I let the words hang there.
"Charlotte was hand-picked as his graduate student. Don't you find that funny?"
Dead silence.
After a long moment, Tyler spoke again, his voice subdued. "Try to understand him. He's a renowned professor. If his sponsored student failed to get into his own university, he'd lose face."
The anger flared white-hot in my chest.
"Am I not enough to give him face?" I demanded. "I've been first in my class since childhood. I've won so many awards my hands are tired of holding them. Why must I be sacrificed for his reputation? Why is it that to avoid suspicion, I can't go to the school I love?"
"Why should we wrong our own flesh and blood for an outsider?"
My voice went cold as steel. "Tell them this. I will fulfill my legal obligation to support them financially in their old age. But that is where it ends. Just money. No family."
The breathing on the other end of the line changed.
Victor Swanson.
He had been listening the entire time. Now, realizing I wasn't going to back down, he couldn't stay silent.
His tone was as lofty and arrogant as ever. "Do you still not realize you are wrong?"
I scoffed. "You have money—why didn't you lend it to me when I was desperate?"
"You—"
"Eighty-eight tables. Fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars a table. You have a fortune to help her show off, but not a dime to help your daughter in an emergency."
True to his professorial nature, Victor remained infuriatingly calm. "That is my money. I have the right to dispose of it as I see fit."
"I know." My grip tightened on the phone. "It's your money, your connections. Use them on whoever you want."
A breath. Steadying.
"Then how I use my future money and my time is also my business."
I hung up and turned off the phone.
Finally, the world was quiet.
...
In the adult world, there is no time for self-pity.
After being blocked from Yanda, I went to another grad school. Unwilling to settle, I tried starting a business with friends. Predictably, it failed, leaving me with several hundred thousand dollars in debt.
I had tried to borrow from my parents, but they preferred throwing banquets for strangers.
I was on my own.
I moved into the graduate dorms at my university. A cramped double room, inconvenient and loud, but I only had to pay utilities. It saved me a fortune in rent.
Without my parents, I would still pay off this debt.