Chapter 2 - The Trust Fund Revelation
The digital camera on Madison’s smartphone continued to roll, capturing the dead silence that descended upon the hallway. Her pink tweed skirt felt suddenly too tight, and the tiny dog in her arm whimpered, sensing the shift in atmospheric pressure.
"You heard me, Madison," Doctor Vance said, his voice dropping its usual professional warmth and acquiring a sharp, authoritative edge. "Clara is the primary trustee of the Vance-Holloway Foundation. Your father’s endowment is precisely four percent of what she contributes annually to keep this institution afloat."
Madison let out a nervous, high-pitched laugh that sounded entirely out of place in the fluorescent-lit corridor. "That’s completely impossible. She’s wearing grey scrubs! People in scrubs work for people like us. My father buys things like this building for fun on weekends."
Clara finally lowered her clipboard, her dark scrub cap shifting slightly as she tilted her head. She looked at Madison not with anger, but with a deep, unsettling pity that made the influencer's skin crawl. "Your father taught at the university, Madison. He didn't build his fortune from the ground up. He inherited it from the Holloway estate—the very estate my grandfather built before your family legally dismantled it thirty years ago."
Doctor Vance stepped between them, his expression grim. "The board has been waiting for an excuse to audit your father’s recent philanthropic disbursements, Miss Vance. And your little livestream just provided the exact public probable cause we needed."
Madison’s fingers trembled as she stared at the screen of her phone, where thousands of live comments were already scrolling past at breakneck speed. Viewers were screenshotting Clara’s ID badge and digging into public property records in real-time.
"Delete this footage immediately," Doctor Vance ordered, holding out his hand. "Or I will have security confiscate the device under federal patient confidentiality laws."
Madison clutched the phone to her chest, her high heels clicking backward against the linoleum. "You can't do this to me. I'm going to call my lawyer right now."
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She spun around to dial, but her phone screen suddenly went completely black, displaying a red emergency override notification from her father's bank.
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