Billionaire's Forgotten Star

It began with a photograph.

A boy-no older than me-caught mid-step, his face half-turned from the camera, one hand raised as if to block the world out. His black curls were windswept, his jaw tense, his lips parted like he was about to speak... or scream. But it wasn't the pose that caught my attention. It wasn't even the face.

It was his eyes.

Emerald green. Sharp. Cold. And worst of all-familiar.

I shouldn't have known them. I had never met him. Not in this life, not in any memory I could summon. But something in me reacted, recoiled, like a long-dormant alarm being set off. It was as if the image reached inside me and flipped a switch I didn't know existed.

In that moment, everything shifted.

I didn't know then that he was Elias Nolan-the billionaire teen with a perfect résumé and a closed-off past. I didn't know he was the sponsor behind the scholarship that would tear me out of my ordinary life and drop me into something else entirely. Something colder. Sharper. Hungrier.

Something dangerous.

I thought this scholarship was my chance-my golden ticket. I thought I'd finally earned a seat at the table I'd always watched from afar, a beginning disguised as an opportunity, and I had just taken the bait.

It happened on the bus. I was crammed in-betweenRileyand Tamara, half-focused, when Riley leaned right into me , grinning, phone in hand.

"You have to see this guy," he whispered like he was handing me gossip wrapped in gold. "He's so my type."

I took the phone without thinking. Just some photo he'd pulled off the internet-maybe an article, maybe a profile. I expected the usual: sharp jaw, moody lighting, expensive haircut. But this was different.

This wasn't some random cute boy. This was him.

The boy.

The eyes.

I froze, everything else-the noise of the bus, the chatter around us, even Riley's commentary-blurred to static. My fingers clenched around his phone like I could anchor myself through it. I stared and stared, trying to make sense of what I was seeing, what I was feeling. It didn't make sense. There was no reason I should recognize him. But my body did.

It was a full-body jolt. Like a hidden tripwire had been triggered, one I never knew existed until it was too late.

I handed the phone back and tried to laugh it off. Riley rolled his eyes and said something about me being "so dramatic." Maybe I was. But later that night, I couldn't sleep. I kept seeing his face behind my eyes.

And then came assembly being picked among the eligible candidates and then the letter.

Congratulations. Full scholarship. All-expenses-paid admission to NYX Academy.

I stared at the pamphlet, blinking. This wasn't a place people like me ended up. It was the kind of school that raised future CEOs, diplomats, heirs to empires. It was a golden gate flung open in my direction. And I stepped through it without question.

But I should have asked why.

Why now?

Why me?

Because when I got there-when I saw him in person, real and alive and exactly like the photo-I knew the truth. This wasn't a coincidence. It was a setup. The moment I saw those eyes, I realized I wasn't stepping into a future.

I was walking straight into a past I didn't remember.

And somehow, it remembered me.