Chapter 297: Revealing The Secret

Chapter 297: Chapter 297: Revealing The Secret

The warm morning sun bled through the sheer white curtains of Aliya Rivers’ modern off-campus apartment, painting the dining nook in soft, golden light. The rich, enticing aroma of freshly brewed coffee and sizzling buttered toast filled the room, offering a cozy contrast to the crisp autumn breeze humming outside the glass balcony doors.

Sitting across from Aliya at the small glass table was Carroll—her roommate, close friend, and fellow university student. Carroll blew gently on her steaming mug, taking a quiet sip before looking up at Aliya, who was casually buttering a slice of sourdough while scrolling through her phone with her thumb.

"Hey, Al?" Carroll asked, setting her mug down on a cork coaster. "Did your brother ever give you a final confirmation about the trip to France? Our semester break is literally a week away, and I still need to know if I should finalize my leave at the campus library."

Aliya looked up from her screen, offering Carroll an easy, reassured smile. "Oh, yeah. Jake confirmed it a few days back. Flights, accommodations, private transport—everything’s fully taken care of. You don’t have to worry about a single detail. All we have to do is pack our bags and wait for the day to arrive."

Carroll let out a long, dramatic sigh of relief, slumping back against her chair. "Thank goodness. Honestly, please tell Jake I said thank you a million times. I still feel surreal about taking a private jet to Paris for break."

Aliya waved her hand dismissively with a soft laugh. "Don’t stress about it, Carroll. Seriously. To Jake, arranging a trip like this is about as complex as ordering a coffee. Just bring your passport and a appetite for croissants."

The two girls finished up their breakfast, leaving the dishes in the sink before retreating to the spacious living room couch to relax before their afternoon lectures. Carroll picked up her tablet, leaning back against the plush cushions, and opened her daily news app.

Not even ten seconds passed before Carroll froze, her eyes widening as her jaw slowly dropped.

"Wait... Aliya, look at this!" Carroll blurted out, turning the tablet screen directly toward her friend. "Is this real?! Did your brother actually drop over five billion marks yesterday to buy a pair of sovereign islands?!"

Aliya glanced at the bold, sweeping headline dominating the front page of every financial portal in Veyra: JAKE RIVERS SWEEPS MERIDIAN GALLERY GALA; BUYS TWIN ISLANDS FOR 5.2 BILLION MARKS.

Aliya chuckled quietly, leaning back against the sofa armrest. "Yup. It’s completely real. He bought them during the auction last night."

Carroll stared at her as if Aliya had just claimed her brother bought the moon. "I... I honestly didn’t even know you could just buy islands with full sovereign rights like that! Five billion marks for two thousand acres in the ocean?"

"Honestly?" Aliya grinned, her dark eyes twinkling with dry amusement. "I only found out yesterday too when the auctioneer brought out the catalog. I thought he was just bidding on a painting or some vintage watches."

Carroll shook her head in sheer, unadulterated awe, looking back at the glowing screen. "Man... money really does do the impossible, doesn’t it? With the right amount of cash, you can literally buy anything in this world."

The words had barely left Carroll’s mouth when Aliya suddenly stiffened. Her eyes widened in sudden, dramatic realization.

"Oh, my God..." Aliya gasped aloud.

Before Carroll could even ask what was wrong, Aliya sprang off the couch like a launched missile, her slippers sliding against the hardwood floor as she bolted down the hallway toward her bedroom.

"I ALMOST FORGOT!" Aliya screamed from her room, the sound echoing through the apartment followed by the loud clatter of desk drawers opening and closing.

Carroll sat on the couch, blinking in utter bewilderment at the empty hallway. "Forgot what?! Aliya, what’s wrong with you?!"

A few seconds later, Aliya came dashing back into the living room holding her ultra-thin laptop against her chest. She practically slid onto the coffee table, flipping the lid open and mashing the power button while her face lit up with a mischievous, manic grin.

Carroll raised an eyebrow, leaning over the back of the sofa to inspect her roommate’s sudden surge of chaos. "Okay, what on earth just came over you to make you react like a crazy person?"

Aliya’s fingers flew across her keyboard as the video editing software booted up. She looked back over her shoulder, her grin stretching from ear to ear. "I need to expose a massive secret that almost nobody in the world knows about yet."

