“No,” I whispered, burying my face in his shoulder. “Just the dress.”
He pulled back, his hands resting on my shoulders. His eyes dropped to the jagged, ruined hem of my blue dress peeking out from beneath the suit jacket. I saw the muscles in his jaw clench, mirroring the expression Marcus had worn earlier.
“Get inside,” he said softly. “Maria has a hot bath running for you.”
I nodded numbly and started to walk up the steps. But before I crossed the threshold, I stopped and looked back.
My father was walking toward Marcus. The two men stood near the front bumper of the SUV. They weren't speaking loudly, but the quiet intensity of their conversation sent a shiver down my spine.
“I want her fired, Marcus,” my father said, his voice low and cold. “I want her credentials revoked. I want the school board on my desk by morning.”
“Arthur,” Marcus replied, his tone cautious. “It’s not just a crazy teacher. She knew who Chloe was. She said, ‘Money buys nothing in my band.’ She used your name.”
My father froze. The anger on his face shifted, instantly replaced by something I had never seen before.
It looked like fear.
“Did you get a name?” my father asked, his voice suddenly hollow.
“The students call her Ms. Harrington,” Marcus said. “But I recognized her from the security file ten years ago. Her maiden name is Evelyn Shaw.”
My father closed his eyes, exhaling a long, shuddering breath. “Shaw,” he whispered.
He looked up toward the house, locking eyes with me where I stood in the doorway. The moment he saw I was listening, he forced his face back into a neutral, reassuring mask. But it was too late. I had already seen the truth.
This wasn’t a random attack. This wasn’t about a dress code.
My father had done something to Evelyn Shaw. And now, she was coming for me.
CHAPTER 2
The house felt like a tomb the next morning.
Usually, the Vance estate hummed with the quiet, efficient energy of the staff—the distant clinking of dishes in the kitchen, the soft murmur of the landscapers outside, the rhythmic ticking of the grandfather clock in the foyer. But today, the air was heavy, thick with a suffocating silence that made every footstep sound like a thunderclap.
I sat at the massive mahogany dining table, picking at a plate of untouched eggs. I was wearing a thick gray sweater and sweatpants, entirely inappropriate for a Wednesday morning at school, but going to school was completely out of the question.
My father had made that explicitly clear.
“You are not stepping foot on that campus until this is handled,” he had said last night, pacing in front of the fireplace while Marcus stood silently in the corner. “The lawyers are drafting the injunction. The principal is terrified. Evelyn Shaw won’t be allowed within five hundred yards of you ever again.”
It sounded like a victory. It sounded like protection. But as I sat alone at the table, scrolling through the endless stream of notifications on my phone, it felt like a prison sentence.
The video Jason had taken was everywhere. It had leaked beyond the closed circles of our high school group chats and hit the local community pages. The narrative had twisted overnight. I wasn’t the victim of an unhinged teacher anymore. I was the secret billionaire heiress who had brought a private military force to intimidate a public school employee.
“Did you see the cars? They practically ran her over.”
“Chloe Miller is actually Chloe Vance. Yeah, the Vance Corp guy. She’s been lying to us for three years.”
“Harrington is a legend. Good for her for standing up to corporate money.”
I locked the screen and shoved the phone across the table, feeling sick to my stomach.
They didn’t see the terror in her eyes. They didn’t see the scissors slashing toward my skin. All they saw was the wealth. The very thing I had tried so desperately to hide.
I pushed my chair back and stood up. I needed answers. My father had locked himself in his home office since six a.m., taking back-to-back calls with his legal team. Marcus was stationed near the front door, reviewing security footage on a tablet.