The second Adrian was escorted out, the classroom went full fucking nuclear. Chairs scraped back like students were evacuating a disaster zone. Whispers flew across rows like ammunition, phones materializing faster than you could say “academic scandal.”

“Did you see his face?”

“Someone said he was sleeping with a student.”

“Is it true? Is it her?”

I sat frozen, jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth, hands curled into fists that could probably punch through my desk.

My pulse was doing this thing where it forgot how to function normally, but I heard Cleo’s voice cutting through the chaos like a foghorn.

“What the actual fuck does Dr. Vaughn have on him?” she asked, eyes wide as dinner plates. “Like, what did she even report? And does she— Oh fuck, does she know about you two?”

I swallowed what felt like broken glass and lied, “I don’t know.”

Cleo leaned closer, voice dropping to that stage whisper that somehow carries better than regular talking.

“Sophie. Babe. I know we joke about your thing for masks and emotionally unavailable men with possible criminal records, but this is serious. The police took him away. In actual handcuffs.”

“I fucking know that,” I snapped, sharper than I meant to.

Her expression crumpled like I’d just kicked her favorite puppy.

I exhaled slowly, trying to find some semblance of human decency in my emotional wreckage. “I’m sorry. I just— I need a minute.”

She nodded, but I could see the worry radiating off her like heat from asphalt. “Okay. Just… be careful.”

I grabbed my bag and practically sprinted from the room, heart doing its best impression of a dying star collapsing in on itself.

The hallways felt too bright, too normal, too full of people going about their regular Tuesday bullshit while my entire world had just imploded in front of thirty witnesses with camera phones.

I didn’t stop walking until I reached her office. Dr. Lisette Vaughn’s name was still polished on the door like nothing had happened.

Like she hadn’t just detonated a nuclear bomb in the middle of my life for reasons I was starting to understand with horrifying clarity.

I didn’t knock. Fuck politeness.

She looked up, startled, as I burst through her door like an avenging angel with serious anger management issues. “Sophie?”

“You turned him in,” I said, because subtlety was apparently not on today’s menu.

She stood from her desk with that practiced grace that suggested she’d been expecting this conversation. “I did what needed to be done.”

“Don’t give me that sanctimonious bullshit,” I spat. “You reported him to the fucking police. You couldn’t just go to the academic board? You had to make it a public execution?”

“It wasn’t a show,” she said with the kind of even tone that meant she’d rehearsed this conversation. “It was time someone stepped forward and called him out.”

“Bullshit.” My voice was shaking with fury I didn’t know I was capable of. “If I wasn’t involved, you never would’ve done shit. Would you?”

Vaughn went quiet, which was basically a confession wrapped in academic silence.

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