Chapter 4

There was something testing in his voice. "You want to pick up a side gig?"

I froze for a second.

Because of his family's situation, Dirk was always taking on odd jobs.

I just hadn't expected that, in a moment like this, he'd be willing to share one of his money-making channels with me.

I smiled and asked, "What kind of job? What's the hourly rate?"

The second I finished, he flipped over to a video call.

He pointed the camera at the hiring notice by the door of a karaoke lounge.

It read: "Now hiring private-room hosts. Eight hundred a night, paid daily."

I fought down the surge in my stomach and demanded, "What exactly are you getting at?"

Dirk's tone was matter-of-fact, as if none of it needed explaining. "Didn't your family go bankrupt? What's with all the airs? I'm saying this for your own good. Eight hundred a night, you sing a few songs, drink a little with people, and it's yours."

Blood rushed straight up to the top of my head, my scalp prickling with fury.

I laughed, pushed past rage into something colder. "If it's that great, why don't you do it?"

He shrugged. "I've got my own gig. Besides, you've got experience..."

He drew out that last word, then said, with a heavy little meaning behind it, "Weren't you always out eating and drinking with those older women?"

I couldn't hold it back. I gagged.

The business dinners I used to attend with my elders, and he had twisted them into something this filthy.

"Get lost."

I was about to hang up when Cyril, half-drunk, took the phone. His words came out slurred. "Can pride put food on the table? Your family's bankrupt. Drop the young-master act and go earn some money."

Then he waved the others over. "Come look, get a good look. This is the young Locke heir from our dorm. From now on you'd all better give him some business."

A wave of laughter went up around him, and their crowded, overlapping chatter jabbed into my ears like needles.

"So this is that Ryan Locke, the one whose family went under? Good-looking, decent build. But he's a college student and he's really doing this?"

"What do you know? He used to be a young master, used to throwing money around. Apart from fast cash, why would he ever swallow his pride for real work?"

"True. A private-room host is still a kind of host, right?"

My fingertips had gone white from how hard I was gripping the phone.

I glanced at the reminder in the top-left corner, still recording the screen, and forced myself not to hang up.

I wanted them to die of shame in front of the whole school someday, wanted everyone to see just how filthy the hearts under these faces really were.

One of them pulled three hundreds straight out of her pocket, hiccupping from the drink. "Come on, cutie, come drink with me and I'll give you three hundred."

They all dissolved into laughter. I didn't break down and sob the way they'd expected.

I just looked back at them through the camera, cold.

That look, like I was above all of it, set Cyril off again. He screamed into the phone, cursing me. "You know what I hate most? That high-and-mighty, too-good-for-us face of yours. So you had a little money. Who are you putting on airs for?"

I had nothing left for Cyril, watching him the way you'd watch a kid throwing a tantrum. "What is it you're actually so unhappy about?"

That one line seemed to set him off all over.

His face went hard and he roared, "Handing us the stuff you couldn't use up, that was all just to watch us grovel and thank you for it, wasn't it?"

It had never once occurred to me. This whole year, everything I'd given them, everything I'd done for them with my whole heart.

So this was how they'd seen me the entire time.

"Cyril. Dirk. If you didn't want the things I gave you, you could have just said so. I'd have smashed them before I let you have them. To spare your pathetic pride, every single time I said I'd bought too many, and handed you brand-new electronics."

"Too bad you never valued any of it. Now that I've fallen, suddenly you're the ones who got wronged? Back when you were taking it all, why didn't you say a word?"

Cyril's features twisted almost into one another, and he was just about to speak.

Then someone let out a sharp, piercing shriek.

The girl who'd just said she'd pay three hundred to have me drink with her pointed at her phone. "Look, everyone, it's Ryan Locke's family company."

Everyone pulled out their phones and checked what was trending that day, and one by one their eyes went wide.