Chapter 2

The spotlight hit my face hard enough to sting.

The audience was a dark mass, but I could feel every pair of eyes on me, some expectant, some measuring, and in the corner two more, one guilty and one pleased.

I walked to the center of the stage, and unlike everybody before me, I did not reach for the flash drive.

Instead, in front of every judge and every student, I pulled the projector cable clean out.

A crackle went through the speakers, and the huge screen behind me went black.

The hall broke into noise.

"What's going on? Did the equipment break?"

"What is Olivia doing? Is she backing out?"

Whispers moved through the room.

The dean in the front row frowned, pushed his glasses up, and looked at me with a question on his face.

Charlie, over in the corner, let his shoulders drop, and something close to a smile pulled at his mouth.

He must have thought I had found the ruined files and given up in a rage, or that I was about to break down in front of everybody and beg for sympathy.

It was a cheap read. I

put one hand on the podium, swept the room with a cold look, and let my eyes rest for a second on the two faces that turned my stomach.

Then I smiled, calm and certain, with the kind of confidence that looks down at a room.

"Good afternoon, professors and fellow students."

My voice carried through the whole hall without a microphone.

"About the classic economic model all of you know, I think the standard charts are not only tedious, they narrow the thinking.

"Real logic does not need a decorated background.

"So today I'm going to take this topic apart for you with nothing but reasoning."

When I finished, the hall went quiet enough to hear a pin hit the floor.

Everyone thought I'd lost my mind.

I could practically hear it echoing in their heads.

Nobody in her right mind would go off script with no slides for a full presentation at a defense that mattered this much, and doing it came close to academic suicide.

But I didn't give them a chance to doubt me.

The next second, fluent, professional English rolled off my tongue.

Without slides holding me in place I was freer, because the complicated formulas and the dry data had been carved into my head and had gone into my blood a long time ago.

I built the model in the air with my hands and steered the room with the pitch of my voice.

I went from the swings of the macro market down to the moves individuals make against each other, and theory that had always been dense turned precise and sharp and impossible to look away from.

Five minutes.

In five minutes the faces that had come to watch me fail went from surprise to shock and then to something close to fascination.

Even the dean, who had a reputation for being merciless, put his pen down without noticing, leaned forward, and kept nodding.

I watched the smile freeze on Charlie's face, and he sat there with his mouth open, staring at me like he had seen a ghost.

Sophie had her sleeve twisted in her fist, and she was paler than she had been while faking illness.

They had tried to take away my weapon, and they had never understood that I was the weapon.

Fifteen minutes later, the defense was over.

I smiled and bowed. "Thank you."

There was one beat of dead silence, and then the applause came, loud enough to lift the roof.

The dean stood up first and clapped, and he didn't bother hiding what he thought of it.

"Outstanding! That is the best defense I have seen in years. Ms. Lane, your composure and your command of the material are beyond reproach."

I gave him a small smile and walked off the stage.

I had barely reached the backstage hallway when Charlie came rushing at me.

The shock was gone from his face, and the familiar, sickening relief had replaced it.

"Olivia! I knew you could do it!"

He reached out to clap my shoulder, and his voice carried the assumption that all of it was ordinary for me.

"You had me scared for a second there. I thought you might actually be angry. But look, I told you a little thing like that couldn't stop you. You're Olivia Lane. There's never been anything you couldn't handle."

Then he lowered his voice and put on the face that said he was doing it for my own good. "Sophie was crying down there. She's been blaming herself the whole time.

"You did great and the spot is yours, so about what happened before, let it go. Please?"

Look at that.

Twenty years I had spent loving this man, and there was not a trace of guilt in him.

He was treating my comeback as a free pass for what he had done, as if the knife stopped counting because it had not killed me.

Now, he wanted me to go comfort the person who had nearly finished me.

I stopped walking and turned my shoulder so his hand missed me.

His hand hung in the air and his smile slipped. "Olivia, what is it? Still angry? That's enough. Sophie is sick..."

"Charlie."

I cut him off, my voice calm, but with a cold edge.

I pulled the flash drive out of my pocket and held it up in front of him.

"Do you know what else was on this besides the garbage?"

His eyes moved. "Wasn't it... didn't I corrupt it by accident?"

"By accident?" I laughed without any warmth. "So the selfie of Sophie in lingerie wandered onto it by accident too?"

His face went dark red. "You... you saw that? She sent it so I could help her pick an outfit. Don't turn it into something filthy."

"I'm the filthy one?" I looked at the man in front of me and felt like twenty years of my life had been thrown to the dogs.

I raised my hand without hesitating, in front of every student and teacher walking past.

The flash drive arced through the air and dropped cleanly into the recycling bin.

"Charlie, this drive is dirty and I don't want it." I looked up, and my eyes cut. "Same as you. We're done."

With that, I turned and walked away.

Charlie's voice came after me, furious. "Olivia! What is wrong with you? All this over one small thing? If you walk away now, don't ever come to me for comfort again!"

Come to him.

I didn't slow down, and something sarcastic pulled at my mouth.

He had better pray he never landed in my hands, because what I planned to do to him had only started.