“How do the Garrons even have a million dollars to donate to Woodcrest?” Tiffany asked me as I took exit 78 onto the freeway. I’d brought her with me for emotional support, and for directions. Mostly emotional support; I could have used my GPS to get to Derringer Inc., this place where I was supposedly going to be landing a new job.

“A few years ago, Alexander invested in this pharmaceutical company, um…Miratran, I think. They were making um…oh what was it? Right, an alternative for therapy or something, you like, take the pill and it fixes everything that’s wrong with you…somehow,” I explained. “I’m not really supposed to tell you that, but Jayne filled me in when we were hanging out one day. The problem is that the pill worked but there were like three human rights groups that gave him the smackdown.”

“Then how did it make money?” Tiffany raised an eyebrow. “How is he loaded?”

“The pharmaceutical company paid some people off. It’s not really in use but…it’s out there.”

“Sounds like something I could use,” Tiffany laughed. I pulled off the freeway and took a right.

“Couldn’t we all,” I rolled my eyes. “Give Audrey some of that shit.”

“She’s going to need it too, after everything we’ve done to her,” Tiffany said, a tinge of irritation and worry present in her voice. Yeah, I was a little worried too.

“Okay, here we are,” I said, pulling off the main road and into a parking lot. As I passed by an empty guard house I internally gasped at the size of the steel and glass structure in front of me. This thing was huge, and I do mean huge. Steel and glass with a wavy construction, this one building extended forever as it towered over the parking lot and as I understood it, this was only the main campus. “Holy shit.”

“Yeah,” Tiffany said nonchalantly, answering a message on her phone. “Derringer’s way more loaded than the Garrons.”

“Uh, is that why you date him?” I pulled into an empty parking space, considering myself lucky that I was actually able to find one.

“At first,” She admitted. “But it seems…a little more complicated than that now.”

“Complicated how?”

“I…like him?” She shrugged.

“Well that IS complicated for YOU,” I smirked, turning the car off. I was doing my best to keep my mind busy; I’d been having a mild panic attack ever since I’d read the news about the Garrons practically buying their way into the Woodcrest board. It made sense because they kind of lived around here but I didn’t know how I felt about them having that kind of control over my college experience. “Where are we going again?”

“Floor 3A,” Tiffany informed me as she began to walk briskly toward the building. I quickly caught up and walked beside her, clutching my purse and the folder in my right hand. “Don’t freak out, you’ve got this. I’m pretty sure you already have the job.”

“We’re not going to know that for sure until I get in there,” I sighed. “Let’s just…get this over with so they can reject me, alright?”

“You’ve got it,” Tiffany grinned as we continued to walk toward the entrance. We passed a sign that pointed visitors in multiple different directions; the green arrow pointed toward the main entrance, a massive aqua tinted window with a series of built-in revolving doors. I could feel the pressure change the moment we stepped inside; a woosh of air connected with the entirety of my body and I immediately felt a little more comfortable than I had outside. We exited the revolving door and emerged into a marble lobby, the entire space bathed in the aqua colored light emanating from the plate glass windows. The entire lobby was flanked with white walls, steel columns, and flat OLED displays showing off products. This place was impressive.

“Can I help you?” A short-haired receptionist called out to us as we approached the front desk.

“Hi, my name is Aleah Simms I’m here for—”

“Oh yes, the interview!” The receptionist said. “Why don’t you two have a seat over there and Veronica will be down in a few minutes. Can I get you anything? Coffee, Soda, Food?”

“Uh…” I said, thinking for a moment. “I probably shouldn’t.”

“Great!” She smiled, chipper as all fuck. “Just have a seat and she’ll be right down!”

“This place is incredible,” Tiffany remarked as we took a seat on the U-shaped couch off to the right. “I had no idea.”

“You’ve never been here?” I asked, a little confused. “Aren’t you dating Shawn?”

“We haven’t quite gotten to ‘take me to your daddy’s work’ yet,” She shrugged. “In fact I JUST started calling him Daddy—”

“Um…moving on,” I said quickly. “What about that news? That’s a little insane.”

“I know, right?” Tiffany said as she scrolled through her phone. “Look at this, news from our sister campus, Bellcrest. Remy Francis set the record for volunteer hours.”

“I’m not talking about that news, and you know it,” I sighed. “The Garrons worming their way into Woodcrest is a disaster.”

