My Roommate Called My Dad My Sugar Daddy? Oops, There Goes Her Fellowship Chapter 07

My Roommate Called My Dad My Sugar Daddy? Oops, There Goes Her Fellowship Chapter 07

The statement had barely been posted when the scandal took a new turn.

Joanne Vance came storming into the department building.

Two relatives followed her, along with someone filming on a phone.

Joanne planted herself in the doorway of the student affairs office, her voice sharp enough to carry down the

hall.

“Where is Claire Hensley?”

“Get her out here!”

“She calls herself a struggling student while meeting my husband in hotels and taking money from my

family?”

“She wants fairness? Today the entire campus is going to see exactly how fair she is.”

Every office door on the floor opened.

Rachel hurried out to stop her.

“Ma’am, this is a working office. Please calm down.”

Joanne threw a stack of photos down on the desk.

“I can’t calm down!”

“My husband is Preston Vance, and he wired her money, bought her a phone, bought her clothes, and booked

her hotels.”

“And she has the nerve to accuse another woman of having a sugar daddy?”

“How dare she?”

The hallway erupted.

Somebody recognized her.

“That’s Vance’s wife, isn’t it?”

“Oh my God, the actual wife showed up?”

“So Claire really was on the hotel floor last night?”

I stood in the doorway of Ms. Mercer’s office as a chill ran down my spine.

Claire came up the stairs, and the moment she saw Joanne, her face went white.

She still did not cry.

She only stopped where she was and said quietly, “Mrs. Vance, you’ve misunderstood.”

Joanne gave a cold laugh.

“Misunderstood?”

“You know perfectly well this is not a misunderstanding.”

“Send my husband one more late-night message or ask him for one more dollar, and my attorney will handle

the rest.”

“I will recover every cent through my attorney.”

Claire’s lips shook.

“He helped me because he wanted to.”

“My family is struggling.”

Joanne laughed in disbelief.

“Struggling?”

“Does being broke give you the right to chase a married man?”

Her voice carried through the entire floor.

Everyone nearby heard every word.

Claire finally lifted her head and looked at me.

Her look was full of venom.

The commotion soon brought campus security.

She had not shown up empty-handed.

There were photos, hotel records, receipts, transfer screenshots, and printed message logs.

Each document was more damning than the last.

The university could not treat privately supplied records as conclusive evidence without verification.

But they were enough to open a formal review and require Claire to respond.

The financial aid office called her in for an interview soon afterward.

She stuck to the same explanation.

“That was not regular income.”

“I never demanded any of it.”

“Mr. Vance described some of it as support for a student in need.”

Rachel asked, “If it was substantial financial support, why did you omit it from your aid application?”

Claire was silent for a long time.

“I was afraid the other students would look down on me.”

When I heard that, I nearly laughed out loud.

She was afraid of being looked down on.

She accepted thousands of dollars from Preston while continuing to collect need-based aid from the

university.

She left the hotel’s guest-room floor, then photographed me and implied that I had a sugar daddy.

She was never truly afraid of being judged.

She was afraid of being exposed.

At the same time, investigators uncovered problems with a research paper Claire had listed in her fellowship application.

The metadata on the earliest draft listed someone else as the author.

She had also wired twelve hundred dollars to an academic ghostwriting service.

The memo line said it plainly: final payment for research paper.

The department suspended her eligibility for awards and removed her from active alternate consideration.