Damien leaned across the divider, his knuckles turning white as he tried to lower his voice to a hushed, furious command. “Mariana, you are enabling a public scandal! I funded Michael’s secondary insurance facilities last semester! My construction group is the primary corporate sponsor for this regional vocational district! Tell your son to pick up his prepared notes and finish the ceremony like an adult!”
“Your corporate sponsorship doesn’t grant you administrative sovereignty over my graduation, Dad,” Michael said smoothly, his voice dropping into a deep, authoritative register that echoed perfectly through the active sound system.
He stepped back up to the podium, his eyes locking directly onto the front-row block where Bianca’s relatives sat frozen.
“The prepared speech I set down was an idealized fiction,” Michael announced to the silent room. “It thanked ‘my family’ as a collective unit. But the data trail doesn’t support that narrative. When my mother was working double shifts at the Phoenix clinic to cover my honors enrollment fees, Damien’s holding firm was busy executing a non-hostile asset separation to shield his real estate profits from our domestic support ledger.”
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