It broke on a Tuesday morning, seventeen minutes before Elena's first class, in the kind of headline designed to travel fast and hit hard.
*Reclusive Whitmore Heir Secretly Teaching, Owns University Where He Lectures*
Maya shoved the phone into her hands before Elena had even finished her coffee, her face pale with the particular urgency of someone delivering news they wished they didn't have to be first to share.
"It's not just campus gossip anymore," Maya said. "It's actual news. A real outlet. This is going to be everywhere by tonight."
Elena scanned the article with a rising, sick feeling, her own name appearing halfway down the page, unnamed but unmistakably described: *sources close to the university suggest Coleman's relationship with a female student may have factored into the
