"Let me be clear, Senior."
Shenna's voice was calm and even, but there was no softness in it. She looked at Logan without apology.
"Direct your concern toward someone who actually needs it. Stop interfering in my relationship with Senior Jason. We're mutually in love. There's no deception happening here — not the kind you're imagining."
She didn't wait for a response. She took Jason's arm and turned toward the parking area where her Ferrari sat in the morning light.
Logan stepped forward on instinct.
Two figures moved in front of him.
Positioned themselves between Logan and the retreating couple without a word exchanged between them, without being asked. The message was physical and clear.
Logan stopped. He recognized both of them. His brows pulled together.
"As far as I know," he said, keeping his voice low and controlled, "the two of you were also pursuing Shenna."
Neither of them responded immediately.
"She's gone off with a man who has multiple women in his life, and not only do you have nothing to say about it — you're standing here blocking my path." Logan's jaw tightened. "Do either of you have any backbone at all?"
Felix looked at him for a moment with an expression that wasn't quite contempt but was close to it.
"Mr Carter is in a good mood today," Felix said. "So he won't bother with you. But I'd suggest you watch what comes out of your mouth next. If he gets angry, that changes."
He stood with his arms crossed, his gaze moving over Logan.
"Even compared to the two of us," he said, "you fall short. So I'm genuinely curious where you found the confidence to step in front of Jason Carter."
Logan's spine straightened. "My family's wealth doesn't compare to his. Or yours. I'm aware of that." His voice hardened. "But at least I'm not a scumbag. I've done real things for Shenna. I couldn't go up against Zanes — I didn't have the resources for that. But I consulted finance professors, talked to investment experts, spent weeks trying to find solutions for there family. I did what I could."
Felix smiled, and the smile had no warmth in it.
"You consulted professors."
He let the words sit there for a moment.
"Good morning texts. Campus paperwork. Consulting professors on her family's behalf." He tilted his head. "You think that's solving her problems? For a family like them, that kind of help isn't help. It's background noise. They have entire teams of advisors. They don't need you fawning over them and calling it devotion."
Chase didn't smile. He just watched Logan with an expression that had settled into something colder.
"You couldn't face Zane. Your family doesn't have the foundation for it. Fine. That's not a character flaw." He paused. "But you're standing here barking at Jason Carter. That's a different problem. Let me explain something to you, since it's obvious you've been moving through the wrong circles."
Logan said nothing. Something in Chase's tone made him go still.
"The first time Jason Carter met Shenna, "he bought a park. The entire park. Because she mentioned wanting to ride bumper cars late at night without crowds. He bought it so she could." He watched Logan's face. "He bought the Astral Observatory Tower so they could stargaze together. Just the two of them."
Logan had heard fragments of these stories circulating on campus. He had filed them under exaggeration.
Looking at Chase's face now, he understood they weren't.
"Her birthday," Chase continued. "The Zane family was applying pressure at the time. Political pressure, financial pressure, social pressure. Jason hosted a banquet. He made it clear, in front of everyone who mattered in this city, that there were under his protection. The Zane family backed down at the table."
The air felt different. Logan wasn't sure when that had happened.
"You see the Blue Sea Pearl at the pier." Chase didn't phrase it as a question.
Logan had looked at it when he arrived. A luxury cruise liner, the kind that cost more per week than most people earned in a lifetime.
"It's not rented," Chase said. "It belongs to him."
Logan's breath came out uneven.
Felix stepped in, his voice dropping the mocking edge for something more direct.
"Then the financial war started. You've heard about the collapse of Ashes Capital and the Zane family's losses. Everyone has. Most people think it was market forces, bad decisions, bad timing." He shook his head. "It wasn't. Jason Carter put over ten billion dollars into the market at opening. He moved against both Ashes Capital and the Zane family at the same time, on two fronts, and crushed them both. Shenna's family didn't just survive that period — they came out of it with their assets climbing from three billion to four and a half billion. That jump didn't happen by accident."
Logan stood very still.
"He did all of that," Felix said, "while you were consulting professors."
The words weren't loud. They didn't need to be.
Chase looked at Logan one more time, and his voice lost whatever edge it had carried before. What replaced it was something almost worse — a kind of flat, factual dismissal.
"You didn't know any of this. That's not surprising. Your world and his world don't share a border. The people who attended Shenna's birthday banquet — not the inner circle, just the regular guests — any one of them could have ended your family's finances without a second thought." He paused. "You're not in that category. And standing here talking about backbone and scumbags and what Shenna deserves — you don't have the standing for it."
He stepped aside.
Logan didn't move right away.
Logan had spent the better part of two years building something he called devotion. He had tracked Shenna's schedule, found reasons to be useful, learned her preferences, waited for openings that never quite materialized. He had told himself he was patient. That the right moment would come.
He understood now that he had been living inside a very small room and calling it a strategy.
It wasn't jealousy anymore, the thing spreading through his chest. Jealousy required some sense of comparable standing, some universe in which the outcome could have gone differently. This was something else. It was the specific, suffocating feeling of realizing that the competition you'd been preparing for had never included you. That the scoreboard you'd been watching wasn't the one that mattered.
He thought about the moment he had walked up to them at the pier. The way Shenna had looked at him — not hurt, not conflicted, not uncertain. Tired. Like someone dealing with a minor interruption. Like someone who had already made her decision so thoroughly that being questioned about it didn't even register as a threat.
She had known about the other women and walked in anyway.
At the time, he had attributed that to manipulation. To some technique Jason used, something that clouded judgment. It had been easier than the alternative.
The alternative was that Shenna was clear-eyed and intelligent and had weighed everything she knew and still made a different choice than the one Logan would have made for her.
He looked toward the parking area. The Ferrari was already pulling out. Through the windshield, at this distance, he could see the edge of a dark navy scarf around Jason's neck.
He had no more words. He turned and walked back toward the Audi. His two classmates followed without speaking, which he appreciated.
Behind him, they watched him go. Neither said anything further. There was nothing left to say.
Inside the Ferrari, Shenna merged onto the coastal road and let the engine settle into a smooth, quiet hum.
She hadn't heard what Chase and Felix said to Logan after she walked away. She didn't need to. She had said what she needed to say, and she had meant it.
Jason sat in the passenger seat with the scarf still neat at his collar. He was looking out the window at the water, the city skyline reflected in pale strips across the surface of the bay.
After a while, he glanced at her.
"You seem unbothered," he said.
"I am unbothered," she said.
A pause.
"He wasn't wrong about everything," Jason said, without particular emphasis.
"I know," she said.
She kept her eyes on the road. The morning was clear, the kind of clear that felt like the day had made a decision about itself and intended to follow through.
She had walked into this knowing the full shape of it. The other women. The complicated geometry of his life. None of it was hidden from her. She hadn't been swept away on feeling alone — she had looked, and she had chosen.
Whether that turned out to be wise or foolish, she would find out in time.
But it was hers.
She accelerated onto the open stretch of coastal road, and the city fell behind them, and the morning opened up ahead.
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