Chapter 3. Terms of Access

The invitation wasn’t sent. It was planted.

Harper found the key inside her room service tray, beneath the silver dome where a linen napkin should have been. No name, no crest, just a matte black key card with one number engraved on the back: 42S.

It wasn’t part of any known floor plan.

That alone told her exactly where it led.

The South Wing.

No one spoke of it openly, but the stories seeped through Van Hollen like whispers in stone. Students who entered the South Wing didn’t talk about it afterward. Some came back changed. Some didn’t come back at all.

She left her dorm with nothing but the keycard and the coin still tucked in her pocket. The hallways dimmed around her as she walked—Van Hollen’s version of a warning or an escort. Either way, she didn’t slow her pace.

Room 42S had no plaque. Just a sensor. The key fit without resistance.

Inside, the air was colder than the hall. No windows. No visible lights. Just one long wooden table and a folder at its head, like a relic in a room that never saw daylight.

A second later, Knox entered behind her.

No guards. No theatrics. Just him, sleeves rolled to the forearm, shirt the color of smoke. There was ink on one cuff and a faint shadow under one eye. He looked like a man who hadn’t slept because he was too busy rewriting people’s futures.

“You took your time,” he said.

“I wasn’t late.”

“You were deciding. That’s slower than most.”

She didn’t respond. She took the seat opposite him, back straight, hands still.

Knox sat. He didn’t open the folder.

“The question tonight is simple,” he said. “Do you want in?”

“I’m already in.”

“No,” he replied. “Right now, you’re a curiosity. A wildcard. I’m offering elevation. A place where decisions get made. Where reputations rise or disappear.”

Harper narrowed her eyes. “In exchange for what?”

“Execution,” he said. “Not death. Precision. You’ll be assigned portfolios. Ghost identities. Tasks. One wrong move, and it won’t be your failure, I’ll bury—it’ll be you.”

“And you?”

“I watch,” he said. “I grade. And when needed, I intervene.”

She raised a brow. “So I’m your project.”

“No,” he said, voice cooling—too deliberately. “You’re my risk.” And for the first time, the word didn’t sound strategic. It sounded personal.

He pushed the folder toward her. “Three companies. All tied to the same hedge fund, through off-shore subsidiaries and nominee directors. One of them is wired to implode in the next sixty days. Your task is to find out which, sabotage the others, and extract profit without triggering regulatory flags.”

Harper flipped open the folder.

Names she didn’t recognize. Shells nested inside shells. Layers of plausible deniability. There was beauty in the architecture. Ugly beauty, but undeniable.

“This is a real scenario.”

“They all are.”

She didn’t ask for time. She didn’t ask for protection. She simply closed the folder and looked up.

Every assignment was a litmus test. Fail quietly, and you vanished. Succeed too loudly, and you became the next target. The Ledger didn’t reward excellence—it punished vulnerability disguised as success.

“When’s my deadline?”

“You’ll know when it’s too late.”

There was no sarcasm in his voice. Just the truth.

She stood, folder in hand. “Anything else?”

Knox rose as well. He stepped closer than necessary.

“You’ll be watched,” he said. “Not just by me.”

There was something too fast in his voice, like the words were rehearsed. Like he wasn’t just warning her. He was remembering something. Or someone.

“That worked out well for the last person who tried.”

A flicker of something—maybe amusement—touched his face. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a slim black case.

Inside was a ring.

It looked unremarkable. Matte band. Onyx inlay. But it hummed with implication.

“This isn’t decoration,” he said. “It’s a signa for you, the gift of access and status.”

“And if I wear it?”

“You’ll gain doors.”

“And lose?”

He held her gaze. “Distance.”

She stared at the band and thought of wedding rings, nooses, and handcuffs—three things that circled the body and made promises they didn’t always keep. This wasn’t jewelry. It was jurisdiction.

She didn’t take the ring. Not yet.

Instead, she leaned in, her voice low. “You’re playing long games, Knox. But I wonder if you’ve ever gambled on someone who might gut you for sport.”

For a fraction of a second—so brief it could’ve been imagined—something flickered in his eyes. Not fear. Not arousal. Maybe… recognition. “That’s the only kind worth gambling on.”

She took the ring. There was no oath, no ceremony. Just the ring closing over her skin.

She didn’t wear it because she’d accepted the role. She wore it because Knox needed her visible. Because the Ledger would only underestimate a woman wearing a symbol they assumed meant surrender.

But to Harper, it didn’t feel like surrender. It felt like silence made visible—like the courtroom hush that fell the day her father was sentenced, crystallized into leather and silver. Not a leash. A record.

***

That night, she returned to her dorm and slid the coin open again. She’d missed something before. Deeper layers of the USB opened: names, surveillance logs, encrypted recordings. One labeled only with a date—March 14—the night her father’s car exploded.

She pressed play.

The audio was short. Seven seconds.

A man’s voice. Not her father’s.

“Tell Devereaux I won’t play Judas. If he wants blood, he can get it himself.”

Then static.

She stared at the screen until it dimmed.

This wasn’t just strategy anymore.

This was war.

This was war. And Harper Quinn never walked into one without a blade behind her smile.

***

Harper read the shell documents three times before she saw the flaw.

Two of the companies—Velcrest Innovations and CamberEdge Holdings—looked like distractions. No liquidity. No political insulation. But the third, Everelle Core, was built like a grenade disguised as a candle.

It was clean on the surface—too clean. Audits perfect. Media praise surgically timed. Ties to a biotech project in Switzerland she knew didn’t actually exist.

The test wasn’t just to find the ticking bomb. It was to choose how to weaponize it.

She ran the playbook backward.

Expose CamberEdge for a fake acquisition leak. Tip regulators anonymously. Meanwhile, pump Velcrest’s profile until it attracted too much dumb capital to ignore. Then, when Everelle collapses, the fallout shields her real hand.

It was a high-wire act with no net.

She wrote her move on plain paper and slid it beneath her dorm door—no digital trail, no signature.

***

Two hours later, her phone pinged.

Subject: Confirmed. Next step, Room 7. Midnight. Wear the ring.

She barely exhaled.

The flashback struck without permission.

She was thirteen. Her father’s tie was undone. His laptop glowed with numbers she didn’t understand yet—but she’d remember the look on his face forever.

“Everything I built is a house of glass,” he had said. “All it takes is one stone.”

She’d been too young to understand.

So he’d bent down, kissed her forehead, and whispered: “When the time comes, don’t be the stone. Be the architect.”

Three weeks later, he was dead.