The glass doors slid shut behind Richard Ellis, the billionaire CEO of the Green Valley empire. The silence in the pharmacy was deafening.
The manager stammered, stepping back so fast he knocked over a display of vitamins. “Mr. Ellis… I—I didn’t know she was—”
“You didn’t know she was my mother?” Richard’s voice was ice. “Or you didn’t know she was the Chairman of the Board?”
Margaret’s frail, trembling posture instantly vanished. She squared her shoulders, suddenly radiating the ruthless, undeniable authority of a corporate titan. She tossed her cheap beige scarf onto the counter.
“We’ve been secretly auditing stores for six months,” Margaret said, her voice snapping like a whip. “Corporate flagged this branch for a massive drop in community assistance funds. Now I know why. You’ve been forcing cashiers to reject low-income patients and pocketing the corporate subsidies yourself.”
The manager’s face turned the color of ash. “No! I can explain!”
Margaret tapped the $100 bill Noah had just placed on the counter. “Can you? I just watched you void this transaction on your terminal to mark the medicine as stolen inventory.”
Two uniformed officers stepped through the sliding doors behind Richard.
“Escort him out,” Richard ordered.
As the manager was handcuffed and dragged away, whining protests, the pharmacy was completely still. Richard turned to the stunned teenage cashier.
Margaret smiled, her eyes softening as she looked at Noah.
“Noah, your application for our corporate medical scholarship was maliciously denied by him last month,” Margaret said softly. “I decided to review it personally. But I needed to know if you actually had the heart of a doctor first.”
She slid his $100 bill back across the counter, placing a pristine gold card on top of it.
“Clock out, son. Your tuition at Johns Hopkins is fully paid for.”