Chapter 5 - The Academic Fraud
By 10:30 PM, the Belle Meade Country Club had entirely cleared out.
The glittering ballroom was dark, the chandeliers shut off. Gwen Vance sat on the cold stone curb at the club's locked iron gates, her makeup ruined by black mascara streaks, shivering in the brisk autumn wind. Her gown was torn at the hem. Beside her, Evelyn sat weeping silently, while Arthur paced back and forth across the asphalt, desperately redialing Brooke’s number every thirty seconds.
*“The subscriber you are trying to reach has restricted incoming calls. Please try your call again later.”*
"She blocked us," Arthur cried, slamming his fist against a brick pillar. "The ungrateful, venomous little wretch blocked my number!"
"How could she do this to me?!" Gwen wailed, pulling her knees up to her chest. "Tonight was supposed to be my coronation! I was supposed to be appointed Assistant Chair of Literary Humanities by Monday! Provost Finch will never speak to me again!"
"Forget your chair, Gwen!" Evelyn snapped hysterically. "We don't have cars! We don't have a house! We owe seventy-five thousand dollars to this club, and Mrs. Sterling said if it isn't wired by nine o’clock tomorrow morning, she's filing criminal charges for grand theft and commercial defrauding!"
Before Arthur could reply, Gwen’s iPhone pinged with a high-priority alert.
It was an official notification from the **University Board of Academic Integrity.**
Gwen fumbled with the phone, unlocking it with her trembling thumb. She read the subject line, and the air left her lungs in a sharp, strangled gasp.
> **URGENT: Formal Notification of Inquiry into Doctoral Dissertation No. 884-Vance**
> **From: Dean of the Graduate School / Office of Ethics & Compliance**
>
> *Dr. Vance,*
> *At 9:45 PM this evening, our office received a formal dossier submitted by Vance Bio-Dynamic Systems IP Enforcement Group, alleging that Chapters 4, 5, and 7 of your doctoral dissertation, titled 'Semantic Data Structuring in Comparative Linguistics,' contain extensive, unauthorized proprietary algorithms directly copied from an unreleased patent filed in 2021 by Brooke E. Vance.*
>
> *The metadata attached to your primary dataset indicates the source files were accessed from a shared cloud drive belonging to Vance Bio-Dynamic Systems. Your doctoral conferral is hereby stayed pending an emergency review by the Academic Senate tomorrow at 11:00 AM. Your pending employment contract is suspended immediately.*
Gwen let out a high-pitched scream that sounded like a wounded animal. "No! No, no, no! That was just an old database Brooke left on our shared home server four years ago! She said it was just useless statistical junk she was cleaning up!"
Arthur stopped dead in his tracks. He stared at his younger daughter, his mouth agape.
"Gwen..." Arthur said, his voice dropping to a horrified whisper. "Did you... did you steal Brooke’s work for your doctorate?"
"It wasn't stealing!" Gwen shrieked, her voice cracking with fury and terror. "Brooke is a nobody! She sits in her stupid pajamas typing numbers all day! She doesn't have a PhD! She didn't need those algorithms—I did! I deserved that degree! I worked the cocktail parties! I built the connections! Brooke was supposed to help me!"
"You idiot," Arthur whispered, burying his face in his hands. "You absolute idiot."
"Don't you dare call me an idiot!" Gwen raged, jumping to her feet. "You're the one who told me she was weak! You and Mom always said Brooke was our family doormat! You told me to demand her paycheck when I couldn't pay my semester tuition! You told me she owed us because you paid for her community college ten years ago!"
"Enough!" Evelyn screamed, standing up and slapping Gwen across the face with a loud, stinging *crack*.
Gwen staggered back, clutching her cheek in shock.
"Stop it, both of you!" Evelyn sobbed, her mascara running down her wrinkled neck. "We have to go to the hospital. Right now."
"The hospital?" Gwen spat, venom dripping from her words. "Why would we go to that disgusting place?"
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"Because," Evelyn said, her voice shaking with desperate realization, "Brooke is there. And right now, that pathetic little girl on that operating table is the only leverage we have left on this earth."
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