“Woodcrest is a private school,” Tiffany said, trying to be reassuring. “It’s not like one person on the board can do anything.”

“You would think,” I said. “But I looked into the board members, most of them lean pretty conservative, Garron throws them over the top.”

“What are you thinking?” Tiffany raised an eyebrow.

“I’m thinking they could ban LGBT clubs on campus, change the dress code…I never believed one person could make a change, but this…this guy is pure evil,” I shuddered a bit at the thought.

“Excuse me,” A woman said, approaching us. “Aleah Simms?”

“Ah yes, that’s me,” I confirmed, standing up to take the woman’s hand. She was a brunette, kind of nerdy, a lot smaller than me. Her face was framed by her long, super straight brown hair and a pair of pink cat-eye glasses. She looked anything but professional.

“Hi Aleah, my name’s Veronica, Mr. Derringer’s personal assistant, if you’ll follow me, we can get started with the interview!”

‘Good luck’, Tiffany mouthed to me as I followed Veronica away from the reception area and toward an elevator. We rode in silence, not even a hint of elevator music, all the way to the third floor. As we emerged from the carriage we passed onto a balcony that put the whole of the lobby on display, from a massive fountain in the center to the swath of OLED screens illuminating each wall in the light of rampant commercialism. I could see Tiffany below, lost in her phone.

I continued to follow Veronica until we reached an office – not a very discreet one; you could see into it from the outside as the entire wall was made from plate glass. Inside was a thin onyx conference table flanked by modern styled chairs; she led me inside.

“Have a seat,” She smiled as she gestured to one of the chairs. As we sat down, she lifted a small remote from the table and pressed a button. Instantly, the glass shifted from being transparent to entire opaque. Shit, that was neat. “Just wanted to give us a little bit of privacy.”

“I appreciate it,” I tried to mirror her chipper attitude but I just couldn’t pull it off.

“Okay, there are a few things I want to go over here,” She said. “You currently run the Gamma Alpha Tau sorority over at Woodcrest, and we’ve seen your work history which is spotty at best. Fortunately for you, that’s not what we’re looking at.”

“It’s not?” I looked down at the folder containing my resume. Did I bring this for no reason?

“We’re actually looking at your activity in the GAT house, particularly member dues,” She began to scroll through information on a tablet in front of her. “I know that the GAT membership is $450 per semester, per person, which is pretty cheap for a Greek house, but it looks like you’re collecting $550 based on information we found.”

My eyes went wide; I could feel the lump in my throat forming. How could they have possibly gotten their hands on that information? It’s not like it was written down anywhere, holy shit.

“I um…I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said as I tried my best to maintain my composure.

“I see,” She said. “So how are you handling the money? What’s the reason? We’re not going to report you, we’re just curious,”

I sighed. I was caught, this wasn’t good. Best to just come clean. It wasn’t like I would be in school that much longer anyway, especially if I didn’t get this job.

“So, when my parents cut me off financially I knew that I’d have to pay for school so I started skimming off the top. I took the money and put it into gift cards instead of putting it under my mattress, or in a bank account. I can’t really cash it out and use it though, because if it looks like I suddenly have money there would be an investigation.”

“That’s embezzlement, and money laundering,” Veronica said, staring straight at me. “You do know you could spend time in federal prison for that, right?”

“It’s better than spending the rest of my life flipping burgers because I couldn’t pay for college,” I said defensively. “I don’t know what I was supposed to do. I guess I’m going to jail now, so thanks for that.”

“Actually, that little scheme of yours is why you’re being given this interview,” Veronica said matter of factly. “We have secretaries, we have EA’s, we have all kinds of people to do grunt work. What we have a lack of is people who’ll do whatever it takes to succeed. You think you could bring some of that ingenuity to our organization, Ms. Simms?”

I started at her in shock. She was dead serious. Was this actually happening?

“I…could…” I said. “For the right price.”

“Ah yes, the right price,” Veronica tapped on the tablet a few times and slid it over to me. “Would that be the right price?”

I looked at it, my eyes were completely bugged out.

“Um…I…I think that’s the right price,” I nodded slowly.

“Then welcome aboard!” Veronica smiled wide and reached out to shake my hand. “I have a non-disclosure agreement for you to sign and then we’ll get started on your employee paperwork, I just KNOW that we’re going to get along!”