course is set!] [Keeley is definitely going to be at that gala. The fake girlfriend and the real one in the same room? The drama is going to be delicious.] [According to the plot, Gideon is going to publicly humiliate Maeve, throw her out, and then immediately grovel to Keeley.] Staring at those venomous words, I quietly clenched my jaw. I hadn't spent the last few months bleeding over spreadsheets and market analyses just to be someone's stepping stone. 5 The day before the event, Mr. Davis had a courier deliver an evening gown. Along with it came a fifty-page dossier on the attendees. "The core assets and immediate investment pipelines of tonight's VIPs are all in here," Davis told me over the phone. "My employer does not bring arm candy to events. You are required to memorize the profiles of the top ten key players. "And I mean all of it." I didn't dare slack off. I stayed up the entire night until I could recite the details backward. But I didn't stop there. Using my terminal access, I dug deep into the recent, buried financial reports of the companies owned by those ten men, memorizing the skeletons in their corporate closets. No matter what happened when my identity was revealed, I was going to prove that I was worth every cent he had invested in me. That evening, the towncar pulled up to a sprawling estate in the Hamptons. The air was thick with the scent of expensive champagne and fine cigars. Guests conversed in low, hushed tones. What sounded like casual banter was actually the invisible maneuvering of hundreds of millions of dollars. I picked up a glass of sparkling water and retreated to a quiet corner. I systematically matched the faces in the room with the dossiers I had burned into my brain the night before. Suddenly, a grating, familiar voice shattered my focus. "Maeve? What the hell are you doing here?" I turned my head. Unsurprisingly, Keeley was standing there. She was clinging to the arm of a slick, overly-gelled young man, staring at me in sheer shock. This, presumably, was Trent, the trust-fund boyfriend. "This is an ultra-exclusive networking event. How did a broke nobody like you sneak in?" She stepped closer, dropping her voice, her eyes swimming with malicious intent. "Did you sleep with one of the caterers? Snuck in through the kitchen?" The phantom text floated perfectly on cue: [Keeley isn't wrong. Maeve literally scammed her way in by lying to Gideon!] [Waiting for the titan to walk in and rip the mask off this vain imposter!] [Rubbing my hands together gleefully...] I gave Keeley a sidelong glance, entirely ignoring her, and shifted my gaze to the man beside her. "Trent Haverford, I presume. Your father's manufacturing plants failed their EPA inspections last quarter, and your primary lenders are currently threatening to call in their loans, correct?" Trent, who had been raking his eyes over me with a sleazy smirk, instantly went rigid. The color drained from his face. I offered him a serene smile. "Instead of helping your family navigate a massive liquidity crisis, you have the leisure time to parade a date around here to show off. Your lack of situational awareness is honestly inspiring." "Who... who the hell are you? How do you know about that?!" His voice shook. That information was highly classified. If word got out in a room like this, his family’s company would be slaughtered. "If I were you, I would immediately go buy Mr. Carmichael a drink. He has a massive surplus of unallocated capital right now. He might be your only lifeline. That would be a better use of your time than asking me pointless questions." Trent followed my gaze to where Carmichael was standing. His face turned a sickly shade of gray. Finally, he whipped around and glared violently at Keeley. "I thought you said she was a brain-dead bookworm! Why does she know more about my sector than I do?!" He ripped his arm away from her and practically sprinted toward Carmichael. "Trent! Where are you going?!" Keeley stomped her stilettos, her face flushing with humiliation. She whipped back to me, teeth bared. "What kind of sick game are you playing? You read a few Wall Street Journal articles and think you can play pretend among the elite?" I didn't bother responding to her tantrum. A sudden shift in the room's energy caught my attention. The heavy mahogany doors at the front of the hall were pushed open. The entire ballroom fell into a hushed silence. A tall, imposing man stepped inside. His features were striking, carved in sharp, unforgiving lines. He barely offered a slight nod to the people greeting him, yet his mere presence fundamentally altered the atmospheric pressure of the room. Gideon Wright was here. 6 [AHHH! The male lead has entered the chat! He’s so gorgeous I’m suffocating!] [Maeve is dead meat. He's going to instantly realize she’s not the girl from the video calls!] [Once Keeley tells him the truth, Gideon is going to explode and destroy Maeve.] Keeley recognized him, too. Even though she didn't realize he was her "stingy old man," his face was a staple on the covers of Forbes and Fortune. Everyone knew who he was. She frantically smoothed her hair and straightened her spine. "Maeve, you think scaring off Trent makes you special? That man right there is a true titan. You'd better keep your mouth shut and stay out of the way!" The problem was, staying out of the way wasn't an option. I took a slow breath, bracing myself for the judgment. I'd be lying if I said my heart wasn't hammering against my ribs. After exchanging brief pleasantries with a few senior executives, Gideon's gaze swept over the crowd, searching. His eyes locked onto my corner. He bypassed the eager crowds, his long strides carrying him straight toward me. The sea of guests instinctively parted for him. Keeley’s face flushed a deep crimson. She pasted on a coy, breathless smile and took a half-step forward to intercept him. "Mr. Wri—" She didn't even get the chance to finish. Gideon didn't spare her a single fraction of a glance. He brushed past her entirely and stopped squarely in front of me. His sharp, dark eyes swept over me, taking me in. "Maeve Gallagher?" His voice was that same low, magnetic baritone from the audio message.
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