The Boy They Chose to Blame
Chapter 05 - The Boy They Chose to Blame
Bryce Dalton preferred his cruelty loud, easy, and protected by witnesses.
That was why no one was surprised when he picked a fight in the student union the next afternoon—only that he picked it with Malik.
Malik had been standing at the coffee counter arguing with a vending machine that ate his last five-dollar bill when Bryce walked in with two teammates and the heavy swagger of someone who believed campus rules existed to protect him from consequences.
“Hey,” Bryce called across the room. “Tell your roommate I found a better ride for him.”
He tossed a rusted bicycle bell onto the table.
A few students laughed nervously.
Malik stared at it, then at Bryce.
“You rehearse these, or do they just come to you when oxygen gets low?”
The room sharpened immediately.
Bryce’s smile flattened.
“You think you’re funny because your boy has money now?”
“Now?” Malik said. “Try again.”
Bryce stepped closer.
Julian had not arrived yet. He was still in the engineering lab meeting with a faculty adviser. Malik knew the smartest choice would have been silence. He also knew that after years of being underestimated, silence sometimes felt too much like permission.
Bryce leaned in.
“Guys like you always get brave when you think a rich friend adopted you.”
Before Malik could answer, a voice cut through the room.
“That’s enough.”
Maya Flores stood two tables away, backpack slung over one shoulder, expression clear and unimpressed.
Bryce gave her a quick dismissive glance.
“Mind your business.”
“This became everyone’s business when you started performing.”
Students had begun filming again.
Bryce hated being challenged by people he considered beneath the hierarchy.
He reached for the bicycle bell, but instead his hand knocked into Malik’s coffee, sending it across the table and onto the floor.
Security was called.
And within twenty minutes, the official version of the incident had already begun taking shape.
Not Bryce harassed a student.
Not Bryce provoked a confrontation.
But two scholarship students created a disturbance in the union after a “verbal misunderstanding.”
By evening, Malik had been warned by student conduct. Bryce had not.
Julian learned all of it when he came back from lab and found Malik pacing their room with the union incident report crumpled in one fist.
Julian read it once.
Then again.
Bryce had claimed Malik “lunged toward him in a threatening manner.”
Two student witnesses—both lacrosse players—backed the account.
Maya submitted a statement disputing it, but the review had already been marked closed pending no further escalation.
Julian set the paper down carefully.
“This is how they do it,” Malik said, voice low with fury. “Not big enough to make headlines. Just enough to remind you the place belongs to them.”
Julian looked up.
“They chose the wrong day.”
That night he requested the union security footage through a private compliance contact his grandmother had quietly embedded inside Bellmere’s general counsel office. By morning, the answer came back strange.
No footage available due to temporary server malfunction.
Julian did not believe in coincidences with timing that neat.
He went straight to the union manager, an overworked woman named Denise Keller who had once worked with his mother on student pantry drives.
When he introduced himself properly, Denise went pale.
“You look exactly like Anna around the eyes,” she said.
Then she looked around to make sure they were alone and lowered her voice.
“The cameras didn’t malfunction.”
“Then where is the footage?”
“Dean Ashford’s office requested it before conduct did.”
Julian felt something cold settle into place.
“Why would the dean’s office touch a cafeteria argument?”
Denise gave him a look that answered the question better than words.
Because Bellmere knew exactly which students it protected.
Before he left, Denise handed him a thin flash drive.
“There’s no sound,” she said. “One of the kitchen cameras doesn’t feed to the central system. They forgot it exists because it’s old. I kept a copy.”
Julian closed his hand around the drive.
That was twice in three days that someone at Bellmere forgot old things could still matter.
When he returned to his room that evening, Sienna was waiting in the hallway.
She was alone again, and this time she looked less polished and more frightened.
“Bryce is saying Malik shoved him,” she said without preamble.
“I know.”
“He’s lying.”
“I know that too.”
Sienna crossed her arms against the cold.
“My father told conduct to keep it quiet.”
Julian watched her.
“Why are you telling me?”
“Because I’m tired.”
“That isn’t the same as honest.”
“No,” she said. “But it’s a beginning.”
He could not tell yet whether that was true.
Then Sienna said, “You’re going to bring this up at the gala, aren’t you?”
Julian said nothing.
She took a step closer.
“If you do, my father will come after whoever he thinks gave you information.”
“Then perhaps your father shouldn’t build his career out of theft and small humiliations.”
For the first time since the courtyard, Sienna looked genuinely ashamed—not because she had been caught, but because she recognized herself in the architecture around her.
Julian went inside without another word.
At his desk, he plugged in the flash drive.
The video showed exactly what he expected.
Bryce taunting.
Malik standing his ground.
Maya intervening.
Coffee knocked over by Bryce himself.
No lunge. No threat. No ambiguity.
Julian leaned back in his chair and watched it once more.
Then he opened the Bellmere gala program on his laptop.
Dean Ashford would speak at eight-thirty.
The major donor presentation would begin at nine.
And at nine-fifteen, Bellmere was planning to celebrate integrity, generosity, and the future.
Julian looked at the frozen image of Bryce Dalton sneering into the kitchen camera.
Then he looked at the budget sheet showing scholarship money rerouted to the dean’s residence.
May you like
The gala, he decided, was about to become useful.
But twenty-four hours before it began, he was going to learn that the dean had already made plans for him too.
