Episode 6 : Buried Truths : Part 1

Monroe pulls out two more folders, like a magician who’s just perfected the rabbit-from-the-hat trick. One folder. Another folder.

“How much more?” I sigh.

Inside, something waits to dismantle me.

CONFIDENTIAL MEMO – RIDGEWAY PREP ADMINISTRATION

Monroe watches me, patient. “Elijah didn’t just get transferred,” he says. “He was erased.”

Flashback: The Ridgeway Prep Incident

Ridgeway wasn’t just any school.
It was a fortress—an institution steeped in tradition, where the most powerful families sent their children to shape their futures. A breeding ground for trust fund babies, reeking of entitlement. It was where the children of the powerful remained untouchable, insulated from the world outside.
Elijah didn’t belong there.
He wasn’t born into money. He wasn’t a legacy. He was the charity case—the kid the school had to let in on a scholarship to keep their accreditation. His presence was a formality, a necessary evil to uphold their pristine reputation.

Humiliation and contempt became Elijah's only friends. It started with small things, the kind of things you might overlook. His notebooks would go missing. His desk and chair would be dismantled

when he came into class. And then, it became louder. The word Loser was

scrawled across his locker door. He was locked inside the janitor's closet.

Elijah found solace in the library. Books always gave him more comfort than

people ever did. And then one day, he found something that would turn his

world upside down.

The Discovery

The school had a tradition—a fundraising gala for Ridgeway’s elite. It usually took place in November, a pre-Christmas extravaganza, if you will. The “cause” was really just an excuse for kids to wear mink coats and Tom Ford suits.

A month before this glorified prom night, students were assigned roles—design, music, food, entertainment. For Elijah, though, the noise and hullabaloo were a good distraction, a chance to slip out unnoticed.

A week before the gala, on a particularly sunny afternoon after Chem-2, Elijah walked into the library as usual. He slipped his bag under the desk and slumped into a chair. As he was about to log in, he noticed something—an email, possibly left by the person who used the computer before him. The account was still open.

Usually, Elijah wasn’t one to snoop. But the title caught his eye, piquing his curiosity.
"CONFIDENTIAL: GALA FUND TRANSFER - Account Statement"

He glanced around to see if he was being watched, swallowed hard, and quickly clicked on the email. It was an account statement for the month of November—likely the funds collected for the gala from the students.

"Eighty thousand US dollars for a gala," Elijah sighed. The school would collect these funds months in advance from the students to help “organize” the gala, even though it was well known that Ridgeway had millions in donations.
"Probably to build a posh new wing of the library," he thought as he scrolled down.

As he was about to close the tab, something caught his eye. It was the email ID of the person the email had been sent to.

"Lincoln Fraiser."

Fraiser... Fraiser... where have I heard that name before?

And then it clicked—Brendon Fraiser.
Brendon was a kid in Elijah’s class—lanky, tall, popular and apparently the son of the senator.

"That’s right," Elijah remembered, recalling an interview he had read. "Lincoln Fraiser—The man who built an empire." He was one of the most powerful people in new york city.

Elijah was confused. Why were the funds being transferred to the parent of a student? It didn’t make sense. He quickly opened a search bar and typed the name: "Lincoln Fraiser".

What he saw next was unbelievable.

His heart began to race. There were years’ worth of transfers, all marked as gala

funds. But as he scrolled, he noticed something strange: some were titled

"ROCHESTER DEVELOPMENT PROJECT", and others were listed as

"BROOKLYN YOUTH CENTRE". Was the school affiliated with these projects?

He quickly opened another tab to look them up.

A cold sweat broke out across his skin. They didn’t exist.

Elijah paused, the weight of it sinking in. “This is not good,” he muttered under his breath.

Paper Trails

It had been two hours since Elijah came across the email. He spent the next few hours going through all of the emails sent from the account. It didn’t take him long to figure it out.

For years, the school had been siphoning money to apparent student programs. It was a system. Repeated transfers—thousands of dollars funneled into ghost accounts under the guise of ‘development projects’ that had no paper trail. Elijah patiently cross-referenced the names of the benefactors with the kids who went to Ridgeway.

Smith. Ford. Kensington. Surnames he had heard every day. Children of Businessmen. Industrialists.

Elijah sat there, shaken. He knew what he had to do next. The account from which the emails had been sent. He just needed to find out who it belonged to: “RC18201.”

He typed it into the Ridgeway database.

RC… RC… The initials kept ruminating in his mind as the system buffered.

And then there it was. RICHARD CALLOWAY.
Vice Principal Richard Calloway.

The man was responsible for all the student initiatives, fundraisers, and mental health resources that the school had been advertising for years. Thousands of dollars were being washed through these fake programs, siphoned into private accounts.

Elijah felt the weight of it crash down on him like a ton of bricks. He remembered his first interaction with him. He called Elijah “Exceptional” and said that Ridgeway would provide what Elijah needed. He found comfort in those words.

The man he had trusted, the one who had smiled and nodded, pretending to care about the students and their well-being, was behind it all. A fraud. A liar.

His hands shook as the screen in front of him seemed to blur. This wasn’t just about a few misused funds—it was about an entire system built on deception.

Elijah leaned back, staring at the screen, his mind racing.
This wasn’t just corruption. This was the entire foundation of Ridgeway Prep, and Elijah was holding the match.