Chapter 1

Fifty coins hit me square in the face.

It wasn't just my skin that stung.

My chest ached worse.

I stared, dumbfounded, at Elmer Chapman—my roommate, the one I'd been bankrolling for three years.

He wasn't the same Elmer who used to shuffle around in washed-out, oversized shirts, timid and apologetic. He stood in the season's newest designer clothes, chin tilted up, looking down at me like something he'd scraped off his shoe.

"Julian Whitmore, don't think I don't know exactly what you've been up to. I was grateful to you once. You gave me a full stomach when I had nothing. But do you have any idea what that meal actually cost me?

"I brought you three meals a day. I cleaned your room. I followed you around like your personal errand boy. You even dragged me to your lectures, no matter how much I hated it.

"Don't feed me that 'I just wanted to help you' garbage. All you did was drop some pocket change and buy yourself a live-in servant.

"And me? I was supposed to be a college student enjoying my best years. Instead you enslaved me, day after day, until I could barely breathe.

"Real charity doesn't expect anything in return. But you just liked feeling superior—you got off on humiliating someone poorer than you!

"You're selfish, you're a hypocrite through and through, and I'm done associating with you.

"Here's your fifty dollars back. Now you get to know what it feels like to be humiliated for once."

The rest of the class turned to gawk at me, whispering among themselves.

"Everyone always said Julian was such a good guy, always helping people out. Who knew he was actually bullying Elmer behind closed doors?

"Fifty bucks bought him a slave for three years? That's a steal. I want a bargain like that too."

Listening to Elmer's tirade, and to the classmates snickering around us, I felt a chill creep down to my fingertips.

He'd only mentioned the fifty dollars.

What he'd conveniently left out was that it wasn't fifty dollars over three years—it was fifty dollars a day, every single day, for the entire three years I'd been supporting him.

On top of that, I'd covered his tuition, his school fees, his clothes, his food—down to the underwear he wore. From his freshman year to right now, I'd paid for every single thing in his life.