While My Husband Cheated I Married His Powerful Brother novel Chapter 129

Chapter 129: Chapter 129 A Forced Apology

​The silence in the room felt heavy, almost suffocating. You could hear the faint noise of the fluorescent lights overhead and nothing else.

​Professor Sterling stood near the heavy oak door, his shoulders completely slumped. His face had lost all its usual color, leaving his skin looking ash-gray and tired. His hands hung uselessly at his sides like he had simply run out of energy to hold himself up. He looked ten years older than he had when he first walked into the office twenty minutes ago.

​Slowly, he turned his body toward Xiomara. His voice sounded flat and exhausted.

​"Apologize."

​Xiomara blinked, staring at him as if he had just spoken a foreign language. "What?"

​"Apologize to Mrs. Thorne," Professor Sterling said, his tone leaving no room for argument. "Right now."

​Xiomara’s face twisted into an ugly expression of pure shock. "Professor, you can’t be serious. You’re taking her side?"

​"I am completely serious, Xiomara."

​She shook her head rapidly, her styled hair flying around her face. "I am not apologizing to her! She ambushed me. She attacked me, she humiliated me in front of everyone, she—"

​"She exposed you," Professor Sterling cut in. His voice cracked like a whip across the quiet room. "She didn’t ambush you, Xiomara. She exposed your lies. Your manipulation. Your sheer cruelty."

​A bright, blotchy red flushed up Xiomara’s neck and onto her cheeks. "She set me up! It was a trap!"

​"She recorded the exact words that came out of your own mouth," the professor replied, staring at her with cold disappointment. "That is not a setup. That is plain evidence."

​Xiomara’s hands curled into tight fists at her sides, her long nails digging hard into her palms. Her chest heaved up and down as her breathing grew heavy and loud. She spun around and glared at Veyra, her eyes practically burning with hatred.

​For a long moment, she didn’t say a single word. She just stood there, fuming.

​Professor Sterling didn’t back down. His gaze remained hard, his voice dropping an octave into something cold and unyielding.

​"Apologize."

​Xiomara’s jaw tightened so hard Veyra could hear her teeth grinding together from across the room. She looked down at the floor, refusing to meet anyone’s eye.

​"I’m sorry," she muttered. The words were barely a whisper, completely swallowed by the quiet room.

​Veyra tilted her head, keeping her expression completely neutral. "What was that? I couldn’t hear you."

​The red on Xiomara’s face deepened into a dark crimson. "I said I’m sorry!"

​"Still didn’t hear you properly," Veyra said calmly.

​Xiomara’s hands began to shake with rage. She raised her voice, almost shouting it this time. "I’m sorry!"

​Veyra shook her head, crossing her arms over her chest. "That’s not good enough, Xiomara."

​Xiomara’s eyes snapped open wide, full of disbelief. "What do you mean it’s not good enough? I said the words!"

​"I mean you aren’t actually sorry," Veyra told her, stepping a little closer. "You aren’t remorseful at all. You’re just scared because you got caught. I know how your mind works. If I let you walk out of this restaurant right now with a half-hearted mumbled apology, you’ll go straight to social media. You’ll leak a spun version of the story. You’ll twist the narrative, leave out what you said, and turn me into the villain like you always do."

​Xiomara opened her mouth to argue, closed it, and then opened it again, but no sound came out. She was completely trapped and she knew it.

​Veyra pulled her phone out of her pocket, tapped the screen to wake it up, and held it up between them so Xiomara could see the audio file saved on the screen.

​"Should I post this raw recording straight to the medical university student forum?" Veyra asked, keeping her voice mild. "Should we let the whole campus, the faculty, and the board hear what the top scorer really sounds like when she thinks nobody is listening?"

​All the color drained out of Xiomara’s face in an instant. Her eyes locked onto the screen, wide with genuine panic.

​"No," she breathed out.

​"No?" Veyra repeated.

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