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Mistaken for Rich
Mistaken for Rich
Author: Calliope

Chapter 1

Author: Calliope
My phone buzzed with a notification chime. It was two hundred dollars, sent over by Megan.

Megan: [We're not trying to eat off you for free or take advantage of you. This is payment, so think of it as supporting your family's business. I can't believe dragging your feet and putting on airs. Vibe killer.]

Before I could even respond, she tagged the whole group.

Megan: [Then it's settled. Saturday, everyone meet at the Windsor Grand! I'm treating, dinner and then a night's stay after. If you've got the time, reply and sign up!]

Cheers erupted in the chat. Somehow, all fifty-plus people in the class signed on.

[I've never stayed in a five-star hotel before. Thanks to Megan, I'm finally going to see how the other half lives!]

[I'm bringing my wife and kids!]

[Megan is so generous!]

The chat filled up with people thanking Megan one after another. Not one of them stopped to think how two hundred dollars was supposed to cover a five-star dinner and a night's stay for dozens of people. It was almost too ridiculous to be real.

Megan sent back a bashful little emoji.

Megan: [Aw, I'm just doing what a class rep's supposed to do.]

I didn't want to start anything, so I hurried to set the record straight.

Me: [Everyone's got this wrong. The Windsor Grand isn't my family's place. My family just runs a little diner.]

The chat went quiet for two full seconds after that.

Then Megan sent over a screenshot: a business registry printout with a line reading "Legal Representative: Vince Ford."

Megan: [My cousin ran into you at the Windsor Grand once. And the owner shares your last name. You're telling me it's not your family's?]

She followed it with a photo. In it, I was sitting in the hotel lobby's lounge area, and the administrative manager, Denise Marshall, was handing me a cup of coffee with a smile, a plate of cut fruit set out on the table between us.

Megan: [My cousin saw this with her own eyes when she stayed there last week. You've been hiding this well, Miss Ford!]

Megan: [You think a regular employee gets treatment like that?]

It was almost funny. By that logic, if my last name happened to match some billionaire's, did that make him my father? And that photo in the lounge was just Denise doing me a favor after I'd helped her out with something small. She was only being polite.

But before I could explain any of that in the group, a private message from Megan popped up.

Megan: [Rachel, we haven't all gotten together in ages. Don't ruin it for everyone. Three years of friendship should count for something.]

Megan: [If you think it's not enough, I'll send another hundred.]

She transferred another hundred dollars.

Megan: [It's just one dinner; it won't cost you much. Your rooms are usually empty anyway, so it's not like you're losing anything by putting us up for one night. Might as well admit you'll come out ahead. Bleeding money out of your own classmates, real capitalist of you.]

That actually got a laugh out of me, bitter as it was. Three hundred dollars, and fifty-some people eating and drinking their fill at a five-star hotel, then staying the night on top of it, and somehow I was the one coming out ahead?

I took a clear, well-lit photo of my family's business license and of the sign out front reading "Sunny's Diner," and sent it over.

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  • Mistaken for Rich   Chapter 9

    It wasn't good news. The night Megan signed her payment plan, someone had secretly snapped a photo of her and posted it online, captioned "This is what happens when a class rep fakes being rich." It had been shared more than ten thousand times by morning.Megan's workplace got dug up and exposed. She worked in administration at a small company, and her boss called her in for a talk the same day the story broke, delicately putting it as "damage to the company's image." Megan quit that same afternoon.Sandra had it worse. She'd gotten into an argument with someone online, saying, "I never thought it would be that expensive," and someone screenshotted it and passed it around. The comments underneath were nothing but people tearing into her. A client from her company saw it and called to ask if she was the "tripled the seafood order" woman from the Windsor Grand scandal. She didn't go into work the next day. I heard she spent two days at home crying.Todd's line, "one room to chan

