Chapter 4 4

Allison pushed the dorm room door open.

Her other roommate, Claire, was sitting cross-legged on the cheap rug, typing furiously on her laptop.

Allison's desk was covered in glossy brochures and thick application packets for the London School of Economics.

Allison walked straight to her desk.

She didn't hesitate. She scooped up the entire pile of expensive, carefully prepared application materials and shoved them forcefully into the plastic trash can.

The heavy paper hit the bottom of the bin with a loud thud.

Claire's head snapped up. She pushed her thick black-rimmed glasses up her nose.

"Are you insane?" Claire asked, her eyes wide with shock. "You've been working on those for six months."

Allison pulled out her desk chair and sat down. Her posture was rigid.

"I'm not going to Europe for grad school," Allison announced. Her voice was terrifyingly calm.

Zoe closed the door behind them and leaned against it.

Allison looked at her two best friends. She gave them a highly sanitized, surface-level summary of her brutal confrontation with Judd at the company today. She left out the marriage, but she made it clear she was going to war.

Zoe walked over to the mini-fridge. She pulled out a freezing can of Diet Coke, popped the tab, and handed it to Allison.

"We are behind you one hundred percent for this Manhattan revenge tour," Zoe said fiercely.

Allison took a sip of the cold soda. The carbonation burned her throat.

She opened her laptop and logged into SSOL, Columbia's notoriously terrible course registration system.

The screen loaded slowly.

"I need to move all my classes to the early morning and late evening," Allison muttered, her fingers flying across the trackpad.

"Why?" Claire asked.

"Because I need my core daytime hours completely free to intern at the Lee Group's Wall Street headquarters," Allison explained. "I have to be inside the building to find the financial rot."

Claire slid across the rug and looked over Allison's shoulder at the glowing screen.

"Look," Claire pointed at a row of text. "The Advanced Finance Seminar has exactly one spot left."

Allison stared at the screen.

"That class is worth a massive amount of credits," Claire warned. "And it's basically the golden ticket into top-tier investment banks."

Allison's eyes moved to the instructor column.

It read, in cold, black pixels: E. Dillard.

Allison remembered the conversation in the hallway just three minutes ago.

"Hey, Zoe," Allison called out without looking away from the screen. "What is Professor Dillard's full first name?"

Zoe shrugged, tossing her jacket onto her bed.

"Nobody knows," Zoe said. "The university website only lists his first initial. They haven't even uploaded a faculty photo yet."

Allison chewed on her lower lip.

The coincidence was strange, but New York was full of elite men with the last name Dillard. It meant nothing.

She moved the cursor and aggressively clicked the 'Register' button. She claimed the final, highly coveted seat in the class.

Instantly, a bright red warning box popped up on the center of her screen.

WARNING: This course maintains a zero-tolerance attendance policy. One unexcused absence will result in an automatic failing grade.

Allison scoffed. She confidently clicked 'Accept'.

She firmly believed she had the perfect time management skills to balance a hostile corporate takeover and a demanding Ivy League schedule.

She closed the laptop with a sharp snap.

She walked over to her narrow closet and pulled the folding doors open. She needed armor for her first official day infiltrating the company.

She pulled out a sharp, impeccably tailored black Tom Ford suit. She hung it carefully on the back of her door.

Suddenly, her phone chimed.

She picked it up. It was an encrypted text message from an unknown number.

Remember the confidentiality clause in section four of our agreement.

The message was brutal in its brevity.

Allison knew immediately who it was. It was Elliot, her cold-blooded contract husband.

She typed back a single 'OK' emoji.

She saved his number in her contacts under the name Cold-blooded Partner.

Hours later, the dorm was pitch black.

Allison lay in her narrow twin bed. She stared at the ceiling. Her brain was hyperactive, refusing to shut down.

Images flashed behind her eyelids. The dense text of her father's will. The cold, sharp line of Elliot's jaw as he sat across from her at City Hall.

She tossed and turned, tangling her legs in the thin sheets.

At exactly 6:00 AM, her alarm went off. The shrill electronic beeping cut through the quiet room like a knife.

Allison sat up violently.

Her heart was pounding. Her eyes were wide open, burning with raw ambition and a desperate hunger to conquer the Wall Street battlefield.