Chapter 5 - The Anonymous Benefactor
The afternoon sun was streaming through the high arched windows of the Drake Hotel’s employee breakroom when Elena’s phone vibrated in her locker. She was on her fifteen-minute break, her hands raw from scrubbing three marble bathrooms on the fourteenth floor. She opened her locker, took out her phone, and saw an official email notification from the Chicago Institute of Fine Arts Admissions Board.
Her heart began to race. She hadn't sent in the financial aid appeal yet; she had planned to spend her evening begging the admissions director for a monthly payment plan. Trembling, she opened the email and read the text:
Dear Ms. Flores,
We are thrilled to inform you that Lily Flores has been selected as the recipient of the prestigious Midwest Arts Endowment Fellowship for the upcoming academic year. This comprehensive fellowship covers 100% of her tuition for the entire five-year junior program, along with a full credit line at the academy supply store for all necessary materials, canvases, and professional instruments.
No further financial documentation is required at this time. We look forward to welcoming Lily to our campus next Monday.
Elena stopped breathing. She read the email a second time, then a third, the letters blurring through a sudden rush of tears. An endowment fellowship? The academy hadn't mentioned any fellowships during the orientation yesterday. They had explicitly stated that all merit scholarships were capped at fifty percent.
She walked out of the breakroom and stepped into the quiet service corridor, pulling up the academy's phone number. She called the admissions office directly.
"Admissions, this is Mrs. Gable," a polite voice answered.
"Hello, Mrs. Gable. My name is Elena Flores. I’m calling about an email I just received regarding my daughter, Lily Flores. It says she received a full fellowship?"
"Ah, yes! Ms. Flores, congratulations!" the woman said warmly. "It was quite the surprise for us this morning as well. A private corporate benefactor contacted our development office just before noon and endowed a specialized scholarship fund specifically for high-achieving students from the South and West Sides. Lily was at the very top of our ranking list, so the board awarded it to her immediately."
"A private corporate benefactor?" Elena asked, her knuckles whitening around the phone. "Who was it? What company?"
"I’m afraid that information is strictly confidential, Ms. Flores," Mrs. Gable replied. "The donor requested total anonymity. But I can assure you the funds have already cleared our escrow account. Lily’s tuition is paid in full through her twelfth birthday!"
Elena thanked the woman faintly and ended the call. She leaned her back against the cool concrete wall of the service hallway, her chest tightening with a complex mixture of overwhelming relief and sharp, instinctive dread.
An anonymous corporate benefactor. Endowed just before noon today.
In a city as massive as Chicago, coincidences like that simply did not exist. There was only one man she had met in the last twenty-four hours who had the power to make thousands of dollars materialize in an institutional bank account with a single phone call. A man who wore a five-thousand-dollar suit, carried a concealed weapon, and bore the serpent tattoo of the Vargas Syndicate.
Why was he doing this? In Elena’s world, men of violence never gave away money out of the goodness of their hearts. Every dollar from the underworld came with a hook attached—a debt that would eventually be called in when you were most vulnerable. Was he trying to buy her silence about the chaotic scene in the park? Was he grooming them for something worse?
May you like
She thought of Lily’s beaming face, the sunflower magnet on the fridge, and the dream of real oil paints. She couldn't let her daughter's future be built on blood money, nor could she allow a mafia boss to hold a silent claim over their lives.
Elena looked at her watch. Her shift ended at four o’clock. She didn't care how powerful Mateo Vargas was, or how many armed guards he had surrounding his glass towers. She was going to find him, look him in the eye, and find out exactly what he wanted from her daughter.
