Billionaire’s Blacklist

The first thing Harper Quinn noticed about Van Hollen Academy was the silence. Not quiet, but curated silence—like money had disinfected the sound itself. The chandeliers didn’t tinkle. The marble didn’t echo. Even the whispers had pedigree.

She adjusted her thrifted blazer and stepped through the entryway, her scholarship badge barely visible beneath her neckline. It wouldn’t matter. They already knew who she was.

Knox Devereaux’s name was the first thing she saw on the display board. Endowed Chair of Strategic Acquisition. The man who indirectly bankrupted her father. Her presence at Van Hollen wasn’t a coincidence. It was infiltration.

Every step was calculated. She wasn’t enrolled—she was embedded.

The doors sealed shut behind her with a hiss that felt far too symbolic. She paused in the entry hall, letting her heels click once, sharp and solitary, on the marble before stilling them entirely. A choice. Let them think she was afraid to be noticed.

Van Hollen was less a campus than a kingdom. The main building loomed like a Roman courthouse in chrome and glass—tradition, hollowed out and wired for surveillance. Tradition, monetized. She’d memorized the layout weeks ago: the East Wing for high-level strategic studies, West for behavioral finance and ethics (theoretically), North Tower for scholars and low-level grantees, and South—well, no one talked about the South Wing. She suspected that’s exactly where she’d end up.

As if on cue, the woman at the reception desk looked up, already knowing her name.

“Miss Quinn,” she said, crisp and clinical. “Welcome.”

Harper didn’t reply. She merely walked forward and placed her ID on the desk.

The woman didn’t touch it. Instead, she handed Harper a thin envelope marked with a silver “V.”

“You’ve been assigned to Orientation 3B. Room Twelve. You’ll want to be early.”

It was already 8:58. Orientation began at 9.

Harper gave a polite smile that said fuck you and turned. The envelope was heavy, unusually so. A card slid partway out, revealing embossed lettering and a curious symbol—two concentric circles, one nested within the other, both lined in black.

She recognized it immediately. The Ledger.

She slipped the envelope into her bag without flinching and headed east. Every hallway, every face, every second—she wasn’t just observing. She was cataloguing weaknesses. One day, they’d matter. One day, they’d pay.

***

The East Wing hallway was narrower than the rest, finished in matte obsidian. No paintings, no school crests; just a wall of one-way glass on the left, reflecting back her own face a hundred times over. Her steps quickened.

She found Room Twelve with seconds to spare. It was already full.

A sea of blazers and silent judgment turned to watch her enter. There were thirty desks arranged in ascending arcs around a central lectern—an architectural coliseum designed to expose. No podium. No privacy.

Harper took the only open seat in the last row. No name card. No welcome packet.

She didn’t need one. She already knew who sat in this room.

Jude Matheson, heir to a pharmaceutical empire and known sadist-in-training. Lilah Vance, crypto heiress and part-time model for a leather bondage line she pretended didn’t exist. The rest followed suit: sons and daughters of legal loopholes and offshore accounts.

And all of them, at least on paper, were her peers.

The panelists at the front didn’t introduce themselves. They didn’t need to. Instead, a man in a dark olive suit stepped forward and gestured to the screen.

“Today’s exercise,” he began with a voice like polished stone, “is legacy management. Public scandal, internal containment, and external messaging.”

Harper leaned back. Of course.

“Each of you will respond to a hypothetical ethical dilemma. The board will observe and score in real-time.”

Jude stood first, practically bouncing. His scenario: hostile board coup. He flashed a grin at Harper as if daring her to flinch, then delivered his answer with the reckless precision of someone who’d never faced consequence.

But maybe he’d been waiting for someone to challenge that.

Lilah followed, her dilemma involving human rights violations at a textile supplier. Her solution? A media smokescreen using environmental philanthropy. Applause followed—but not from Knox. He was watching someone else. Lilah returned to her seat with a knowing glance toward the back row, just past Harper.

Not performing for the panel. Performing for someone else.

That, Harper clocked. And filed away.

Names were called, one by one. Each student performed their sociopathy like it was a theater audition. By the time twenty had gone, Harper had the pattern: no right answers. Just bold ones. The crueler, the better.

“Harper Quinn.”

The name cracked like a whip. She rose slowly and walked to the front. She didn’t smile.

