The Man Who Pretended Not to Know His Blood
The projected faces of the international stakeholders on the far wall of the boardroom were a silent, nodding chorus.
Their voices, piped in from Zurich and Tokyo, had dissolved into a low, meaningless hum in my ears.
My focus was entirely on the frantic, insistent vibration buzzing against the polished obsidian of the conference table.
My personal phone.
Olivia.
With a calm I didn't feel, I raised a hand, silencing the Swiss banker mid-sentence.
“One moment, gentlemen.”
My thumb swiped across the screen.
The line connected, and I didn't need to speak first.
A choked, ragged sob tore through the phone's speaker.
“Avery…”
“Liv? What is it? What’s wrong?” I kept my voice low, turning away from the curious glances of my team. “I’m in the middle of a global syndication meeting.”
“They stole it,” she wept, her voice so broken it was barely a whisper. “The Cambridge spot. Someone… someone just took it.”
The Cambridge exchange program.
My mind instantly flooded with images of her.
Images of the faded sticky notes covering every square inch of her bedroom wall, scrawled with organic chemistry formulas and lines of Chaucer.
Images of her eyes, shadowed and bloodshot from countless nights spent hunched over textbooks in the university library.
Images of her pure, unadulterated joy the day she’d gotten the preliminary acceptance email.
It wasn't just an academic honor for her; it was the culmination of a life lived for a singular, shining dream.
The obsidian table felt cold beneath my suddenly numb fingers.
The global syndication deal could wait.
“Stay right where you are,” I said, my voice now a blade of ice. “Don't speak to anyone. I'm on my way.”
I ended the call and stood, my chair scraping back with a sharp, discordant sound.
“Gentlemen,” I announced to the silent, projected faces. “An urgent family matter. My senior VP will take over. We’ll reconvene tomorrow.”
I didn’t wait for a reply.
As I walked out, I was already dialing my assistant.
“Cancel my next two hours. Get me a car downstairs. Now.”
The drive through Manhattan was a blur of yellow cabs and concrete canyons.
All I could see was my sister’s face, not as the brilliant, resilient young woman she was, but as the small, fragile girl I’d always protected.
The girl whose entire future had just been stolen.
§02
Professor Davies's office was a cramped, airless box that smelled of stale coffee and desperation.
Dust motes danced in the anemic light filtering through a grimy window, illuminating stacks of yellowing academic journals that looked as if they hadn’t been touched in a decade.
My sister was backed into a corner, looking small and fragile against a bookshelf overflowing with forgotten theories.
Her face was ashen, streaked with tears.
Looming over her, practically radiating a cloud of cloying, aggressively sweet perfume, was a girl who looked like a social media algorithm come to life.
Her hair was a violent shade of pink, her makeup was a heavy, smudged smokey eye, and her designer clothes were so layered with logos they looked like a ransom note.
Skylar Kirk.
“Crying isn’t going to help you, Holloway,” Skylar was sneering, her voice a sharp, nasal whine. “Did you really think your sad little 4.0 GPA was enough to compete with me?”
She gestured around the tiny office with a sweep of her hand, a dozen gold bangles clattering on her wrist.
“My father, Leland Kirk, just funded an entire new science wing for this university. A whole building. With his name on it. So, you tell me, what’s your perfect attendance record worth in comparison to that?”
The man behind the desk, a weedy, balding man with glasses perched on the end of his nose, was Professor Davies. He offered a weak, sycophantic smile in my direction.
“Miss Holloway,” he began, as if speaking to a child. “We must be practical. The Kirk family are among our most generous and important benefactors. Skylar’s placement in the Cambridge program is… a gesture of institutional gratitude.”
“Gratitude?” I repeated, my voice dangerously soft as I stepped fully into the room.
The word hung in the dusty air like a shard of glass.
“Professor,” I continued, my eyes locked on his, “my understanding is that this university, particularly its exchange programs with institutions like Cambridge, operates on a strict policy of academic meritocracy. Are you suggesting that policy is now for sale?”
My directness seemed to startle him. He stammered, adjusting his glasses. “Well, no, not for sale, but one must consider the… holistic contribution of a student’s family to the university community.”
Skylar let out a derisive snort. “Oh, look, the bookworm brought her bigger, boring-er sister. You want to talk about merit? Let's talk about this.”
She snatched a thick, beautifully bound portfolio from the corner of Davies’s desk.
Olivia’s portfolio.
Her life's work. Her dream, bound in rich, cobalt-blue leather.
“This pathetic stack of papers?” Skylar sneered, flipping through the pages with a dismissive flick of her thumb, her eyes glittering with a cruel, petty malice.
And then, with a sharp, tearing sound that seemed to rip the very air in the room, she tore the portfolio in half.
The meticulously curated pages—the essays, the award certificates, the letters of recommendation—fluttered to the grimy floor like wounded birds.
“NO!”
Olivia’s cry was a raw, strangled sound of pure devastation.
A white-hot, blinding rage pulsed behind my eyes. I felt a tremor in my hands, a primal urge to launch myself across the room.
“You,” I managed to say, my voice a low, shaking growl, “have absolutely no idea what you’ve just done.”
Skylar tossed the ruined halves of the portfolio onto the floor, nudging them with the toe of her ridiculously expensive sneaker.
“Oh, I know exactly what I’ve done,” she retorted, a triumphant smirk twisting her lips. “I’ve put you and your pathetic, nobody family back in your place.”
§03
“Don’t say another word, Liv,” I murmured to my sister, pulling her behind me as I took out my phone.
My fingers flew across the screen, not out of panic, but with the cold, precise fury of a surgeon reaching for a scalpel.
I brought up the direct contact for the Chairman of the University’s Board of Trustees.
Skylar’s smug expression faltered for the first time as she saw the name on my screen. A flicker of uncertainty crossed her face.
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