Chapter 14
Quill
A Man’s World
Beth’s Story
Carlos Rafael Rivera
With the folder containing the signed document clutched tightly in my hand, I hurried across the slowly filling campus. The morning birds chirped far too cheerfully. As if I had landed in the wrong movie and not in the nightmare that Maplecrest was slowly but surely turning out to be.
My friends would be waiting for me in the main park in fifteen minutes, and I would confess to them that they had been right.
I didn't belong here.
My pace quickened and I fought the urge to pick at the skin around my nails, because I didn't want to shock the secretary with a blood-stained document.
I still felt empty from last night. Too much had happened. Too much to think about as I had cried myself to sleep with a suit jacket pressed to my chest that belonged to a man who no longer wanted anything to do with me.
My steps quickened and I entered the main building of the law faculty, where most of the professors' offices and the secretariat were located. I just had to find it...
With my chest growing heavier, I strode down the main hallway, nodding to a professor I didn't know who stared at me as if I had escaped from a psychiatric ward before passing me.
The only thing I regretted was giving up my research. Maybe it was best if I put the entire book project aside.
“Quillon?” a woman's voice called out, and I stopped, turned around, and spotted a pretty woman about my father's age wearing a light gray pencil skirt and an elegantly cut white blouse. Her light gray-blonde hair was full, her features graceful, her gaze curious. “Quillon Veritas, right?”
Slowly, I nodded.
“Yes...?”
A smile took hold of her lips and she immediately approached me, stopping three feet in front of me and smiling as if we knew each other.
The small golden angel wing pendant on her necklace reminded me of Lara, but I pushed the thought aside to make room for all the questions.
Who was this woman? How did she know my name? And why was she smiling as if she had won the lottery?
“So, you're the first female student who's already the talk of the campus after her first day.”
Oh, great. The gossip mill was probably working overtime.
“Don't worry.” With a serious look, I looked into her blue eyes. “I'm on my way to withdraw from the program.”
I turned around, but a hand grabbed my upper arm and pulled me back.
Confused, I turned back to the woman.
“You're not going to do that.” She laughed, her eyes wide as if I had made a joke, before euphoria spread across her face. “Do you want to know how long I've been waiting for a woman to enroll here?”
Wait... Was she a professor? In fact, there had been a single female name on the faculty website.
“The most important professors here made it pretty clear to me yesterday that I’m not welcome here.”
The Fitzeks were probably a nightmare for everyone here, but it was my father who could kick away the bucket on which I had been waiting since birth, with a rope around my neck, for a decision by my fate. Arnold and Troy, on the other hand, were show-off clowns who would never intimidate me.
“Unfortunately, you had the bad luck to meet the wrong professors at the wrong time.”
Her gaze was serious, almost pitying.
As kind as it was meant, I didn’t need her pity.
“The rest of the faculty is open-minded and happy to have you here.”
My heart skipped a beat.
Did she know my brother? Did she know Davian?
While the former was probably completely disappointed in me and had assured me just this morning that it was better this way, the latter certainly had no desire to see the woman again who had clung to him, wallowing in self-pity.
No matter how much shit was going on in my life right now, at night, when everything was quiet, thoughts of Davian Rydell were the most pleasant. Not even his dismissive words could kill the moths in my stomach.
Would I ever forget our short, intense encounters? Did I want to?
“Even if I wanted to stay.” Shaking my head, I adjusted the strap of my bag on my shoulder. “It's too late. My parents have frozen my bank accounts and cut off my funding.”
White lies had become part of my personality.
The truth was that I had to keep Tony out of this, even though he had assured me that he didn't mind if his father blocked part of his inheritance because he earned enough himself.
It was out of the question that I would allow Joseph to freeze any of Anthony's savings accounts that he had set up for his son over the decades.
Just because I had never had a papa of my own didn't mean Tony should lose his too. Certainly not because of me.
“Give me their number,” the woman demanded, holding out her hand, and I blinked. “I’ll talk to them.”
My teeth cut into my tongue.
“That's... not possible.” Taking a deep breath, I stepped back. “I'm sorry.”
Before she could hold me back again, I turned around, walked on until I found the secretary's office, knocked quickly, and simply entered the room, where the secretary – a small, heavyset woman with a brown bun and glasses that had slipped down her nose – looked up with only her eyes.
Arriving at her desk, I put down the black folder and opened it to pull out the withdrawal form.
A hand appeared beside me and snatched the paper from my hands.
Startled, I spun around, and the secretary also looked up in confusion from her phone call to the woman who had followed me and was now holding my ticket out of Maplecrest University in her hand.
“I'm going to finance your studies.”
The secretary raised her eyebrows.
I blinked in confusion.
“No.” I shook my head again. “That's out of the question.”
“I never had a child to invest my money in. You don't even want to know how much I've accumulated over the years.”
What the...
I pulled the document from her hand and turned back to the secretary.
“Donate it to Africa.”
“What?”
I gave the woman a serious look.
“Do something useful with it.”
I held the document out to the secretary, who still seemed to be listening to someone on the phone – at least she was trying to.
She hesitantly reached for it, but the woman next to me snatched it back and... tore it up.
My eyes widened, as did those of the secretary, who put the receiver back on the phone box.
“Wait...” I tried to grab it, but she dropped it into the metal trash can. “No...”
Why had she done that?
“This place needs you.” My gaze wandered from the scraps of paper to the woman.
“You could be the beginning of something really big. A symbol for other women out there.” She lowered her voice and something determined settled in her gaze.
Everything about her screamed lawyer. Someone who could convince others, because her words did not leave me cold.
“If there's anything I would invest in, it's this.”