The screen blinked. Her prompt appeared:

“A hedge fund CEO is exposed for falsifying ESG credentials to attract ‘clean’ capital. The deception totals $2.7 billion. Your role: defense strategist. The question: how do you spin it?”

Her heart didn’t even flutter. “I wouldn’t spin it,” she said. “I’d short the company and make my exit.”

A pause.

The panel stared. Someone chuckled—too loud. And then a slow and deliberate sound came from the shadows on the right.

Applause. Only one person clapped.

He stepped into the light like a painting come to life. Knox Devereaux. Black suit, open collar, no tie. Hair tousled just enough to suggest disinterest, not carelessness. He was younger than she’d expected. Or maybe just more dangerous in person.

His gaze flicked to her like he already owned her secrets.

“Well played,” he said.

Harper gave nothing in return, not a word, not even a glance. She turned and walked back to her seat.

The applause didn’t resume. No one else clapped.

She didn’t know it yet, but the moment she turned her back on Knox Devereaux, the game began.

***

She found her dorm reassigned.

Room 403, North Tower—now marked “Occupied” on the housing portal.

Instead, her name appeared in East Residential, Room 3E. She didn’t question it. That would be giving them satisfaction.

Van Hollen’s dorms didn’t use keys. You were either let in… or you weren’t.

3E opened for her with a hiss.

It was pristine. Too pristine.

Nothing about it resembled student housing. The sheets were new. The furniture was custom. A vase of jet-black tulips sat beside the window—extinct in nature, only grown in one specific Dutch greenhouse known for catering to the eccentric rich.

A flicker moved behind her eyes. Her mother’s perfume had smelled like crushed tulips. She remembered the pressure of her mother’s hand—tight, trembling—on the night of the indictment. It had been the last time someone touched her without calculation.

On the pillow: another envelope. White this time. Scented faintly with something citrus-sharp.

She opened it.

Inside: a card. Black with silver ink.

You stood. You’ll kneel soon enough.

—K.

Her skin burned. Her fingers clenched so hard the coin left a mark. He thought this was a game. Good. She played to win.

***

At dinner, no one sat near her.

The dining hall, with its Greco-Roman columns and Michelin-tier catering, might as well have been a gladiator pit. Every glance was a contract. Every table, a battle line.

Harper found a table in the far corner.

She let them look.

Jude passed behind her chair once. Brushed it just enough to let her know it was intentional.

“Nice performance,” he muttered. “But you should’ve kissed the ring.”

She didn’t turn. “Wrong religion.”

He laughed, low and unpleasant.

That night, she returned to her room and found the window cracked open.

A card had been slid beneath the door. This time, it bore no words—just the Ledger’s concentric-circle symbol and a series of numbers.

4.1

She didn’t know the reference. Yet. But the next morning, she received a private calendar invite to “Strategy Seminar—Room 4.”

No title. No instructor. No context. Just one word, embedded in the metadata: Knox.

She almost declined, but then she remembered her father’s face the night everything burned down. She accepted.

***

At precisely 7:59 a.m., Harper stepped into Room 4.

Knox was already there. Alone. No lights, just morning shadows carving him like a sculpture.

He didn’t speak, just handed her a physical folder, which she opened immediately. It was a contract, a precisely confidential Internship contract. Embedded Access. Strategic Oversight. Three pages of dense corporate legalese. But the key was hidden in the addendum.

The Ledger wasn’t a club—it was an ecosystem. Roles weren’t assigned for prestige, but for function: Companion, Proxy, Saboteur, Handler. Leverage in human form.

Clause 4.1: Harper Quinn agrees to submit to the personal discretion and instruction of Knox Devereaux. Duration: 90 days. Scope: undisclosed.

She stared at the line, then looked up.

“You’re insane.”

He tilted his head. “Not insane. Selective. You don’t put reins on a dragon unless you want to ride it into fire.”

Her jaw tightened.

He circled her once. Not touching. Just orbiting, like he was calculating yield.

“You think you’re here to destroy me,” he said softly. “And maybe you will. But you’ll have to get close first. Close enough that the distinction between conquest and surrender stops mattering.”

“I’m not scared of you.”

“I’m counting on that.”

She should’ve walked away. She had to throw the folder in his face.

Instead, she picked up the pen from the table and signed.