Carroll chuckled dryly, shaking her head as she picked her coffee back up, assuming Aliya was just up to her usual dramatic social media antics. "Well... I already feel bad for whoever pissed you off this time."

Aliya just giggled, not bothering to correct her. "Oh, nobody pissed me off. In fact, people have been dying to find out this exact truth since last weekend. Just wait and see."

Aliya locked her focus back onto her screen. On her timeline sat the fully rendered, polished 4K vlog file from their trip to Switzerland weeks prior—the footage she had painstakingly edited after enduring Leon’s endless demands to fix his jawline and lighting in every frame.

She opened her official, verified video channel—which already boasted millions of subscribers tracking her lifestyle content though most only followed because she was Jake’s little sister—and began filling out the upload details.

TITLE: THE SECRETS OF GENEVA: INSIDE VIP BOX SIX & THE UNREVEALED $100,000,000 BUGATTI BUYER!

She attached a thumbnail featuring a sharp, candid group shot inside the ultra-exclusive VIP Box Six at the Grace Heritage Invitational: Jake Rivers looking cool and unbothered in his bespoke tuxedo, flanked by Noah, Marcus, Adrian, and Leon—all five founding members of Aurelia Capitals sitting together in a single frame.

Without hesitating for another second, Aliya hit [PUBLISH].

Within three minutes of the upload going live, the global internet hit an absolute wall.

It started as a trickle of notifications on campus, but within fifteen minutes, the video link spread across social media platforms, private investor forums, tech subreddits, and financial newsrooms like an unstoppable wildfire.

The vlog wasn’t just a casual travel video; it was an unprecedented, behind-the-scenes look into the most secretive circles of global wealth.

For the first time ever, the public saw all five partners of Aurelia Capitals laughing, bantering, and casually bidding tens of millions of dollars on ultra-rare hypercars like it was pocket change. But the absolute climax of the video—the moment that caused the global online sphere to completely implode—came near the end.

The vlog cut directly to the high-stakes final lot of the Grace Heritage Invitational: the 2021 Bugatti La Voiture Noire, opening at fifty million dollars. The video captured the arrogant Middle Eastern heir shouting his sixty-five-million-dollar bid, daring the room to top him.

And then, the camera turned to Jake Rivers.

The audio captured Jake’s quiet, effortless command—"Elias"—followed by the sharp, ringing ’chime’ of VIP Box Six as a mind-boggling $100,000,000 bid flashed across the screen, utterly crushing the entire room into silence and leaving the auctioneer gasping for air.

The comment section on Aliya’s video broke down into complete, chaotic hysteria:

> @CryptoKing_99: "NO WAY. NO FREAKING WAY. THE MYSTERY $100M BUGATTI BUYER WAS JAKE RIVERS THIS WHOLE TIME?!"

> @FinanceBro_Veyra: "Bro dropped $100M on a single car in Geneva, came back home, and bought two sovereign islands for $5.2B a few weeks later?! WHAT IS HIS LIQUIDITY?!"

> @AureliaFanatic: "Seeing all 5 Aurelia Capitals founders sitting in one VIP box together is terrifying. Their families literally own the entire financial ecosystem."

> @TechTrader_Leo: "The Middle Eastern dressed guy dropping his paddle when Jake dropped $100M is the greatest piece of cinema I have ever seen in my entire life ??????"

> @WallStreetDaily: "This single vlog just solved the biggest financial mystery in the automotive world. Jake Rivers is operating in a tier above everyone else."

Within an hour, news networks across Veyra and Europe cut into their scheduled broadcasts to report on the viral vlog, confirming that the legendary $100 million Bugatti sale in Geneva had indeed been executed by none other than Jake Rivers.

Back in the apartment, Carroll sat glued to her tablet screen, watching the view counter on Aliya’s video leap from fifty thousand to over ten million views in real time. Her eyes shifted from the screen to Aliya, who was lounging back on the rug with a satisfied, triumphant smirk on her face.

"Aliya..." Carroll whispered, her voice trembling slightly in absolute shock. "Your brother... he spent a hundred million dollars on a car in Switzerland?"

Aliya took a slow sip of her juice, winking playfully at her roommate. "I told you, Carroll. Some secrets are just too big to keep forever."

"But that’s a billion marks," Carroll said as tried to comprehend the logic behind it. "He spent a billion marks on a car?"

"You see..." Aliya said with a grin. "Those islands seem pretty cheap now, don’t they?"

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