All Chapters of The Buffet Was a Red Flag: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

After the review session, our accounting cohort rep, Ada Duffy, walked to the front."Yo, listen up!"The room went quiet."Seafood buffet tomorrow night. Bosfa. My treat!"She flipped her phone around.There it was.A $3,600 Bosfa order.Paid in full.For one second, nobody said a word.Then the room exploded."Holy crap, Ada. You rich now?""That place is like $120 a person! What, did you win the lottery? Find out you're secretly loaded?"Everyone crowded around her.Ada soaked it up, flipping her hair with a huge grin."Oh, it's nothing."I found this high-paying side gig. Dinner's no big deal."I sat in the back, watching it all like I wasn't even part of the class.I knew Ada way too well.She never paid for laundry. She just tossed hers in with mine.If we split shampoo for the dorm, she'd sneak half the bottle for herself.To Ada, classmates were basically free clicks for her shopping referral links.And now she was treating everyone?To a $120 seafood buff

Even after I got in the car, my heart was still pounding.I knew it.Tonight was gonna be bad.Back at the motel, I sat at the desk and forced myself to chill.Then I took a breath and shut off my phone.Outside, the sky slowly went dark.That night, I buried myself in language practice until late.***The desk lamp had burned all night.I woke with my face on the hard desk, my neck so stiff I could barely move it.I checked the clock.10:38.Already morning.The room was dead quiet except for my breathing.I stared at my dark phone, my heart pounding.'Last night... it should be over by now, right?'As I'd barely dodged a disaster, I reached for my phone and turned it on with shaky fingers.The screen lit up. The logo flashed.Then the home screen loaded.No flood of messages.Nothing.For a few seconds, everything stayed quiet.I laughed at myself. 'Was I seriously just being paranoid?'Did I really miss the one epic seafood feast our class would ever have?'T

"Someone in the group chat said a few students really thought it was interest-free, so they borrowed way more than $2,500."One guy borrowed $10,000... His parents already got the collection texts. They're coming to campus!"My heart jumped.Once parents got involved, this could turn into a complete mess.The school might even try to bury it to protect its image, leaving the students screwed.I had to get ahead of this before the parents and the school went to war.Lily and I rushed to the administration building.The second we reached Mr. Elmore's office, I heard someone crying."My son is only a sophomore! How does he owe $16,000? What are we supposed to do...?"A mother was sobbing while Mr. Elmore tried to calm her down.I took a breath and cleared my head.'I have to expose Ada and whoever's behind her and get them out of this school for good.'Then I pushed open the door and walked in.***The AC was blasting, but the office still felt suffocating.The student's mo

At the bottom was a flash drive with the recording from last night.The more Officer Keen looked through everything, the more serious he got.Finally, he looked up at me."Simone Hart, right? This is a solid evidence trail. More organized than some case files I've seen."Then he turned to the other officers."We've been tracking Mike's crew for almost two months. Most victims were too scared to talk, or they didn't have enough proof for us to build a case."With this, we can move now."The second he said "move," Ada started shaking hard.Officer Keen stepped toward her."Ada, right now, you could be charged as an accomplice to fraud."But you were coerced. If you cooperate and give us your handler's exact location, we can ask the court to take that into account."We may also be able to recover the $16,000 you lost."That was her only way out."Really?"Ada looked up at him, tears streaking her face."Only if you tell us the truth. Besides Venture Tower, does Mike's crew

"Thanks to the bank's fraud alerts and how fast we moved." Officer Keen sat down and took a drink of water. "We froze the overseas transfer just in time. We managed to freeze ninety percent of the stolen money."The other ten percent was already spent, but we seized two cars registered to Mike Leach and some cash deposits. That should cover the rest."He looked at the nervous students."And there's more good news. From what we've found, those contracts involved illegal predatory loans and fraud. They're invalid."We'll issue the legal paperwork, and the loan records will be wiped. You won't owe a cent, and your credit won't take a hit."Lily burst into tears first.Then the whole office exploded with crying, laughing, and cheering.The guy who'd borrowed $10,000—with his parents already headed to campus—shook Officer Keen's hand over and over, thanking him.While everyone celebrated, a few girls who'd trashed me in the group chat awkwardly came over."Simone... we're sorry. We