Craved By My Brother-In-Law

A Worthy Rival

Kira

For the first few months after Kent left for California, our text messages were the only thing holding my sanity together. But eventually, the connection thinned.

“Cool.”

“Got practice, brb.”

“Yeah, busy week.”

One-liners turned into two-week silences. I spent my nights staring at the ceiling of the staff quarters, watching the blue glow of my phone screen reflect off my glasses as I scrolled through his social media stories.

Sometimes, he was laughing at a crowded beach party with one arm slung casually around a gorgeous brunette. There he was, the golden boy of the USC hockey team, living a life so dazzling it made our childhood in the Silver garden look like a black-and-white movie.

By the time my senior year rolled around, the messages stopped completely. My last text was a simple, “Good luck with the game tonight!” and it sat unread for three weeks.

"What do you mean, you're not submitting the Harvard application?"

My father’s voice cracked through the kitchen. He stood by the small dining table with the acceptance materials and Ivy League brochures crumpled under his hands. Hands that had spent twenty years gripping the steering wheel of another man's luxury cars just so I could have a shot at the world.

"I’m going to USC, Dad," I said softly, keeping my eyes fixed on my tea. "I'm applying for their full academic scholarship."

"USC? Kira, you have the grades for Harvard! The counselors said you are a shoe-in!" He stepped closer. "Why would you settle for a school across the country when the best universities in the world are begging for you right here?"

"California has a better criminology program," I lied, but my cheeks flaming sold me out.

"Do not lie to me, Kira. Is this because of the Silver boy?"

I flinched. "No."

"He has his own path, and you have yours," my father said in a fierce whisper. "You cannot build your life around a boy who belongs to a world that will never accept us. His father is my boss, Kira. Remember your place."

"I am remembering my place!" I snapped and finally looked up, my eyes stinging behind my lenses. "My place is on a full ride where I don't have to worry about your retirement money being spent on dorm fees! I’m going to USC, Dad. It’s final."

He stared at me for a long, painful moment before dropping his shoulders. "You are too smart for your own good. Reminds me not to firce you to live my own dream."

He was right. My father was determined to send me to school because he never had that privilege. I swallowed the lump in my throat as I packed my bags.

Getting into USC was easy. When you have a perfect academic record, universities tend to open their gates pretty wide.

The real problem was arriving there.

My father had insisted on driving me to the airport, and when we landed in Los Angeles, he used the perk of his employment to secure one of Mr. Silver’s midnight-black Mercedes sedans from the corporate garage to drop me off at the campus.

The moment the car pulled up to the curb outside the freshman dorms, dozens of students gathered near the steps. They eyed the tinted windows and custom rims.

"Have a good semester, Kira," my father said softly from the driver's seat, his eyes warm in the rearview mirror. "Study hard."

"I will, Dad. Love you."

I stepped out of the car and adjusted the straps of my backpack. The crowd of students watched me with wide, expectant eyes, clearly waiting for a trust-fund heiress or a celebrity's daughter to step out in designer clothes. Instead, they got me: oversized sweater, medicated glasses, and a pair of worn sneakers.

Before I could even drag my suitcase out of the trunk, a girl in dark clothing and bold eyeliner tore through the crowd.

"Oh my god, finally!" a loud voice squeaked.

A girl with jet-black hair styled into wild layers grabbed my arm until her long nails dug into my sleeve. She smelled strongly of sweet mint and watermelon.

"Hi! I’m Amira!" she announced to the entire courtyard, practically dragging me away from the car. "We are officially best friends. Come on, I’ve been waiting for my roommate for two hours and everyone else here looks like a carbon copy of a Barbie doll."

"Uh—hi," I stumbled, trying not to trip over my own feet as she pulled me toward the brick building. "I'm Kira."

"Perfect," she muttered, throwing a smug look back at the staring crowd as if she had just claimed the most valuable prize on campus.

It took the entire day to navigate the financial aid verification for my scholarship, and retrieve my room keys. By the time I finally pushed open the door to Room 314, my feet were throbbing and my head was starting to ache.

