Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Three Months Later
Bea’s phone had just reconnected to data from flight mode when it immediately buzzed in her lap, and she saw two messages in their group chat.
UMMA: Send us a photo when you arrive safe!
CLAIRE BEAR: Selfie or it didn’t happen.
After passing through an efficient arrival system and collecting her luggage from baggage claim, Bea flipped the camera, angling for the perfect shot of the terminal. Her hair was a mess, her skin puffy with travel fatigue, but it didn’t matter. The grin stretching across her face felt unstoppable.
BEYA SLAYA: Made it. Still alive. Not rich yet.
She looked around in awe. The airport was a vast glass-and-steel structure that gleamed under a blazing sun like a modern cathedral of prisms and reflected light.
A glaring contrast to the grey slush she’d left behind in Toronto.
February there had been all frosted windows and streets of ice. Here, summer refused to leave.
“Bea?”
She looked up just in time to be pulled into a hug.
Georgina Ashcroft, her assigned “buddy” and a year ahead of her at St. Ives, was somehow even more intimidatingly perfect in person.
She was taller than Bea by several inches, her golden hair tumbling over slim shoulders, expensive sunglasses perched on her head.
There was something sunny and unapologetic about her, like she’d never had to dim herself down to belong in a room.
“It’s really you.” Georgina grinned. “You’re shorter than I imagined.”
Bea laughed. “I’d be almost your height in heels, thank you very much.”
Georgina winked. “Video adds inches. Anyway, welcome! Brandon will grab your bags.”
Bea glanced back at her beat-up suitcase and duffel, suddenly painfully aware of how out of place they were against the glossy, black SUV.
“Oh, I can carry them.”
“Please don’t. He’ll be offended if you try,” her new friend teased. “I rarely ask Brandon to drive me, but I promised your mother I’d take care of you.”
Brandon was already hoisting them like they weighed nothing.
Georgina linked arms with her, steering her toward the car. “Exhausted?”
“Beyond.”
“Perfect. We’ll get you home first. Food later. I know just the place.”
The SUV pulled away from the terminal, the smooth hum of the engine barely audible beneath the low jazz playing through the speakers. Bea leaned against the window, watching the landscape unfold.
The expressway didn’t run through the land.
Every curve and elevation had been engineered for discretion.
Tall hedges and sculpted stone walls bordered the road, broken occasionally by clean-lined glass panels that offered glimpses of the world beyond.
Sloping vineyards, framed like paintings.
Distant mansions carved into hillsides, guarded by silence and surveillance.
Even the topography here had boundaries.
Eventually roads became smaller and the aesthetic began to shift.
Houses rose in clean rows, narrow and elegant, with steep gables and tall windows.
Their facades were painted in soft creams, moss greens, and pale blues.
Bright shutters framed each one, and iron balconies spilled over with ivy and jasmine, perfectly trimmed.
Nothing looked old. Everything appeared timeless.
As they entered the town proper, Bea sat forward slightly, taking it in.
Sidewalk cafés stretched along the avenues, their awnings striped, their tabletops gleaming in the light.
The streets were pristine, the paving stones clean, the trees evenly spaced and in full bloom.
The buildings pressed close together. Every detail on the lanterns, the window boxes, the storefronts was expertly maintained.
It felt like a storybook built for the elite.
“Welcome to the billionaires’ playground,” Georgina said.
“It’s beautiful,” Bea breathed, a little starry-eyed.
“It is. But you’ll stop noticing after a while.”
Bea wasn’t so sure. “How far is Northgate from here?” she asked.
“Twenty from here, thirty minutes from St Ives. That’s where most people end up after graduation—working at their family company, playing at being CEOs.”
Bea huffed a laugh. “Naturally.”
The UR wasn’t just rich. It was engineered. Born from Dutch maritime trade, then reshaped by generations of private wealth, it had become the modern world’s most discreet financial empire. No other country housed more billionaires per square mile. No nation guarded its gates more carefully.
St. Ives reflected that.
It hadn’t started as a university, but as a cloistered place where one family had trained their heirs in privacy. Over time, other dynasties wanted to join. And when it became too obvious to hide, they gave it a name.
She hadn’t expected it to feel so jarring, being here.
One minute she’d been shivering on a snowpacked curb, the next she was watching palms sway under a relentless sun.
The academic year at both the University of Toronto and here at St. Ives commenced at the end of summer.
In the UR, which was just far enough southwest of Hawaii to be in the opposite hemisphere, that meant late February, not September.
It was why she’d cut her third year short, and was restarting as a junior at the beginning of the UR term.
The SUV rolled into campus, passing through towering iron gates flanked by guards in sharp black uniforms. They didn’t speak, just nodded once as the vehicle was waved through, the gates swinging shut behind them.
Mayfield Hall rose in front of them, looking exactly as it had online, if only more elegant and impossible.
Arched windows, white stone, towering columns, everything gleaming in the golden afternoon light.
As she stepped out, the air carried the scent of the ocean and lavender, perhaps from the perfectly manicured hedges.
Brandon unloaded her bags while Georgina nudged her forward with a grin.
“Top floor. Used to be Gage’s place. He’s in the city now most of the time.”
“Your cousin?”
“Yep. He’ll come by in a day or two.” Georgina smirked. “Try not to be too impressed when you meet him.”
“No promises.”
When they reached the apartment, Georgina held the door open. “Welcome home.”
Bea crossed the threshold and stopped, stunned. Sunlight spilled across marble floors and sleek furniture. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows that occupied nearly an entire wall, the campus shimmered in the heat, every rooftop and courtyard framed like a postcard.
Home.
Her bag slipped from her fingers, forgotten.
This wasn’t just a new chapter. It was a whole new book. The pages—blank.
From this point onward, anything was possible.