My Past, His Present, Our Struggles: From my rags, to his riches….

The lights above were bright, too white, too clean, too far from where I am. Nexus Incubator didn't smell like dreams or innovation. It smelled like polished glass, recycled air, and expensive perfume, the type you can't pronounce, and which comes in black containers with no labels. Everything here seemed like money, even the plants in pots. I smoothed out the hem of my blazer, a used Calvin Klein that fit two sizes, too big. Its shoulder pads made me look like I was too hardworking to be serious, which in reality, I was just trying to be. There was a tiny tear on one of the sleeves near the cuff. I tried using my fist to cover it, hiding it from the camera-lined pitch room walls. People in the room didn’t look at me like I belonged here. Cole Vanderbilt didn’t. He braced himself against the back wall, dark-haired, long, sharp-faced, with an attitude that screamed control. His charcoal-gray suit was tailored like a coat of paint, the price probably going to be equal to the amount I need for my mom's bills. His hand was in his pocket. His eyes? On me. Bored. Condescending. And something more, that glint that showed he'd already made a decision. I should've left. Rather, I climbed up to the glass podium and presented like my life depended on it, obviously, it does. "My name is Ellie Harper," I said clearly. My voice didn't shake, although my stomach did. "I'm here to demonstrate an app called MindMend. It's designed to help users manage their mental health better, it trends with personalized AI recommendations, " A snicker in the back. Laughter? Or maybe I imagined it. I continued. "It uses adaptive language modeling and biometric synchronizing to track cognitive-emotional shifts, especially in trauma patients. It doesn't react, instead, it learns." My fingers danced over the control pad. The screen behind me was still black. I clicked on it again. Nothing. No. No, no, no, I spun around to the screen. A blinking cursor. Code, crashing in real time. Someone had introduced a loop. "Uh, just a second." My palms sweated. I leaned forward. Faked a smile. "Little bug. Give me a sec." I said. A second turned into thirty. And then I heard him. Smooth, rich tones from the shadows. "Nice try, Harper," Cole drawled. "But you're out of your league." The room was silent, apart from the thudding of blood in my ears. I gave him a quick glance. The smug look on his face caused something within me to snap. I was not going out like this. "Out of my league?" I grumbled, turning back to the screen. "Right. Okay." I knelt, pulled the side panel off the Nexus control terminal, and crashed to the floor. My important blazer was snagged on my knees, but I didn't care. I plugged my drive into the maintenance port, jumped over the firewall, cut the loop, inserted a new string of code from memory, and re-routed the visualizer through an external port. The screen flickered and booted. MindMend's loading icon, a simple, flickering light bulb contained within a heartbeat, pulsed onto the giant screen behind me. Slowly, the AI's interface sprang to life. A voice, warm and genderless, poured through the speakers. "Welcome. Let's feel better together." Silence. Then whispers. And then applause filled the room. They were impressed. I stood up slowly. Sweat stuck to the back of my neck. As I looked at Cole again, his smirk gave way to a stern face. ~~~~~ I sat cross-legged on my bed that evening, no frame, just springs and upholstery atop a cracked linoleum floor. Roaches crawled across under the fridge. My laptop glowed from the milk crate I worked at. Coughing came from the other room. Mom's voice. Raspy. Tired. I was still wearing the same thrift store jacket. The email came at 8:42 p.m. From: Cole Vanderbilt Subject: Deal Message: One million for 80% of MindMend. Tomorrow. 10 a.m. Don't be late. No signature. Just the offer. One line. Steel cold. I gazed at the number. One million dollars. I couldn't sleep that night. ~~~~ Nexus was even more clinical the second time. Cole's office was on the 46th floor. Its glasses were as smooth as the back of a duck, city view wall-to-wall, untitled books, untouched-looking shelves, and one black leather chair that looked like it could probably do taxes for itself. He didn't greet me when I entered. He didn't even look up from his desk. "You're late." "I'm early." He looked at his watch. "You're right. I just like to say that." I folded my arms. "Fifty-one percent is a joke." "One million dollars," he murmured, standing up. He circled the desk at a deliberate speed, shark-like, his hands hidden in his pockets. "To cover your mother's hospital bill. To retire school loans. To escape the infestation you live in. That isn't amusement. That's mercy." I flinched. "You've researched me." "Of course I have." He smiled with his mouth, not his eyes. "I don't make investments in liabilities." "I'm not a liability," I told him. "And you're not getting control of my app." He came closer. Not threatening, exactly. Just close enough for me to smell his cologne, dark and citrusy. Expensive. Arrogant. He leaned forward. "Then walk away." My jaw was clenched. I resented my need for the money. Resented the sound of his words resounding off my worst nightmares that I fought every night alone on that mattress. I did not want to betray myself. But Mom's cough had not improved in two weeks. I swallowed the golf ball in my throat. "Fine. But I maintain 50/50 control. And all medical integration rights are mine." He raised an eyebrow. "Brave for someone whose pitch just got eaten by an insect." "Brave for someone whose server I fixed in ten seconds." He smiled again. "Deal." We didn't shake on it, I didn't. ~~~~ That night, while trying to arrange the house after trying to get rid of a ‘devil sent’ rat which didn't cease to prove its athletic skills, I pushed open the loose floorboard under my mattress and pulled out the old journal. Dad's journal. I hadn't touched it in years. The pages were parched, their edges already yellowed. The writing was firm and sloppy, like he'd been in a rush when he'd written most of it. I flipped through quickly, out of boredom, I flipped through schematics, equations, and notes. Then I saw it. A name. It was underlined three times in red. ‘Cole Vanderbilt’. My stomach dropped. There was a line below it, scribbled in all caps: "NOT AN ACCIDENT. THEY TOOK EVERYTHING. TRUST NO ONE." I looked at the name, and I even went back to the email I got to check if I wasn't mistaken. I thought about his offer. The server, the sneer. The million-dollar leash. I thought about the look on his face now, it was as if I was a challenge, a game, a puzzle to be solved. And I couldn't help but wonder at the question that would torment me all night. What if I had just sold my future… to the man who took apart my past?