I stepped inside and froze.

The room was split down the middle into two entirely different dimensions. My side was empty and bare. Amira’s side looked like a gothic cavern.

The walls were covered in large black posters of metal bands I had never heard of. A thick, sweet cloud of vapor hung near the ceiling, illuminated by a string of dark purple LED lights. Amira was sitting cross-legged on her bed, wearing a spiked collar, aggressively applying a layer of dark plum lipstick while a thumping metal track blasted from her speakers.

"You're welcome to join the party," Amira yelled over the music, taking a puff from a sleek black vape. "Hope you don't mind the music. It helps me focus."

"It's... fine," I said, though my skull felt like it was splitting open.

I collapsed onto my mattress, pulling the pillow over my ears.

By the next morning, the mild headache had morphed into a full-blown, pounding migraine.

I staggered down the hallway, clutching my notebook to my chest. My eyes burned as I pushed open the heavy wooden doors of the criminology lecture hall. The room was massive, tiered like an amphitheater, and already packed with freshmen.

I found a seat near the front and pulled out my pen, determined to prove that I belonged here.

"Welcome to Introduction to Forensic Discourse," the lecturer announced while sweeping over the room. "We will skip the pleasantries. Let us see who actually read the syllabus and the prerequisite chapters."

He clicked a button, and a slide appeared on the massive projector screen detailing a classic linguistic puzzle from a famous 1990s criminal trial.

"Who can analyze the syntax of the defendant's statement here and identify the hidden marker of deception?" Prof. Vance asked, leaning against his podium.

My hand shot up instantly. I had memorized this exact case study over the summer.

"Yes—the girl in the front," Vance pointed at me.

"The deception marker is found in the sudden shift from the past tense to the present progressive in the third sentence," I said confidently, my voice ringing through the hall. "It indicates a cognitive lag where the speaker is fabricating the event in real-time rather than retrieving an actual memory."

I smiled softly, feeling a brief rush of pride.

"A textbook answer," a cool, detached voice rose from the row behind me. "And completely inaccurate."

My smile vanished. I turned around in my seat.

Sitting a few desks back was a boy with sharp, aristocratic features and perfectly styled dark hair. He wasn't wearing a hoodie like the rest of the freshmen; he wore a white, neat, tailored button-down shirt. His dark eyes locked onto mine, but they were completely devoid of any warmth. My smile fell.

"Excuse me?" I said.

"The tense shift is a symptom, not the root," the boy said arrogantly. "If you actually look at the structural distribution of the pronouns in the fourth line, the defendant completely drops the first-person singular 'I' and switches to passive formatting. He isn't just experiencing a cognitive lag; he is psychologically distancing his ego from the crime scene. That is the definitive marker of deception."

The lecture hall went dead silent.

Professor Vance’s eyebrows shot up. "Excellent precision... Mr. Rain, correct?"

"Ethan Rain, sir," the boy replied, not taking his eyes off me. He offered a small, mocking tilt of his head that made my blood boil.

"Well, Miss Thompson," Professor Vance said, looking down at his roster before addressing me with a cold, dismissive shrug. "It seems your peer has a sharper eye for detail. Let this be a lesson to you. Just because you entered this university as a top scholarship student with a perfect admission score does not mean you are automatically better than everyone else in this room."

A few students in the back row whispered and snickered.

I sat, frozen and furious. My hands trembled against my notebook. I had been here for less than twenty-four hours, and I had already managed to get publicly humiliated by a professor and an arrogant, self-righteous boy who looked at me like I was dirt beneath his expensive shoes.

I glared back at Ethan Rain, but he had already looked away, casually spinning his expensive pen between his fingers as if I weren't even worth his attention.

For the rest of the lecture, Ethan Rain actively made me feel small, stupid, and entirely outmatched.

By the time the bell rang, one thing was perfectly clear. Ethan Rain was my rival. And he was going to make my life in USC a living hell.