Chapter 2. The Ledger Calls

Harper sat in the last row of the lecture hall, the ink of her pen drying between words she had no interest in remembering. Professor Granger was rambling—again—about hostile takeovers, his voice sliding across the polished walnut walls like static dressed in tenure. The room was dim, the air thick with the scent of aged leather and ambition.

Van Hollen’s lectures were like ceremonies. Everyone played their part: an heir to an airline empire dozing behind Aviator sunglasses, a biotech heiress flipping her stylus like a baton, and Harper, pretending she hadn’t noticed the way the room rearranged itself whenever she entered.

She wrote two lines of notes. Then the screen at the front flickered. A full second of black. Then white text appeared:

Harper Quinn. Room 4. Now.

Silence. The professor didn’t pause. He never did, but thirty heads turned.

She closed her notebook without a sound, stood, and walked out as if she had somewhere better to be, which, this time, was probably true.

Room 4.

No student knew what happened in the numbered rooms. They weren’t listed on the public directory. They didn’t appear on the app. They existed like rumors did: in shadows and in the expressions of those who had returned changed.

She took the long way through the East Wing, her boots striking a rhythm. Her breath faltered—just once—before falling back into step. She didn’t walk faster. She didn’t hesitate. If they wanted theater, she’d give them opening night.

Room 4 was unmarked, tucked between an old elevator shaft and a maintenance stairwell. She pushed the door open.

It was cold inside, Windowless, with no usual luxury decor or digital screens. Just one long, black conference table and the man at the end of it. Knox Devereaux didn’t look up immediately.

He was seated in profile, jacket slung over the chair beside him, sleeves rolled to the elbow. A black pen spun slowly between two fingers. The only sound in the room was the steady tick of a watch on the table—not worn, just placed there like a metronome for power.

When he finally did look at her, it was with the indifference of a man who’d already seen her stripped bare in his mind.

“You’re late,” he said.

“I wasn’t told when.”

He tilted his head. “Exactly.”

She closed the door behind her. The latch clicked. No lock. But the message was clear. She was inside now. And she’d have to earn her way out.

He gestured to the chair across from him. She didn’t move.

“You’re the whistleblower’s daughter,” he continued, unbothered by her silence. “You’ve got your father’s jawline. But not his sense of timing. He pulled too early. Took too little.”

She felt her hand curl slightly against her thigh. She forced it still.

“And you?” she asked. “What did you take?”

He leaned back. “I took the company he tried to burn down and doubled its value. I took the board he tried to expose and made them mine. I took the story and rewrote it.”

She walked to the chair. Sat. Slowly. “So why summon me? To gloat?”

Knox smiled without warmth. “To recruit.”

She blinked. “You’re joking.”

“Do I look like I joke?”

“No,” she said. “You look like someone who doesn’t understand the word ‘no.’”

He considered that. “That’s true. But I respect strategy. You applied under a different name. You used a foundation for your tuition that doesn’t technically exist. You passed your psych interview by lying cleanly.”

She didn’t answer; there was no need to.

Knox leaned forward, palms flat on the table. “You want to burn me. Good. Get close enough to strike. But every strike will cost you.”

Harper’s mouth twitched, but it wasn’t a smile, only the suggestion of teeth.

“Recruiting,” she murmured. “Or leashing?”

He didn’t blink. “Is there a difference?”

There was a pause, brief, electric. A stillness thick enough to hold.

Then he slid a folder across the table. No name. Just a symbol embossed in ink she knew too well: two black circles, one inside the other.

The Ledger.

Harper didn’t touch it.

“You’re offering me… what?” she asked.

“No title. No salary. Just access.”

“To what?”

“To everyone,” Knox said. “To everything. The Ledger isn’t a club. It’s a mechanism. A trading platform. Leverage instead of liquidity. Reputation instead of equity. You get to play in the market no one admits exists.”

“And the price?”

He smiled. “Instruction.”

She reached for the folder and felt it.

A flicker. Heat—sharp and immediate, like static snapping her skin. She didn’t look up, didn’t give him the satisfaction, but her pulse betrayed her.

“You think I’ll be your intern? Your fixer? Your toy?”

“I think,” he said, “you’ll do anything to survive in a world that blacklisted your name before you could legally drink.”

Her fingers closed on the folder. “And what do you get?”

Knox’s voice was low. “Proximity to a weapon I don’t quite understand.”

***

She opened the folder in her dorm later that night. It wasn’t a job packet. It was a dossier. On her.

Photos taken that week. Surveillance from the library. A receipt from a coffee she hadn’t paid for with her card. A screenshot of her encrypted messages. Her father’s private investment portfolio, redacted in three places.

At the bottom of the stack: a single-page memo.

Ledger Internal Use Only.

Name: Quinn, Harper

Classification: Unclear

Risk Level: Elevated

Status: Under consideration

Path: Asset / Threat / Other

She stared until the words blurred—and in their place, her father’s voice echoed, low and steady: “Don’t let them own your story.” The same words he’d whispered the last time they hugged. The night before the explosion.

She reached for her necklace before remembering she wasn’t wearing one. She had nothing of her own here.

Then she turned it over. On the back, someone had scrawled a single line in red ink.

“Your father tried to fix the system. You’re here to own it.”

She hadn’t cried then. She wouldn’t now. But the ache lodged itself like glass between her ribs.

Her phone vibrated once.

Unknown Number: Report to the West Courtyard. 11:30 PM. Alone.

No signature. No reply option. She went anyway. Because whatever this was… she was already inside.

***

The courtyard was empty when she arrived. A cold wind moved through the hedges like a warning.

Then a whisper behind her.

“Don’t turn around.”

She froze.

The voice was male. Young. Polished. Confident without arrogance. Not Knox—but not a stranger to him.

“You’re being observed,” he said. “And not just by Devereaux. There are factions within the Ledger. Not all of us agree with his methods.”

“So you’re… what? A rival?”

“An alternative.”

She heard something drop—soft, metallic.

“Catch.”

She caught it by reflex. It was a flat black coin. No denomination. Just the Ledger symbol is carved into both sides.

“You’ve been granted preliminary observation access. Fail to prove value, and you’ll lose more than just the ring. The last wildcard vanished from campus mid-semester. No record. No explanation.”

“And if I say no?”

“Then you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering if that was your first mistake, or your last.”

The footsteps disappeared into the dark. She turned—nothing. Just silence again.

She looked down at the coin. And for the first time since arriving at Van Hollen, she felt something cut through her armor. Not fear, hunger.

***

She didn’t sleep.

At 3:00 AM, she pulled the coin apart, discovering the halves were magnetic. Inside: a tiny custom-built USB drive.

The halves snapped apart like a secret splitting down the spine. Her father once told her coins were how power disguised itself—innocent in one palm, loaded in the other.

She slid it into a burner laptop. Files bloomed. A test portfolio. Seven companies. Hidden mergers. One designed to collapse under scrutiny—but only if she asked the right questions.

A flagged audio file hovered at the top. She played it. Static. Then a clipped male voice: “He’s not ready. Let him burn slower.”

No name. No signature. But Harper’s pulse jumped—because that wasn’t Knox’s voice. It was older. Colder.

Her father once told her that symbols only had power if you let them. He’d poured her a glass of apple juice, handed her a black pen, and said, “This is what control looks like. Not the pen. The hand that decides when to use it.”

That was the night she stopped fearing symbols. And started learning how to break them.

Knox hadn’t offered a contract. He offered a mirror. And Harper had every intention of cracking it open—and letting everything bleed.