  • Mistaken for Rich   Chapter 8

    Sandra was gasping for breath, her chest heaving, still cursing under her breath, "Playing the innocent, huh? Two hundred dollars! You'd be a laughingstock if word got out!"Megan lifted her face, and her eyes had suddenly gone cold. "Me, putting on an act?" She laughed once. "Then go throw up all that lobster and king crab you ate yesterday. Go on, throw up every last bite!"Sandra choked on her next words.Megan slowly got to her feet, smoothed her hair back, and turned to look at me. "Rachel, you win. You kept quiet on purpose. You've been watching this whole thing like a joke from the start.""Believe whatever you want. Either way, I wasn't the one ordering yesterday. I didn't touch a single thing you all ordered," I said.She took a deep breath and walked up to the manager. "I want to see your boss."A while later, Megan came back. "I signed a payment plan. Five years to pay it off. Thirty-three thousand dollars a month."The lobby fell dead silent.Todd was the first to s

  • Mistaken for Rich   Chapter 7

    Todd's phone suddenly rang. He picked it up, and his face changed color. "Mom? How did you already find out about this..."Sandra's phone started ringing too, and so did Victoria's. Some bystander who'd been watching the whole scene must have filmed it and posted it online. The video spread like wildfire, across social feeds, local forums, everywhere. "Windsor Grand's Two-Million-Dollar Bill" was trending.Todd hung up, his face gone white as paper.Victoria covered her face and sank to the ground. "It's over. Now everyone knows..."Megan slowly got to her feet. Her makeup had smeared into a mess across her face, a few loose strands of hair hanging over her eyes. She stared straight at me, and something in her expression had shifted, from the pleading of a moment ago into something I couldn't quite name, something that looked like equal parts hatred and despair."Rachel," she said, her voice hoarse, "were you waiting for this day to come?"I didn't say anything.She suddenly

  • Mistaken for Rich   Chapter 6

    "You didn't think to mention the caviar was expensive when you were scooping it out? Three whole tins!""How was I supposed to know it cost that much?!"They started arguing right there in the lobby of the Windsor Grand, their voices climbing higher and higher, each one jabbing a finger in the other's face.Brett's dog cowered under the sofa, tail tucked between its legs.The young clerk at the front desk crouched behind the counter, gathering up the scattered receipts and stacking them one by one. I went over to help her. She looked up at me and said quietly, "Rachel, these people are really your old classmates?""Yeah. From high school.""Then how..." She didn't finish the thought, just shook her head.I handed her the last stack of receipts and stood back up.Megan was pinned between Sandra and Victoria, both of them snapping at her, their voices climbing shriller by the second."You're the one who organized all this! You said two hundred dollars would cover it!""And yo

  • Mistaken for Rich   Chapter 5

    The boss's gaze turned cold as two ice picks, landing on the phone Todd still had raised. Todd's hand jerked, and the phone nearly slipped out of his grip. He hurried to put it away.The boss's voice wasn't loud, but it carried across the entire lobby."You know exactly what you ate, what you drank, and what you broke in my hotel yesterday, don't you?"Megan's expression shifted again and again, her lips pressed into a thin line. She suddenly turned to look at me, her eyes reddening, her voice trembling. "Rachel, you're really going to do this to us? One word from you and none of this has to be so humiliating."Sandra chimed in too, "Yeah, Rachel, just say something for us. We'll never bother you again, I promise."Before I could say anything, the boss laughed first."Rachel, it looks like your classmates still haven't figured out what's going on here." He turned to look at Megan. "Rachel works for me. She's a good employee. Aside from being her boss, I have no other relationsh

  • Mistaken for Rich   Chapter 4

    Megan had a bag full of custom eye masks in one hand and three gold-tier membership cards in the other. The group headed for the door in high spirits, laughing loudly, suitcase wheels clattering across the marble floor.Megan turned back and called out to me, "Rachel! We're leaving! This hotel's not bad. We'll come back again sometime!"Victoria rolled her eyes at the front desk as she walked past it. "The service was nothing special. Way too slow bringing out the food."Brett's dog suddenly broke free of its leash and bolted for the door, knocking over a vase on the welcome stand. Water spilled everywhere.Paige Cohen, one of the staff, crouched down to clean it up. Brett ran after the leash and grabbed it, but instead of apologizing, he snapped at her, "Why would you even put a vase there? It almost tripped my dog!"Paige kept her head down and said nothing, wiping up the water and the broken porcelain shards bit by bit with a rag.That was when the manager on duty walked over,

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