“I heard Ethan dropped out.”

Cleo’s voice hit me mid-step, slicing through the late afternoon haze. I blinked, almost stumbling on the stairs outside the library.

“What?”

She barely looked up, thumbing through her phone like she was scrolling past a weather update. “Gone. Packed his stuff. Dorm’s empty. Just… vanished.”

My breath caught. “Seriously?”

“You didn’t know?” Her eyes flicked to me, curious. A little too curious.

“No,” I said, too fast. “Why would I?”

She studied me for a second. I forced a neutral expression. A shrug.

“Looked like hell last week,” she muttered. “Didn’t think he’d bail just ’cause of a breakup.”

I swallowed hard, trying to hold the indifference in my voice. “Not my fault he ghosted me first.”

“Mmm.” She tapped something on her screen, gaze drifting. “Some people just can’t handle watching their ex glow up.”

I smiled, tight-lipped. “Guess not.”

But my stomach coiled. Because I had known.

I’d seen Ethan’s face that night, wide-eyed, broken, duct-taped and bound to a chair, when Adrian tied me to the table and took me apart piece by piece.

When he leaned in close behind me and whispered, “Let him see what he threw away.”

And apparently, he did. He saw everything. The way I begged, the way I screamed. The way I came undone, over and over, for someone else.

He watched me choose it and now he was gone. Just like that.

I was halfway to class when the hallway turned arctic. I didn’t even have to look.

“You did that.” Dr. Vaughn. Because apparently my day wasn’t fucked enough already.

I turned. Her heels clicked against the linoleum like a countdown to my academic execution, arms folded, jaw sharp enough to cut glass.

“He’s gone because of you.”

I lifted my chin. “You don’t know what happened.”

Her laugh was bitter enough to strip paint. “I do, I know Lewis very well. I know his patterns. You think you’re in control, Sophie? Well that’s adorable.”

“I didn’t force Ethan to leave.”

“You didn’t have to.” She stepped closer, and I could smell her expensive perfume mixed with barely contained rage. “You let that man get inside your head. Let him convince you that surrendering your agency was empowerment. Classic manipulation 101.”

“I—” My stomach clenched. “He didn’t make me—”

“Don’t.” Vaughn’s voice went sharp. “That man feeds on damaged girls who think they’re special. He makes you believe you chose it while he’s pulling every string. That’s what he did to me. That’s what he’s doing to you.”

“I’m not you.”

She smiled—slow, cold, devastating. “You will be. Or worse.”

“Why do you even care?” I asked, because this felt personal in ways that went beyond academic concern.

“Because I hate him,” she said, voice trembling with barely controlled fury. “And I’m not going to let another girl get psychologically dismantled while this university pretends inappropriate relationships don’t destroy students.”

My breath caught. “You’re going to report him?”

“Not just to the board. I’m going public. Everything he did to me. The pattern of predatory behavior. The way he targets vulnerable students and calls it mentorship.”

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify