Chapter 7
At exactly eight-thirty, the emcee took the stage. There was a speech from the dean, then a donor presentation, then a student innovation segment featuring the Steel family’s upcoming pharmaceutical breakthrough.
That was Damian’s cue.
He walked onto the stage with perfect calm. The room quieted almost instantly.
He gave a brief speech about medical innovation, ethical responsibility, and the importance of protecting research from bad actors.
Bella stood below the stage, eyes shining with pride, as if she were already standing beside him in everyone’s imagination.
Then Damian said, “Before I continue, there’s one more thing I need to address tonight.”
A murmur ran through the room.
He reached into the inside pocket of his tuxedo and took out a small flash drive.
“This gala is attended by investors, university leadership, faculty, and students. That makes it the right place to publicly clarify a misunderstanding.”
Bella’s smile faltered.
On the giant screen behind him, a file opened.
Then another.
Then another.
Screenshots.
Audio transcripts.
Message logs.
The hall went dead silent.
The first slide showed Bella’s private messages to Lucas.
Damian is almost there. He’s already trusting me with project details.
Next slide.
Once I get the formula, the investor you mentioned better remember what he promised.
Next slide.
Don’t worry. Molly’s already out of the picture.
The blood drained from Bella’s face.
“No,” she whispered.
Then came the audio.
Lucas’s voice: “Seduce him harder. Don’t act innocent with me now. You’ve done this five times already.”
Bella’s voice, sweet and laughing: “That’s why I’m good at it.”
Gasps rippled through the crowd.
Jennifer staggered back as though she’d been slapped.
Rachel’s mouth literally fell open.
Bella rushed toward the stage.
“That’s fake! That’s edited!”
Damian looked down at her, expression frigid.
“Is it?”
He nodded once toward the side aisle.
Two men in suits stepped forward. One was a legal advisor from the Steel Group. The other was a cyber forensics consultant whose name was already printed on the validation report now appearing on the big screen.
Every file had been authenticated.
Every timestamp verified.
Every message preserved.
Bella looked wildly around the room, searching for sympathy, for disbelief, for anything.
What she found instead were faces pulled tight with contempt.
Because the scandal was no longer campus gossip.
It was attempted theft.
Corporate espionage.
Fraud.
The kind of thing that followed you long after college.
She turned, desperate, scanning the crowd for Lucas.
But Lucas wasn’t there.
He had been detained at a separate location forty minutes earlier, after trying to access a restricted lab server with credentials that had already been flagged.
Damian knew he would run.
So he let him.
Right into the trap.
Bella seemed to understand that all at once.
Her knees buckled slightly.
Then, still in front of everyone, Damian spoke again.
“And since there has also been misinformation regarding my personal life, let me make one final correction.”
He looked out into the crowd.
Straight toward me.
“Would my girlfriend please come here?”
Every head turned.
I stepped out from behind the pillar.
A whisper tore through the ballroom like wind through silk.
“Molly?”
“She’s here?”
“She’s his girlfriend?”
Bella stared at me as if she were seeing a ghost.
I walked forward in a fitted black dress, slow and steady, each heel click sounding unnaturally loud in the silence.
When I reached the stage, Damian stepped down to meet me halfway.
Then, in front of everyone, he held out his hand.
I took it.
He led me up onto the stage beside him.
“This,” he said into the microphone, “is my girlfriend, Molly Hart.”
His voice was clear, cool, absolute.
“She has always been my girlfriend. Everything else was part of an internal investigation and a personal agreement between us.”
The room erupted.
Questions flew in every direction.
Bella made a choked sound.
“You used me?”
I finally looked at her.
Really looked at her.
At the smeared mascara gathering under her eyes.
At the hand still trembling around the tiny evening clutch she had probably imagined placing on Damian’s table in some penthouse someday.
At the expression of disbelief that came only when a person realized they were not the player in the story. They were the lesson.
I tilted my head.
“You taught me so much, Bella.”
My voice was soft enough that only the nearest microphones caught it clearly, which somehow made it worse.
“You taught me that if you want to catch a thief, you don’t protect the bait. You display it.”
Bella took a step back.
“No… no, Molly, listen, I can explain—”
“Can you?”
I smiled faintly.
“Can you explain the photos you sent my exes? The times you bragged about stealing them? The way you kept calling yourself my protector while tearing things apart behind my back?”
She started crying then.
Real tears this time.
Not the pretty, trembling tears she used when she wanted men to soften.
These were ugly tears. Panicked tears.
Because she finally understood something she had never bothered to learn.
Humiliation feels very different when you’re the one standing in it.