Chapter 11: The Weight of the Crown
The Grand Library of St. Jude's was a labyrinth of mahogany shelves and leather-bound secrets. It was the one place where the chaos of the hallway couldn't reach.
Jaden led April to a secluded alcove in the restricted section, a place where the sunlight filtered through stained glass, casting patterns of deep blue and gold across the floor. He sat down, leaning back into the velvet chair with a long, heavy exhale. For the first time all day, the tension in his shoulders dropped.
"How does it feel?" Jaden asked, his voice low, echoing slightly against the stacks of books.
April sat across from him, resting her chin on her hand. "Being Number One? It's louder than I thought it would be. Everyone is waiting for me to trip."
"That's the secret about being at the top," Jaden said, a tired smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. "Everyone stops looking at your work and starts looking for your shadow. But you're better at this than I was. You don't have a reputation to protect you have a throne to build."
He reached across the table, his fingers tracing the edge of her notebook. The "contract" had brought them here, but the look in his eyes wasn't about business anymore. It was the same intense, magnetic heat from the gaming booth, softened by the quiet of the library.
"You really did it," April whispered, searching his face. "You threw it all away. Why? You could have just given me the answers to a different test. You didn't have to humiliate yourself with a 91."
Jaden leaned in closer, the scent of his sandalwood cologne mixing with the smell of old parchment. "Because a 99.8 wouldn't have been enough to get Marcus off our backs. He needed to see a collapse. And because..." He paused, his gaze dropping to her lips before meeting her eyes again. "I wanted to see if you'd actually take it. Most people are too afraid to stand where I stand. But you? You look like you were born for it."
The air between them was thick with more than just academic secrets. In the silence of the alcove, the fake relationship felt like a very real, very dangerous fire.
The Serpent's Strategy
While the new #1 and #2 were hidden away, Marcus Thorne was far from finished. He was standing in the empty Physics lab, staring at the seating chart on the professor's desk.
He wasn't looking at the grades anymore; he was looking at the logic.
"It doesn't add up," Marcus muttered to himself, his eyes narrowed. "Jaden didn't miss the hard questions. He missed the easy ones. He didn't struggle with the calculus; he 'forgot' how to multiply basic integers in the final section."
He pulled out his phone and tapped into a private chat with a contact in the IT department.
'I need the raw metadata from the Physics exam logs. Every keystroke, every timestamp. Now.'
Marcus knew Jaden too well. A genius doesn't just forget the basics. He knew Jaden was a perfectionist, and a perfectionist only fails when they are performing.
"You think you're being clever, Sterling," Marcus whispered to the empty room, a cold, triumphant grin spreading across his face. "You think you can play the martyr for your little scholarship girlfriend. But if I can prove you threw this test, the Board of Trustees won't just take your rank they'll take your enrollment. And Mendoza will go down for academic fraud right along with you."
He scrolled through the photos again the black car, the dark room. He didn't need a clear picture of them kissing. He needed a clear picture of the deal.
---
The shift from the library's quiet intensity to the cold reality of the Sterling estate felt like stepping out of a dream and into a storm. As the school day ended, the silver Sterling town car was already waiting at the curb, an iron-clad signal that Jaden's time was no longer his own.
.
April watched from the library window as Jaden was ushered into the car. There was no wave, no lingering glance. He simply vanished behind the tinted glass, leaving her standing at the top of the rankings with a crown that suddenly felt like it was made of lead.
By the time Jaden reached the estate, the atmosphere was suffocating. He walked through the towering marble foyer, his footsteps echoing against the high ceilings. He didn't even have time to drop his bag before his personal maid, Elena, appeared from the shadows of the hallway. Her face was pale, her hands clasped tightly in front of her.
"She is in the conservatory, Master Jaden," Elena whispered, her eyes darting toward the grand staircase. "She has been staring at the academic portal for an hour. Please... be careful with your words."
Jaden nodded stiffly and pushed open the heavy glass doors of the conservatory. The room was a lush, tropical prison of exotic plants, but the air inside was freezing.
His mother, Eleanor Sterling, was standing by a stone fountain, her back to him. She held a tablet in one hand and a crystal glass in the other. When she turned, her expression wasn't one of anger it was one of pure, calculated shock.
"A 91.2, Jaden?" she asked, her voice trembling with a rare, jagged edge. "I had to hear it from the Dean's secretary. I thought it was a system error. I thought someone had hacked the school's database."
"It wasn't an error, Mother," Jaden said, keeping his voice flat and his face like granite. "It was a difficult exam. My focus was off."
Eleanor stepped toward him, the heels of her shoes clicking sharply. "Your focus? Or your company? I've seen the whispers, Jaden. This girl this April Mendoza. The one who grew up in the Old District and somehow managed to leapfrog over a Sterling."
Jaden felt a surge of protectiveness, but he forced himself to stay calm. If he showed too much emotion, his mother would smell blood. "She's just a classmate, Mother. An ambitious one. My rank dropping has nothing to do with her. I simply underestimated the curriculum."
"A classmate?" Eleanor's voice rose, a flash of genuine terror crossing her polished features. "Your father is in London closing a multi-billion dollar merger. When he wakes up to see his son the heir to this entire legacy sitting at #2 behind a scholarship student, he will be beyond disappointed. He will be humiliated. He has invested eighteen years into making you a god among men, not a runner-up."
She slammed the tablet down on a stone table. "If this girl is the reason you are becoming mediocre, I will have her removed from that school by Monday. I don't care if she's 'just a classmate.' A Sterling does not lose. Ever."
Jaden felt the trap closing. He had tried to downplay April's importance to save her, but his mother saw any threat to his perfection as a virus that needed to be eradicated.
Marcus's Masterstroke
While Jaden stood trapped in his mother's golden cage, Marcus Thorne was far from the estate, sitting in the back of a dimly lit study hall. He wasn't looking at the rankings anymore. He was looking at the source code of the Physics exam.
His eyes scanned the digital logs the timestamps of every answer Jaden had submitted.
"There it is," Marcus whispered, a dark, jagged grin spreading across his face.
The logs showed that Jaden had spent exactly forty seconds staring at a basic question one he usually answered in two seconds before choosing the wrong answer. It wasn't a mistake; it was a deliberation.
"You didn't fail because you were distracted, Jaden," Marcus muttered, his fingers hovering over his keyboard. "You failed because you were paying a debt."
He pulled up a folder on his desktop labeled 'The Mendoza Project.' Inside were the photos of the car in the Old District and the metadata from the exam. He didn't need the mother's fear or the father's disappointment. He needed the school board to see that the #1 and #2 students were colluding to fix the rankings.
"Let's see how disappointed your father is when he finds out you're a cheat," Marcus whispered.
He hit 'Send' on an anonymous email addressed directly to the Head of the Ethics Committee. The subject line: [EVIDENCE OF ACADEMIC FRAUD: STERLING & MENDOZA]