Chapter 7
For the first time in anyone's memory, the "Iron Lady" faltered.
Her stoic expression cracked like ice under pressure, revealing a flicker of exhaustion so profound it seemed to age her years in an instant.
Her shoulders, always held so perfectly straight, sagged slightly.
"How could you possibly know that?" she whispered, and her voice, usually so controlled and flat, wavered with something that might have been desperation.
"I've never told anyone. I don't talk to anyone. I don't have friends. I don't..... how?"
"I have a knack for seeing things," Remy replied with a cryptic smile that somehow managed to be both mysterious and reassuring.
"Things that aren't obvious to other people. Patterns. Futures. The weight people carry that they think they're hiding."
He paused, letting that sink in, then continued more softly: "And right now, I see you needing a friend more than a tutor.
Someone who won't judge you for wanting something more than straight A's and parental approval. Someone who understands what it's like to feel trapped by other people's expectations."
Nyx stared at him, her black eyes wide and unguarded for perhaps the first time in years. Her hand trembled slightly as she set down her pen.
"You don't understand. My parents, my father is Dr Richard Harrington. He's on the board of three universities.
My mother graduated summa cum laude from Harvard. My older brother is a Rhodes Scholar. I'm not allowed to be... ordinary. I'm not allowed to want ordinary things."
"Who said anything about ordinary?" Remy asked, tilting his head. "I'm talking about being human. There's a difference."
Before she could respond, before she could process what was happening, this stranger was seeing through the walls she'd spent years building.
Remy's eyes flared gold. Not subtly, not hidden behind sunglasses, but bright and unmistakable, like someone had lit a fire behind his irises.
Nyx gasped, actually pushing her chair back slightly. "What?"
The Foresight hit him like a lightning strike, information flooding his consciousness with overwhelming clarity.
He saw a sequence of events unfolding: a man in a tailored grey suit, Victor Parston's personal associate, a fixer who specialised in corporate espionage, meeting with Lyra's father's lead accountant, a nervous-looking man named Thomas Reeves, in the basement parking garage of the Meridian Tower downtown.
The meeting would happen in exactly forty-three minutes.
He saw the ledger being handed over, a thick manila envelope containing photocopies of documents that would prove the Castellane family's financial fraud. He saw Thomas accepting payment, $70,000 in cash for betraying his employer.
He saw the final piece of evidence needed to trigger Lyra's family's bankruptcy, the smoking gun that would destroy everything they'd built.
He saw Lyra's face when she found out, the devastation that would crush her pride like an eggshell.
And deeper, darker, he saw Victor Parston's ultimate goal. This wasn't just business. This was personal.
Lyra's father had beaten Victor's father in a business deal twenty years ago, and Victor had been waiting ever since for the perfect moment of revenge. The bankruptcy would be complete, total, leaving the Castellanes with nothing but debt and shame.
Unless someone intervened in the next forty-three minutes.
"I have to go," Remy said, standing up abruptly. His chair scraped loudly against the floor, drawing annoyed glares from students several tables away. "Right now. I'm sorry."
Nyx stood too, her movements jerky and uncertain. "Wait...your eyes, what just happened? What are you?"
Remy paused, looking at her with an expression that mixed urgency with genuine concern. "I'm someone who was given a second chance. And I'm trying to give one to someone else before it's too late."
He started to leave, then turned back. "Think about what I said, Nyx. There's more to life than the grades they force upon you.
More than just being what your parents want you to be. You have value beyond your GPA. You deserve to be happy, not just successful."
"I don't even know your name," Nyx called after him, her voice cracking slightly.
"Remy," he said over his shoulder. "Remy Beaumont. And you'll see me again. We have the same Econ 301 class on Tuesday."
Then he was running, not walking, his expensive shoes pounding on the library floor as he headed for the exit. Students looked up in shock, running in the library was forbidden, almost sacrilegious, but Remy didn't care.
He had forty minutes to cross town in rush hour traffic.
He had forty minutes to save Lyra's family from destruction.
He had forty minutes to stop a revenge plot twenty years in the making.
Behind him, Nyx stood frozen at her table, surrounded by her textbooks and equations, staring at the space where he'd been.
For the first time since elementary school, she had completely forgotten about her homework.
Instead, she was thinking about a stranger with golden eyes who had seen through her in minutes, who had spoken truths she'd never admitted to herself, who had looked at her like she was a person rather than a grade point average.
Her phone buzzed. A text from her mother: "Hope you're studying. Your father expects to hear you're maintaining your 4.0. Don't disappoint us."
Nyx looked at the text. Then, in a move that would have shocked anyone who knew her, she turned off her phone without responding.
She sat back down at her table, but she didn't open her calculus book. Instead, she stared out the window at the campus below, watching students laugh and talk and waste time, doing all the things she'd never allowed herself to do.
And for the first time in her life, Nyx Harrington wondered what it would be like to be free.
Remy burst through the library doors and sprinted toward his car. He had the location, the time, and the players. He had the Foresight advantage.
But even with the ability to see the future, he still had to race against the clock.
And this time, someone else's entire life hung in the balance.
"Grandpops," he thought as he threw himself into the driver's seat and fired up the engine, "I hope you're watching.
Because I'm about to find out if this gift can do more than just make me rich. I'm about to find out if it can actually save someone."
The Audi's engine roared to life, and Remy shot out of the parking lot like a bullet, leaving rubber marks on the pavement and a campus full of people wondering who this mysterious new student really was.