“He’s a grown man. There’s no place on our campuses for alumni to come in and spend drunken weekends with our students. That’s a recipe for disaster, Clara. You know that as well as I do.”
Clara straightens, the tablet forgotten. “But we’ve never turned down a university request.”
“I know.”
“Including the ones that should’ve been turned down,” she adds.
“I’m aware.”
She studies me for a beat, recalibrating. “So what’s so different about this one?”
“The dean’s a pompous ass who’s more worried about losing support from a donor family than any form of justice,” I tell her. “That’s the difference.”
Clara exhales through her nose. “You’re talking about values.”
“I am.”
Goliath doesn’t operate on paper. There’s no manifesto, no mission statement framed on a wall. But there are lines we don’tcross. We don’t exist to protect institutions from consequences. We exist to prevent chaos from spreading when systems fail to do their jobs.
The St Augustine’s aren’t interested in prevention. They want insulation.
“They asked for damage control,” I say. “Only because of who the victim is. I don’t recall a similar outcry with that attack on a female student last summer.”
“That made you mad.”
“It did,” I answered.
“So you walked.” Clara doesn’t quite believe it.
“Even monsters such as I have principles, Clara.”
She shakes her head once, slow. “That’s going to rattle some people.”
“It should.”
Clara considers that, then smiles faintly. “Titan would’ve done the same.”
The name settles between us.
“How is he?” I ask. Because I miss the damn bastard enough to care.
“He’s pretending he’s retired.”
“Let him pretend all he wants,” I say. “He earned the right.”
She softens for a moment. “You miss him.”
“I miss the certainty,” I say. “Not the chaos.”
Clara nods. “Fair.”
She taps the tablet against her arm. “Massery’s going to ask why we declined.”
“I’ll tell my father the truth.”
“That the dean wanted us to prop up a reputation instead of fix a problem?”
“Yes.”
