The President
Chapter 1 The Weight of the Crown
The heavy, mahogany doors of the Student Government Association office at the University of Chicago creaked as Zaria leaned against them, finally closing out the rhythmic, echoing noise of the bustling campus. Outside, the Chicago wind was beginning to howl through the Gothic quadrangles, but inside, the air was still and smelled faintly of old paper and expensive floor wax. At twenty-two, Zaria carried herself with a gravitas that belied her petite five-foot-two frame. As the SGA President, she was the face of thousands of students—a role she took with a level of seriousness that bordered on the religious, balancing a six-figure budget and the political whims of the administration.
She caught her reflection in the full-length mirror behind her desk and took a moment to adjust her blazer. The professional charcoal fabric, tailored to within an inch of its life, still strained noticeably across her chest. Zaria had always been gifted—or perhaps cursed, in the context of academic politics—with a powerhouse hourglass figure. Her waist was narrow, a sharp contrast to the lush curve of her hips and the generous swell of her bust that no amount of structured tailoring could truly hide. Even at her shortest, she was impossible to overlook; she occupied space with an undeniable physical magnetism.
Her skin was a radiant, deep bronze, possessing a natural, supple glow that looked as though it were perpetually caught in the warmth of a sunset, even in the dead of a Midwestern winter. She reached up, smoothing the edges of her hair—a magnificent halo of dark, tightly coiled 4C curls that framed her face with defiant volume. She took pride in her hair; it was a crown she wore with precision, each coil a testament to the discipline she applied to every facet of her life.
"President Zaria," she whispered to herself, the title a mantra to steady her nerves. A small, tired smile tugged at her full, plum-colored lips. "You’ve got this. Just one more semester."
She sat down in her leather chair, the springs groaning softly under her weight, and opened her laptop. She expected the usual deluge of emails: demands from the Black Student Union for more lounge space, complaints about the library’s heating, or budget requests for the spring formal. Instead, at the very top of her inbox, was a message from the Office of the Bursar. The subject line was cold, stripped of any collegiate warmth: URGENT: ADMISSION FELLOWSHIP STATUS UPDATE.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird in a cage, as she read the lines of sterile, bureaucratic prose. Due to a sudden administrative "restructuring" of the doctoral endowment and an unforeseen shortfall in state-level grants, Zaria’s full-ride fellowship for the upcoming Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program had been rescinded. Because the deadline for standard financial aid had passed weeks ago, the university was requiring a "Good Faith Admission Deposit" to secure her spot and cover the first year’s shortfall.
The number at the bottom of the screen was a staggering, impossible $50,000.
The air seemed to leave the room. Zaria’s family back in Georgia couldn't help; she was the one who sent money home from her meager stipends to help her mother with her sister's medical bills. To them, she was the success story—the "President" who had conquered the North. Her eyes blurred as she looked at a framed photo on her desk. It was a picture of her and Caleb, taken at Navy Pier last summer. Caleb, a lanky, pale medical resident with kind eyes and a perpetually exhausted smile, had his arm draped around her, his hand resting comfortably on her shoulder. He was her rock, the one person who saw her not as the "Powerful President" or the "voluptuous student leader," but just as Zaria.
She picked up her phone to call him, her thumb hovering over his contact. Then she stopped. Caleb was currently in the middle of a thirty-hour shift at Northwestern Memorial. He was already drowning in his own six-figure student debt, living on lukewarm caffeine and four hours of sleep snatched in on-call rooms. If she told him, he would try to save her. He would take out more predatory loans or work himself into a breakdown, and in doing so, he would break the future they were trying to build together.
Zaria set the phone down with a hollow click. A strange, cold resolve began to settle over her, a numbness that started in her fingertips and moved toward her heart. She looked at her reflection in the mirror again, but the perspective had shifted. For the first time, she didn't see the President or the scholar. She saw the 5'2" woman with the "magnetic" physique that people always stared at just a second too long in the dining hall.
She remembered the comments she usually filtered out—the way the older donors at the university galas would linger a beat too long when shaking her hand, their eyes roaming over the curve of her hips. She thought of Mr. Henderson, the building manager of her South Loop apartment, who always seemed to "happen" to be in the hallway when she got home, his gaze fixed on her with a heavy, hungry transparency. He had even "accidentally" brushed against the small of her back last week while "checking the pipes," his hand lingering on her smooth skin.
A desperate thought, dark and seductive, flickered in her mind. She opened a new browser tab, her fingers flying across the keys with a frantic energy. She typed into the search bar: High-end hostessing Chicago Loop. Discreet. Immediate pay.
The results populated instantly. Chicago’s underbelly was vast and wealthy. A notification popped up from a site called The Gold Coast Exchange. The landing page was minimalist and expensive-looking, featuring a silhouette of a woman whose curves mirrored her own.
“Seeking elegant, professional women for VIP client relations. $1,000 to $5,000 per night. Complete discretion guaranteed. Join The President’s Club—where elite status meets absolute privacy.”
Zaria’s hand trembled as she clicked the link. The name was a cruel irony, a mockery of the title she had worked so hard to earn. But as she scrolled through the requirements—"exceptional physical presence," "refined social skills," "willingness to accommodate elite needs"—the math began to do itself in her head. Fifty nights. Maybe less.
She looked down at her smooth, bronze hands, then back at the $50,000 figure on her screen. To save her future with Caleb, to remain the woman the university respected, she realized she might have to become someone else entirely under the neon lights of the city. The "Shame" she felt was a sharp, physical sting in her throat, a sickening realization of the line she was about to cross.
Yet, beneath that shame, a tiny, flickering spark of "Lust" for the solution—for the raw, primal power that her body held over the wallets of powerful men—began to burn. It was a terrifying sensation, a heat that made her skin tingle. She picked up her pen and began to take notes on the application requirements, her transformation from President to Protagonist beginning in the cold, prestigious silence of the office.