Chapter 3
Julia became my lawyer.
She showed up with a thick stack of files and looked like she was enjoying this far too much.
"You're going to win this one," she said, spreading the files across the coffee table and grinning.
"But it's going to be a ride. Gloria hired a lawyer named Mark Evans. I looked him up, and he lives on cases like this. He plays dirty and he loves running a pressure campaign in the press."
"He's already at it," I said, sliding my tablet over. The screen showed a Facebook post.
The headline was impossible to miss. It read: [Male Piano Teacher in Sunrise Gardens Accused of Raping a Nineteen-Year-Old.]
The poster, JusticeSeeker, laid it on thick and painted me as a predator hiding behind a teaching job who had been working on the girl next door for months.
There were already over three hundred replies.
SunshineProtector: [There are too many monsters walking around. He needs to go away for a long time.]
ArtCritic: [I heard he's a piano teacher? The arts are a mess. Even the people teaching kids are like this.]
IronFist: [Lock him up and throw away the key. People like this don't deserve to walk around.]
Julia scrolled through the comments and snorted. "Textbook mob. It works for us, though. The louder they are now, the worse it looks for them later."
She put the tablet away, and her face turned serious. "Jordan, I need to confirm one thing. Last Friday night, you were at her door for under a minute, and you never touched her?"
"Forty seconds at most," I said. "I handed her the tuner; she took it and said thanks. I said, 'You're welcome,' and I left. The hallway cameras caught all of it, so we can pull the footage."
Julia raised an eyebrow. "Building management says the cameras were conveniently down that week."
I laughed. "That's convenient for somebody."
"That makes it look worse for them," she said, closing the files. "Get ready for the hearing. Keep living your life and don't hide. The more normal you look, the more they panic."
The next day, I went to my student's house for a lesson as usual.
My student was Max, eight years old, all elbows and energy. Halfway through the lesson, he looked up at me and asked, "Jordan, are you a bad person?"
My heart skipped a beat.
"Why do you ask?"
"The old lady downstairs said so," Max said, blinking at me. "She said you're a bad guy and you hurt her daughterl."
I set the sheet music down and crouched to his level. "Max, do you think I'm a bad person?"
He shook his head hard.
I said, "So which one is real, what people say or what you feel yourself?"
He thought for a moment. "What I feel."
"See?" I ruffled his hair. "Don't just believe what people say. Trust your own eyes."
After the lesson, Max's mom walked me to the door, looking like she wanted to say something but held back.
"Jordan," she said, lowering her voice, "have you run into some kind of trouble? People in the complex are saying ugly things."
"Just a misunderstanding. I'm handling it," I smiled at her. "Thanks for your concern."
"That's good," she said, visibly relieved. "I never believed any of it. Max loves you, and he's excited every time you come. Nobody keeps up an act that long."
Her words warmed my heart.
Stepping out of Max's building, I instantly felt something was off.
It was that unmistakable feeling of eyes on my back.
I whipped around, heart pounding.
The street behind me was deserted, just a few leaves spinning in lazy circles on the pavement.
Maybe I was letting my nerves get the better of me.
But as I reached the neighborhood gate, that creepy, watched feeling hit me again.
This time, I didn't look back. I sped up and slipped into the convenience store next door, peeking out through the glass.
Across the street, a guy in a gray jacket stood with his hat pulled low, glancing over in my direction.
I was certain I'd never seen him before.
I killed five minutes pretending to browse, but when I finally stepped outside, he was gone.
Still, my nerves were stretched tight as a wire.