Chapter 4 4

The shrill bell rang. Professor Thaddeus Wainwright marched into the lecture hall.

He stood at the podium and scanned the room. His eyes stopped on Scarlett for a fraction of a second. His upper lip curled in obvious disgust.

He turned and switched on the projector. A massive spreadsheet appeared on the screen. It detailed the recent cross-border acquisition data for the Vance Consortium.

"Pop quiz," Wainwright announced. "You have forty minutes to complete a full risk assessment report on this merger. Begin."

Groans echoed through the room. This was a Harvard Business School level case study. For high school students, it was a slaughter.

Students frantically flipped open their textbooks. They started plugging numbers into basic financial models, sweating under the pressure.

Scarlett did not move. She leaned back in her chair. Her eyes scanned the dense rows of numbers on the glowing screen.

In her past life, she had been groomed to take over the Sinclair empire. For three years, locked in her own mind, she had done nothing but analyze, deconstruct, and rebuild every business case she had ever studied. This was not a test; it was a reflex. Her brain processed the data like a supercomputer.

Five minutes passed. Scarlett pulled a sheet of loose-leaf paper from her binder. She reached over, pulled the fountain pen out of Dwayne's desk, and began to write.

Wainwright paced the aisles. He walked toward the back of the room, heading straight for Scarlett. He wanted to catch her cheating or staring at a blank page.

He stopped beside her desk. He looked down at her paper.

The mocking smirk vanished from Wainwright's face.

Scarlett was not using the standard P/E ratio models. She was writing out a complex formula that bypassed the surface numbers entirely. She was digging straight into the target company's hidden offshore debt.

Wainwright pushed his reading glasses up his nose. He leaned closer. His breathing grew shallow and fast.

Scarlett's pen did not stop. She wrote down a highly obscure SEC antitrust exemption clause.

Wainwright's brain raced. He tried to find a flaw in her logic. He calculated the numbers in his head.

She was right. She was perfectly, flawlessly right.

Twenty minutes into the test, Scarlett drew a sharp period at the end of the page.

She stood up. The chair scraped loudly against the floor. Every student turned to look at her.

She held the paper out to Wainwright.

"If the Vance family signs this deal under the current terms," Scarlett said, her voice carrying through the silent room, "the Department of Justice will hit them with an antitrust investigation in exactly three weeks."

Wainwright's hands shook as he took the paper. He held it like it was a live bomb.

He didn't say a word to her. He didn't dismiss the class. He turned around, clutched the paper to his chest, and sprinted out of the lecture hall.

Wainwright ran down the marble corridor of the administration wing. He ignored the other professors calling his name.

He knew exactly what this report meant. It was enough to cause a minor earthquake on Wall Street.

He burst into his private office and slammed the door shut. He locked the deadbolt.

He grabbed the phone on his desk and dialed the direct internal line to the Student Council President.

The line clicked open.

"Speak," Dontae Vance's voice came through the speaker. It was deep, cold, and heavy with authority.

"Mr. Vance," Wainwright stammered, wiping sweat from his forehead. "Someone... someone found a fatal flaw in your family's acquisition plan."

Dontae let out a low, dark chuckle. "Which rival firm is trying to scare us now, Professor?"

"It's not a firm," Wainwright said. He read the final two lines of the deductive reasoning out loud.

The line went dead silent.

Thirty seconds passed. The silence felt suffocating.

"Bring the person who wrote that to my office," Dontae's voice dropped to a dangerous, lethal whisper. "Now."