Chapter 4 - The Girl Everyone Blamed
By Monday morning, Sabrina Vale had become the most hated woman on campus.
Someone leaked a screenshot showing she had filmed Mason and Evelyn.
Students called her jealous.
Obsessed.
Vindictive.
Videos appeared mocking her.
Comments flooded her social media accounts.
For the first time, Sabrina understood what Evelyn had experienced forty-eight hours earlier.
Only now the crowd was coming for her.
She stopped attending classes.
Her father stopped answering her calls after learning she had implicated the university president.
Mason found her sitting alone inside an underground parking garage near the law school.
“What are you doing here?”
She looked up.
“Hiding.”
“From who?”
“Everybody.”
Mason sat on the concrete barrier beside her.
Sabrina laughed weakly.
“You know what’s funny?”
“What?”
“I wanted people angry at her.”
Mason said nothing.
“I thought if everybody saw that kiss, they’d hate Professor Hart.”
“They did.”
“Now they hate me.”
She wiped beneath one eye.
“I guess that’s karma.”
“This isn’t karma.”
“I edited her life into twelve seconds.”
“No. Hale did.”
“I gave him the video.”
“That was wrong.”
“Thanks.”
“You wanted honesty.”
“I wanted you back.”
Mason looked away.
Sabrina studied him.
“You really do care about her.”
“She doesn’t want anything from me.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Mason did not answer.
Sabrina sighed.
“I found something.”
She handed him a flash drive.
“What is it?”
“When my cloud files disappeared, I checked my laptop cache.”
“And?”
“There’s a corrupted temporary copy of the original video.”
“Can it be recovered?”
“Maybe.”
“Who can do it?”
“My roommate’s brother works in digital forensics.”
“Call him.”
“I already did.”
Mason looked at her.
For the first time since the scandal, Sabrina seemed less like an angry ex-girlfriend and more like someone trying to repair damage.
Meanwhile, Evelyn sat in her apartment reading emails from former students.
Some supported her.
Some demanded answers.
One message came from a student she had taught three years earlier.
Professor Hart, you stayed after class with me for two hours when my father died. I don’t believe what they’re saying.
Another said:
You made international students feel like we belonged here. Please don’t disappear.
Evelyn cried for the first time.
Not because she felt weak.
Because kindness hurt more when you had spent days expecting cruelty.
Then someone knocked.
Rachel walked in carrying two grocery bags.
“You look terrible.”
Evelyn hugged her.
“You flew here?”
“You sounded like somebody who needed a sister.”
Rachel placed the groceries down.
“Also, Mom told me to bring soup.”
Evelyn blinked.
“Mom knows?”
“The internet exists in Illinois too.”
“Oh God.”
“She thinks Mason is handsome.”
“Rachel.”
“I’m trying to lighten the mood.”
“Please don’t.”
Rachel became serious.
“What’s happening?”
Evelyn told her about Caroline.
The scholarship money.
The photographs.
Charles Reed.
Victor Hale.
When she finished, Rachel stared.
“You’ve been carrying this for nine years?”
“I didn’t know what I had.”
“You knew enough to be afraid.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because Mom was sick. You were seventeen. What was I supposed to say?”
Rachel sat beside her.
“That you were scared.”
Evelyn looked down.
“I thought silence would protect us.”
“It didn’t.”
“No.”
Her phone rang.
Dean Collins.
Evelyn answered.
“Professor Hart, I found something.”
“What?”
“I checked archived financial reports from the year Caroline died.”
Evelyn stood.
“And?”
“There are discrepancies.”
“How large?”
“Approximately eleven million dollars.”
Rachel mouthed, Eleven million?
Evelyn put the call on speaker.
Collins continued.
“Payments were made to three consulting companies.”
“Who owned them?”
“One dissolved. One was registered in Delaware. The third belonged to a man named Peter Voss.”
Evelyn froze.
Rachel noticed.
“What?”
Dean Collins asked, “You know that name?”
Evelyn whispered, “Peter Voss was driving the truck that hit Caroline’s car.”
Silence.
Collins spoke first.
“Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
Caroline Reed had not simply driven off the road.
A delivery truck had crossed the center line.
The truck driver survived.
The crash was ruled accidental.
Peter Voss claimed he had swerved to avoid debris.
Evelyn remembered every detail.
Because she had read the police report until the pages nearly tore.
Dean Collins whispered, “We need law enforcement.”
“Yes.”
“But first, I need copies of everything you have.”
Evelyn looked toward Rachel.
“I’ll bring them.”
“No,” Collins said quickly. “Do not come to campus.”
“Why?”
“Because someone accessed my office last night.”
Evelyn went still.
“What was taken?”
“The old financial folder.”
Mason arrived at Sabrina’s apartment at 9:30 that evening.
The forensic technician was already working.
Lines of code moved across the screen.
Sabrina paced.
“Can you recover it?”
Her roommate’s brother, Ian, barely looked up.
“Possibly.”
“How long?”
“Stop asking.”
Mason stood behind him.
A progress bar crawled across the screen.
Twenty percent.
Thirty-eight.
Fifty-six.
Then Ian sat upright.
“There.”
A video file appeared.
Sabrina rushed forward.
“Play it.”
The footage opened.
The classroom.
Evelyn at the board.
Mason approaching.
The kiss.
Then Evelyn shoved him backward.
Audio crackled.
“What the hell was that?”
Mason closed his eyes.
His shame was preserved perfectly.
Then Evelyn said clearly:
“You are my student. You do not touch me like that.”
Sabrina whispered, “That clears her.”
“Keep playing,” Mason said.
The footage continued.
Evelyn ordered him to leave.
Then the camera moved slightly as Sabrina hid in the corridor.
A voice suddenly appeared behind her.
Low.
Male.
“Did you get it?”
Everyone in the apartment froze.
Sabrina stared at the screen.
“I forgot he was there.”
Mason turned.
“Who?”
Sabrina’s face went pale.
The video shifted.
For half a second, a man’s reflection appeared in the glass panel beside the classroom door.
Silver hair.
Dark suit.
President Victor Hale.
Mason’s jaw dropped.
“He was there?”
Sabrina nodded slowly.
“He told me Mason was probably meeting someone after class.”
Mason stared.
“He sent you to record us.”
“I didn’t understand why.”
Ian rewound the footage.
Hale’s reflection appeared again.
This time Mason noticed something in his hand.
A phone.
He was filming too.
“Why would the president of the university be standing outside a classroom waiting for me to make a mistake?” Mason whispered.
Sabrina looked at him.
Then she understood.
“It wasn’t about you.”
“No.”
“It was about her.”
Mason grabbed his jacket.
“Where are you going?”
“To Evelyn.”
But when he reached her apartment building, police cars were outside.
Rachel stood on the sidewalk wrapped in a coat.
Mason ran toward her.
“What happened?”
Rachel’s face was white.
“Someone broke into the apartment.”
“Where is Evelyn?”
“She’s okay.”
“What did they take?”
Rachel looked at him.
“Nothing.”
Mason frowned.
“Then why break in?”
Rachel swallowed.
“They didn’t come to steal something.”
She held up a photograph investigators had found taped to Evelyn’s bedroom mirror.
It showed Caroline Reed.
Across the bottom someone had written:
May you like
SHE DIDN’T STOP.
YOU SHOULD.
