I Traded Three Years of Love for One Perfect Revenge Chapter 10
After I finished handling my mother’s funeral arrangements, I never went back to complete my withdrawal from Aldercrest.
I locked myself inside a cheap apartment and stayed awake for three straight days and nights.
With an old laptop and a phone with a shattered screen, I started going through everything from the past three years.
Cole thought that because I’d deleted and blocked him, I had nothing left on him.
He had forgotten something.
For three years, I had managed his financial records, his passwords, and every important email.
Cole was arrogant and careless.
I broke into his cloud backups.
What I found made my stomach turn.
There were the bank-transfer records and recordings proving he’d taken my $7,000.
But there was much more.
I found ledgers showing him brokering corrupt deals with a faculty advisor, using Brielle’s name to send gifts in exchange for projects.
Worse yet was Brielle’s original admissions file.
Brielle never should have gotten into Aldercrest.
—
Her real academic record was so weak that she would have struggled to get into even a nonselective four-year college.
Cole’s father had abused his position to push her through an off-the-books admissions scheme, using another student’s credentials to make her application look qualified and secure her a place at Aldercrest.
The web of corruption behind it was enough to put his entire family behind bars.
I sorted every piece of evidence, organized it into folders, and encrypted everything.
Then I made a phone call.
The man I called was an elderly law professor, the only person at Aldercrest who had been willing to lend me money when I was desperate.
He had once been a prominent judge known for his uncompromising integrity.
“Professor.” My voice was hoarse, but completely steady. “I have evidence that could shake higher education to its core.”
“I need your help.”
The other end of the line was silent for a long time.
“Bring everything to my office tomorrow at nine.”
After the call ended, I looked at myself in the mirror.
My eyes were sunken, and my face was deathly pale.
—
But I knew one thing.
From that day on, the timid, yielding Nora I used to be was dead.
What survived was someone who had clawed her way back from hell for revenge.
The next morning, I was sitting in the professor’s office at exactly nine.
He went through everything on the flash drive I’d brought him.
By the time he finished, his hands were shaking so badly he could barely keep his mug steady.
“The nerve of these people.”
“Something this rotten was happening right under my nose?”
He shot to his feet.
“Nora, don’t be afraid.”
“I’ll put my own reputation on the line if I have to. I’m taking this to the state higher-education oversight office.”
“I will not let these corrupt parasites ruin Aldercrest’s reputation.”
I gave him a solemn nod.
“Thank you.”
“But I have one request.”
“Don’t expose them yet.”
—
“I want to be the one who destroys them in front of the entire university.”