The whispers continued among the crowd. “They’ve always been a little out of control, but I never thought they’d actually do something like this!” “I saw them walking in together earlier… I think it was Henry leading them.” “Henry? Him again! It’s bad enough that he bullies classmates around campus, but now he’s even leading a group to extort money from another student?” “This is terrifying! This kind of thing actually happened at Governance University? It’s insane! If the police hadn’t gotten here in time, who knows what they would’ve done to Arthur once they all jumped him!” Their voices weren’t loud, but every word made it to Henry and the others. As the police began preparing to take them away, panic spread through the group. Henry ignored the pain from Arthur’s earlier kick and quickly said, “No! Sir, Mr. Mateo, we didn’t extort Arthur!” Hearing Henry still trying to weasel his way out of it made Mateo nearly explode with rage. The scandal with Finley had already tainted the school’s reputation; now they were dealing with group extortion happening right on campus. And even after getting caught red-handed, they still refused to admit it! Mateo couldn’t imagine how this would damage Governance University’s name from now on. If Hugo hadn’t been present to take control, Mateo might’ve seriously started to wonder if the school could even survive this. He snapped, “Not extortion? Then what the heck were you doing here? Why did you try to attack Arthur?” Mateo’s fury reached a boiling point; even his hands were trembling as he yelled. Time after time, these students kept targeting Hugo’s student—piling blame and public opinion on Arthur. What if Hugo decides he doesn’t want to stay at Governance University anymore? Mateo didn’t even want to imagine the fallout. Governance wasn’t the only law and politics university in the country. So many schools were itching to knock them off the top, waiting for any chance to climb to number one. They’d love nothing more than to see Governance University go down in flames. Now, with both these scandals out in the open, Mateo had no idea how to salvage their reputation. Henry didn’t even look at Mateo’s thunderous face; he was too desperate to explain. “We really didn’t extort anyone! Arthur was blocking the door, and everyone panicked—that’s why we tried to push past him!” The other students exchanged uneasy glances; something felt off, but there was no time to argue. Suddenly, they remembered what Henry had said before everything blew up. Right! As long as we stick to our story—there aren’t even any cameras in there—what can Arthur do to us? With that in mind, the ones who had rushed Arthur started chiming in. “Yeah, yeah—Arthur wouldn’t let us leave! We were just trying to open the door! We came here to talk with him, not to extort anything!” “Exactly! Officer, you can’t arrest innocent people! We didn’t do anything—Arthur’s making this up! Please, don’t believe him!” “He set us up! We never tried to extort him! This is Governance University—we know the law! Why would we knowingly break it?” “Right! We only came to talk. We barely said two words before Arthur called the cops—then he attacked Henry and kicked him across the room when he tried to leave!” One student pointed directly at Henry, his voice sharp with anger. He hadn’t said anything until now, but he’d heard Henry trying to pin it all on them. Trying to cut ties and save yourself? Not a chance. Arthur pondered. Saying “the others tried to open the door” might technically be true, but it made it sound like only the rest of them had rushed Arthur—leaving Henry out of it completely. But from start to finish, Henry had been the one calling the shots. Henry had Finley behind him. Out of everyone in the group, only Henry had any kind of backing. The rest were just regular students. And now, they understood something very clearly, they needed to drag Henry in with them—force him to stand on their side. That was the only way they had any hope of getting out of this.The second Henry heard his name, his head whipped around, eyes blazing at the student who’d spoken. Just like that, his plan to distance himself fell apart—and, sure enough, the moment that student finished speaking, all the police turned and looked directly at Henry.