My mother reached across the table.
“Are you still thinking about going back to school?”
I looked at her.
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
I nodded.
“I don’t want them to think they made me disappear.”
My mother smiled faintly.
“Then we’ll make sure you return when you’re ready.”
I closed my sketchbook.
For the first time since the attack, I felt something other than fear.
It wasn’t confidence.
Not yet.
It was determination.
And I knew that the next time I walked through the school gates, things would be different.
Because Brant Vance had made one serious mistake.
He had mistaken my silence for weakness.
And now, for the first time, people were beginning to listen.
But what I didn’t know was that Brant had just discovered something about my mother.
Something his father had never expected.
And when Garrett Vance learned the truth, he would realize that the girl his son had humiliated in a public park was connected to a business empire far larger than his own.
The next confrontation would not happen beneath the pavilion.
It would happen in a room where everyone finally had to answer for what they had done.
TO BE CONTINUED…
