“Where’s your son?” I ask.
His mouth opens. Closes. His eyes meet mine—and that’s when I know. It was never Daniel he was protecting. It was himself. His reputation. His name. The silence slams down hard enough to rattle.
“Rowan—” Bethany starts, sharp with warning.
The dean exhales, shaky and sudden. His face twists—not with grief, not with guilt—but with resentment.
“You’re fucking untouchable,” he hisses.
His hand comes up. There’s a gun in it.
Everything happens at once—and somehow, not fast enough.
“Don’t,” Lily says, voice steady despite the terror tightening her eyes.
Bethany screams.
“I don’t want to hurt anyone,” the dean claims, panic flooding his voice now, the barrel wavering as reality finally catches up to him. “I just need Rowan to come with me. That’s all.”
Lily’s gaze flicks to the gun, sharp and calculating. Bethany shifts—just a fraction. Too fast. Too dangerous.
I step forward.
“I’ll go.”
Bethany spins on me. “Rowan, no?—”
“There’s no need to hurt anyone,” I tell him evenly. “I’ll go with you.”
His shoulders sag in visible relief, like the weight of the moment finally has somewhere else to land.
“Let’s go.” He indicates the elevator with the gun, and I walk past him slowly, every movement deliberate, my hands held at my sides where he can see them.
Behind me, I can feel Bethany’s stare burning into my back.
We reach the elevator. And then, without warning—Bethany lunges.
There’s only pure instinct detonating out of her body. She slams into him from the side with everything she has, her shoulder driving hard into his ribs, her hands striking up and out.
The gun jerks skyward. There’s a flash, a crack. The sound is deafening in the confined space. The shot ricochets off metal, the noise tearing through my ears like shrapnel. The smell of gunpowder hits instantly—sharp and acrid and wrong.
Bethany goes down.
“No—!” I scream.
The hallway erupts into chaos.
Lily dives back, screaming, scrambling for cover as the dean staggers, the gun swinging wildly in his grip. His face is no longer pleading—no longer human. It’s panic now. Pure, feral panic.
Without thinking, Imove.
I throw myself at him, screaming Lily’s name, screaming for her to get down, my hands clawing at his face. My fingers find skin. Bone. Soft flesh.
I jam my thumbs into his eyes. Hard. As hard as I can.
He howls—a raw, animal sound—and stumbles back, the gun firing again into nothing, into walls, terrifying us. But despite his pain, he refuses to let me go. I feel his nails rake my arms as he flails, feel his breath hot and desperate against my cheek.
“Get down!” I scream.
