Hate Me Like You Love Me (Serena and Caleb) novel Chapter 96

Serena’s POV

The thing about watching an empire crumble is that it doesn't happen with a dramatic crash — it happens in small, precise withdrawals, like blood leaving a face.

My father sits at the kitchen table with his laptop open, scrolling through press coverage that multiplies by the hour. The article has been live for two days, and Richard Bennett's firm is bleeding out in public.

Three corporate clients pulled their retainers yesterday. Two more issued statements this morning — carefully worded, legally sanitized paragraphs that all say the same thing: We don't want our name anywhere near yours.

"Hargrove & Lyle just announced they're moving their accounts," my father says, his voice carrying the flat affect of a man reading a casualty list. "That's thirty percent of Bennett's commercial litigation portfolio gone in forty-eight hours."

Catherine leans against the counter, her arms crossed, watching him with the careful attention of someone who's learned to read catastrophe in the spaces between words. "What about the partners?"

"Two senior partners gave interviews distancing themselves from Richard personally. One of them used the phrase 'deeply troubled by the allegations' on camera."

My father closes the laptop with a slow, deliberate click. "The cooperation Richard promised me at the engagement party is officially dead. His firm is in survival mode, and we're not allies anymore — we're collateral damage he can't afford to be associated with."

I sit across from him, my hands wrapped around a mug of coffee that went cold twenty minutes ago.

The warmth I expected to feel at the Bennetts' downfall hasn't arrived. Instead, there's a tight knot of dread low in my stomach, the instinct of a pre-law student who understands that wounded animals are the most dangerous kind.

"They're going to retaliate," I say.

My father meets my eyes. "They already have."

His phone buzzes against the table. He picks it up, reads the screen, and the muscles in his jaw tighten in a way that tells me everything before he speaks.

"That was David Chen. He's forwarding a filing the Bennetts submitted this morning." My father sets the phone down carefully, as though placing a grenade.

"They've filed a countersuit. Defamation and civil conspiracy — against the victims, against Rachel's legal team, against anyone whose name appeared in the public statement or cooperated with the reporter."

The knot in my stomach pulls tighter. "Who's named?"

"Rachel." He pauses. "And you."

The kitchen goes quiet. Catherine's hands drop to her sides. I hear the refrigerator humming, the tick of the clock above the stove — all the mundane noises that keep going when your world shifts beneath you.

"On what grounds?" My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "I didn't make any public statement. My name wasn't even in the article."

"You don't need to be quoted for them to claim you participated in a coordinated effort to damage their reputation."

My father rubs the bridge of his nose, exhaustion carved into every line of his face. "David says it's a SLAPP suit — Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation. It's not designed to win. It's designed to drown us in legal fees until we can't afford to keep fighting."

"So they're suing the women their son assaulted for talking about it." Catherine's voice is low and precise, the controlled fury of a woman who recognizes a bully's playbook from personal experience. "That's what this is."

The words land in my chest and settle there, warm and aching at the same time.

Catherine reaches over and squeezes my father's hand. "We'll figure out the money. One bill at a time, one hearing at a time. This family has survived worse than invoices."

The doorbell rings before any of us can respond.

My father opens it to find a process server — a young man in a polo shirt with a clipboard and the professionally blank expression of someone paid to deliver bad news without absorbing any of it.

He confirms my full name, hands me an envelope, and asks me to sign.

I sign. He leaves. The whole exchange takes less than a minute.

I stare at the envelope in my hands. Thick, official, my name printed in black type with the kind of formal precision that belongs to institutions, not people.

I open it at the kitchen table while my father and Catherine watch.

The language is dense and procedural, but the core of it is simple enough to understand on a single read. I am being formally subpoenaed to testify — not just in the university's Title IX process, but in the criminal trial of Lucas Bennett. The date is printed in bold at the bottom, three weeks from today.

My hands don't shake. My voice doesn't crack. I read the date once, read it again, and set the document on the table between us.

"Three weeks," I say. "I'm going to trial."