“What’s this about?” I asked, keeping my tone even, calm. Like if I didn’t show fear, maybe it wasn’t as bad as it felt.
Mom tapped the file with one manicured nail. “Her.”
I didn’t have to ask who. My chest burned.
“She’s not who you think she is, Leo.”
“She’s exactly who I think she is,” I bit back, jaw clenched.
Mom nodded to the iPad next to the file. “Open it.”
I didn’t move.
“Do it,” Dad said, his voice sharp.
I grabbed it with a shaking hand and tapped the screen. The display lit up—and my breath stopped.
Photos. Screenshots. Of Jade.
Fake ones.
Obscene ones.
Her face edited onto bodies that weren’t hers, in videos she never filmed, in positions I know she’s never been in.
I knew.
Because I’d been the first.
I’d seen her—really seen her.
I also knew she had a star shaped freckle in the middle of her back. That she had a small scar on her left elbow from sixth grade soccer.
The bile climbed up my throat.
“These circulated at her old school,” Mom said, voice cold. “There’s a sealed file from the police department. Harassment. Cyberbullying. Someone even started an OnlyFans using her face. We had a PI pull everything.”
“She didn’t do this.” My voice cracked.
“No, she didn’t,” Dad said. “But the world doesn’t care.”
I flipped the folder open. More documents. Copies of reports. Her transfer application. Her scholarship forms. The alias she used. Everything.
Private.
Now laid bare.
“Why?” I whispered. “Why the hell would you go this far?”
Mom leaned forward, her eyes sharp like cut glass. “Because people are talking. Because I won’t have my son—myson—thrown into scandal his senior year. You think the schools you’re applying to won’t see this? That recruiters won’t whisper? That donors won’t pull support if this surfaces?”
“Nothing will surface. She didn’t do anything wrong.”
Mom narrowed her eyes. “And yet she’s a headline waitingto happen. This isn’t about right or wrong, Leo. It’s about optics.”
“She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” I said, voice hoarse. “She didn’t ask for this.”
“She didn’t ask for you either,” she snapped. “But here we are. So now you get to make a choice.”
