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The First Rumor

Author: Lior Ash
last update publish date: 2026-04-09 19:14:21

The morning after the studio, the air at Aethelgard felt like a held breath. I walked into the student center, and for the first time, the whispers didn't stop when I got close. They got louder.

I sat down at a corner table with a coffee I didn't want. Two girls from my history of architecture class walked by, looking at their phones and then at me.

"Is that her?" one whispered.

"Must be," the other said. "Who else would be out at three in the morning in a red dress?"

I felt a chill that had no
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  • My Professor’s Obsession   A Message from the Past

    "Look inside the vinyl sleeve behind your seat, Sera, because if that's the logbook from my mother’s old flight bag, there’s an audio cassette taped to the back of the maintenance schedule," Caspian said, his voice straining slightly over the loud, metallic rattle of the engine.The tiny Cessna bounced hard as we hit a wall of low grey cloud three thousand feet above the Connecticut border. The air inside the cabin smelled like old fuel, frozen leather, and that metallic tang of pure adrenaline. My hands were shaking so badly I could barely get the plastic tab on the pocket to release."I found it," I shouted back, my voice sounding small against the roar of the prop. "It’s a micro-cassette. The labels are completely faded, Caspian. It just says July 24 in blue ink.""Play it," he said, keeping his eyes locked on the artificial horizon on the shaking dashboard. "The recorder is in the glove box. My mother never traveled anywhere without it. She used to record her board prep notes beca

  • My Professor’s Obsession   The War Goes Corporate

    "They’re trading your father’s name on the short-selling market like it’s cheap lumber, Sera, and if we don't block the margin call by ten o'clock, the foundation won't even exist to be sued," Elias said, his thumb flicking across an iPad screen that looked like a waterfall of red and green numbers.We were sitting in a tiny, windowless security office behind the vault of the main gallery. The air smelled like hot copper from the servers and old, cold takeout coffee. Caspian was on a landline in the corner, his suit jacket off, the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to his elbows. He wasn't yelling, but the skin around his jaw was so tight it looked like stone."What do you mean short-selling his name?" I asked, leaning over Elias’s shoulder. "He’s a dead painter, Elias. He doesn't have a stock price.""The Brandon Estate has a valuation attached to the remaining inventory, honey," Elias explained, not looking up from the glass. "When Vanguard pulled out of the merger last night, He

  • My Professor’s Obsession   The First Public Choice

    "Let go of my elbow before a photographer catches the look on your face and decides we’re both about to jump off a bridge," I said, my breath fogging slightly against the glass entry doors of the Calloway Gallery.The street was a circus of black town cars, umbrellas, and flashbulbs that kept going off like small bursts of artillery in the New York drizzle. Caspian’s hand didn’t move from my arm. He just tightened his fingers through the wool of my coat, his thumb pressing into that sweet spot right above the bone where his signature always lived."If they think we're going to jump, let them write it in the morning edition," he said, his voice flat, low, and entirely too calm for a man whose mother was currently sitting inside with a federal indictment waiting on a compliance server. "I’ve spent twelve years worrying about what the front page looked like, Sera. Tonight, I only care about the girl standing on the step.""The girl on the step is wearing a sixty-dollar dress she bought o

  • My Professor’s Obsession   The Truth About the Painting Series

    "The very first painting wasn't actually of you, Sera, it was just the shape of my own regret dressed up in your skin," Caspian said, his voice dropping into that quiet, gravelly register that always made the hairs on my arms stand up.We were standing in the deepest corner of his personal studio, the one hidden behind the false drywall in the brownstone's basement. The air down here didn't smell like the expensive turpentine and lavender oils he used upstairs. It smelled like damp brick, iron water, and decades of old oil paint that had never dried quite right. He had his hand on the hem of a heavy grey canvas drop cloth that was nailed straight into the ceiling joists."What do you mean it wasn't of me?" I asked, shifting the heavy weight of my work bag off my shoulder. "I sat for you for six weeks, Caspian. I remember the way the stool dug into my thighs. I remember the way you told me to look at the window until my eyes watered.""You sat for the details, yes," he said, and with o

  • My Professor’s Obsession   Elias and the Missing Girl File

    "Look at the date on the admission sheet, Sera, because if I'm reading this right, Caspian wasn't even in the country when that girl went into the water," Elias said.He didn't look up from his monitor. We were sitting in the back of an all-night diner three miles past the New Jersey border, the air smelling of burnt chicory and old vinyl. He had his phone propped against a salt shaker, the screen glowing with an image of a faded police report from 2012.Caspian was asleep in the car outside, his head pressed against the cold glass of the passenger window, looking more like a ghost than a man who owned half the real estate on the Eastern Seaboard."What do you mean he wasn't in the country?" I asked, my fingers tightening around a thick manila folder Elias had slid across the table. "The papers in the penthouse said he was the last person seen with her at the dock. Dominic has the logs from the boat.""Dominic has what Helena wanted him to have," Elias said, finally looking up. His ey

  • My Professor’s Obsession   Helena’s Real Goal

    "Sit down, Sera, because watching you hover near the door like a stray cat makes my head ache, and we have entirely too much business to settle before the markets open tomorrow morning," Helena Blackwood said.She didn’t look up from her tea. She sat at the head of a lacquered dining table that felt long enough to require a microphone, her spine perfectly straight against the velvet backing of her chair. The townhouse smelled of old money, polished silver, and something faintly chemical, like high-end furniture wax used to cover up the scent of rot.Caspian didn’t sit. He stood right behind my shoulder, his hand heavy on the wood of my chair, his knuckles white. I could feel the heat radiating off him, that tight, vibrating anger he always carried when he was forced back into his mother’s house."I'll stand," I said, my voice firmer than I expected it to be. "I’ve spent the last two weeks on my feet at a diner, Helena. I’m used to people giving me orders while I look at the exit."Hel

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