Great, Quill. Now you're giving people hope. You can't do that naturally. It only works when you lie.
A symbol for other women?
The longer I stayed here, the more it felt like I was blocking the door for all the other women who truly wanted to study law here with honest intentions.
“I can't accept this.” Somewhere out there were women who would truly appreciate this financial support and wouldn't disappoint her. “I'm not the right person.”
And now that I thought about it... Who was this woman that she wanted to put all her money into a strange, random student who threw in the towel after her first day?
“Please.” Her hands wandered back to my upper arms. “I need you here. More than you think.”
She didn't need me. But how could I make that clear to her?
“I don't even know your name.”
“Monica Berger.”
She immediately let go of me, straightened up, and professionally held out her hand to me.
The secretary cleared her throat and looked back at the documents in front of her.
“I'm your professor of legal history and human rights.” Bingo. “And all I'm asking is that you give Maplecrest University a chance. Two weeks from now, if you still feel like this isn't for you, I won't stop you.”
Overwhelmed, I stared into the expectant, sparkling eyes of the only female professor in the law faculty.
Right after waking up this morning, because nothing had been able to keep me in this restless sleep, I had printed out this document and signed it.
I wanted to leave all this behind, move out of this house where I didn't belong. What I had completely forgotten was that I had already paid for the whole month and didn't need to rely on my brother's accounts, I just had to pay him back.
So, theoretically, I had a chance to finish my research here, even if I only had twenty-eight days left to do so.
Monica seemed to interpret my hesitation as agreement, because her smile returned.
Two weeks...
Did she really want to pin her hopes on me for that long? Did I want to string her along for that long?
God, I didn't even know her and I already felt guilty.
Castle
Halsey
We walked side by side. Two women who were on their own within their league, but who could pretend for a moment that they were an indestructible unit on their way to a male-dominated battlefield.
I didn't need to know Monica to feel connected to her, to feel stronger because of her as I followed her through the open double doors into the huge lecture hall, where Professor Arnold Fitzek's voice boomed from the loudspeakers.
“This September, Maplecrest's five best law professors will assess your performance so that they can each nominate their candidate in October, who will then, after individual training, have to compete against the other four candidates in debates and mock trials. The four losers will have to leave Maplecrest. The winner can look forward to a glorious future on the most influential fronts of this country.”
We stopped at the top and looked down into the hall, where hundreds of male students turned to face us.
Arnold fell silent, staring at me as if I were a nightmare illusion. From where I stood, I could tell that this man hated women with a passion that had been ingrained in him from birth.
Silence.
We were the center of attention. Or rather, the young woman in the navy blue knit sweater, whom probably no one had expected to see again. A ghost who had strayed among the living for a day.
Whispering and murmuring broke out.
I liked Lucas's blank stare, as if he wasn't happy at all.
But it wasn't the students who interested me. My gaze wandered to the podium where, behind the old head of the faculty, the other five professors stood, all dressed in tailored three-piece suits, their posture rigid, as if lightning had just struck this place.
While Arnold's gaze, visibly tensing, was fixed on Professor Berger, and I was sure that this idealistic, absolutely lovable woman was putting her job at risk with this move for the women's quota at this university, my gaze slid to Anthony.
He swallowed, looked first at Monica, then back at me, the question marks above his head clearly visible.
Sorry, brother, but I can't give up that quickly. I didn't grow up in peace like you did.
Professor Berger started walking, and I followed suit. We strode down the wide parquet staircase of the hall, shoulders straight, heads held high, our eyes fixed on our goal.
My goal wasn't Tony. And it definitely wasn't Fitzek Junior, who looked like he'd touched an electric fence.
No man would ever keep me down just because I was a woman.
With a mischievous smile, I triggered another wave of sensationalist whispering around us.
Then I sat down in the middle of the hall on one of the empty folding chairs right next to the stairs, leaned back, and crossed my legs while Professor Berger continued down the stairs and engaged in a battle of stares with Director Arnold Fitzek.
My smile disappeared when my eyes found those of the man I had believed I would never see again until thirty minutes ago – before Professor Berger had explained to me how I could best survive here.
Unlike his colleagues, he seemed unsurprised by this, as if he had known I would return. His gaze searching, he stood there in his matt dark blue suit.
Oh Davian Rydell. You are a book between whose lines I want to drown. A forbidden book that I am not allowed to read. By secret candlelight, I want to let my fingers glide carefully over your parchment pages, want to smell your coffee-stained paper...
I pushed aside the sinful lines I would gladly write for but never share with him. Longing wanted to rise up, but I drowned it forcefully, because this was not the time for my wistful self-pity.
Instead, I moved on, to the man I wanted to ruin before I left town.
I would take down Joseph Richter's glass palace, just as he had taken down my paper castle. I would remind him that we reaped what we sowed.
His eyes burned with rage. And it gave me satisfaction that he couldn't be unpredictable up there. That he had to experience what it felt like to lose control over something.
Oh, how he suffered.
Professor Berger sat down with the other professors and teaching staff from the law faculty who did not belong to Arnold's little cult, and it didn't take long before the eyes of all six professors were on me.
They all shared the same look. Because they all watched as black ink spilled from an overturned inkwell, spreading across their carefully maintained paper empire and soaking every inch in black ruin.
I would stay for three and a half weeks, focus entirely on my research, and tell Monica at the end that this place wasn't the right one for me.
So, I had about a month left. Enough time to leave my ink chaos at Maplecrest.
Everyone would remember the first woman who had refused to bow to any authority at Maplecrest Law School.
We are authors.
Don’t we enjoy watching castles crumble?
– Blue