The room was louder than usual, the drunken chatter replaced by sharp voices and overlapping arguments. For once, laughter had taken a backseat to tension.

“I’m just saying, you can’t plagiarize the whole second paragraph and call it ‘inspired.’ Professor Burke isn’t stupid,” Jared Kingsley barked, slamming his whiskey tumbler onto the bar.

“Relax, Jare. It’s not plagiarism, it’s a reference. You wouldn’t get it. You don’t exactly scream literary genius,” Seb Winthrop drawled, sprawled out on the rug with a bottle of scotch resting against his knee.

Jared’s jaw tightened, but before he could fire back, Charlie Sinclair let out a sharp laugh from her spot on the leather couch. “Oh, please, Seb. As if you’ve ever written anything more intellectual than a Tinder bio,” she said, flicking ash from her cigarette into a crystal tray, her smirk dripping venom.

“Better a Tinder bio than that pretentious crap you churned out. What was it—a three-page metaphor about death and designer shoes?” Seb shot back, his voice rising as he leaned forward.

“Don’t act like you didn’t eat it up,” Charlie retorted icily.

“Can you all shut up for two seconds? If you’d just pay someone to write it, like I did, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation,” Gigi Astor groaned, lounging on a chaise and tossing a throw pillow at Jared.

“Oh, because integrity means nothing to you,” Margaux DuPont muttered, swirling her wine with an exaggerated eye roll.

“You mean the ‘integrity’ you showed when you borrowed half my notes for last week’s lecture?” Gigi fired back sweetly, though her eyes were sharp.

“You offered!” Margaux snapped, her cheeks flushing faintly.

“Not the point,” Preston Harrington cut in from behind the bar, expertly mixing another drink. “None of this matters because we all know who’s coming out on top. Let’s skip the theatrics.”

The room fell silent as all eyes turned toward the figure lounging in the high-backed chair by the fireplace: Augustus Hawthorne.