Chapter 2 Aftermath
Before
The television’s glow bathes our living room in an eerie blue light, casting long shadows across antique furniture worth more than most people’s homes.
I sit perched on the edge of our Italian leather sofa, my back ramrod straight as I’ve been taught, watching Luna Queen destroy my family with nothing but the truth.
“They drugged me,” she says on screen, her voice steady despite the horror in her eyes.
“They’d either slip pills into my drinks at these parties or force me to take them.
When I resisted, they used injections. Then they’d…
” She pauses, swallowing hard, and the camera zooms in on her face.
Perfect television drama. “They’d offer me to their business associates.
People with power, money, connections. People whose names you’d recognize. ”
My father paces behind me, his Italian leather shoes clicking against the marble floor in a frantic rhythm. Seven steps one way, turn, seven steps back. The sound burrows into my skull like a drill.
“Turn that garbage off,” he snaps, but neither my mother nor I move to obey. We’re transfixed by Luna’s testimony, by the calm, measured way she’s dismantling everything our families have built.
On screen, the prosecutor, David Stone, asks, “And what was the purpose of these gatherings?”
Luna’s emerald eyes harden. “Control. Blackmail. They’d record everything, document every interaction. Then, they’d use the evidence to manipulate people. Business deals, political favors, judicial rulings—anything they wanted.”
My father snatches the remote and turns off the TV with enough force to make me flinch. The sudden silence feels suffocating.
“This is your fault,” he says, turning on me. His face is flushed with rage, a vein pulsing at his temple. “You had one job at that school. One fucking job, Belle. Control Luna Queen. Keep her in line. And you failed.”
I stare at my manicured nails, trying to keep my expression neutral. “She was damaged, Father. More than we anticipated.”
“Damaged?” He barks out a laugh. “She was a fucking weapon. Sebastian trained her too well, and you let her slip through your fingers.”
My mother sits beside me, her posture a mirror of my own—perfect, poised, dead inside. “Richard, please. Yelling won’t solve anything.”
“Federal investigators are circling, Olivia.” My father runs a hand through his silver hair, disheveling his usual immaculate appearance. “They’ve already frozen three of our overseas accounts. It’s only a matter of time before they’re knocking on our door.”
A cold weight settles in my stomach. I’ve never seen him this rattled, this close to losing control.
My father, Richard Gallagher, the private equity firm leader, whose name opens doors across the fifty states, whose smile has graced the covers of financial magazines, whose charitable foundation is praised for its “commitment to vulnerable communities”—is afraid.
“What do they know?” I ask quietly.
He turns to me, eyes narrowing with calculation.
“Too much, thanks to your incompetence. Though the Queens aren’t saying—they’re too smart for that—the people around them are like canaries, trying to reduce their sentences by implicating everyone they’ve ever seen around the parties or witnessed the Queens doing business with. Including us.”
“But they can’t prove—”
“They have emails, Belle. Financial transactions. Witness testimony.” He slams his fist against the mahogany side table, making the crystal decanter jump. “They have your friend Luna, painting us all as monsters for the whole fucking world to see.”
“She’s not my friend,” I say automatically, the denial bitter on my tongue.
Luna and I were never friends, not really.
We were rivals, enemies, two daughters of powerful families playing our assigned roles.
Yet somewhere beneath the hatred and competition, there was understanding.
Recognition—at least from my side. She had no idea we were both prisoners of the same system, just with different cells.
“Listen carefully.” My father crouches before me, his cologne—expensive, subtle, the scent of old money and older power—suffocating me. “You’re going back to Shark Bay tomorrow.”
“What? But the holidays don’t finish for another week and—”
“This isn’t about school,” he cuts me off. “This is about damage control. There are… materials in my office that need to be destroyed before the feds get a warrant.”
My mother’s manicured hand closes around my wrist, her grip painfully tight. “Files, photographs, correspondence. Everything related to the Queens, to our business dealings, to the gatherings.”
The gatherings. Such a benign word for what they really were. Exclusive parties where the elite indulged their darkest impulses behind closed doors. Where girls like Luna were paraded like prized livestock. Where I…
No. I push the memories away, lock them behind the mental walls I’ve carefully constructed over years of practice.
“Why me?” I ask, hating the tremor in my voice. “Why not have your assistant handle it?”
My father’s laugh is cold. “Because everyone who works for me is currently being watched. You, on the other hand, are just my innocent daughter, returning to school early to prepare for the spring semester. No one will question it.”
The trap closes around me, invisible bars snapping into place. I’ve spent my entire life being the perfect daughter, the obedient pawn, the willing spy. Now, they want me to be their accomplice in destroying evidence. To protect them, even as they offer me up as a sacrifice.
“And if I refuse?” The question slips out before I can stop it.
The silence that follows is deafening. My father straightens, his expression shifting from anger to something colder, more calculated.
“Then you’ll face the consequences alongside us,” he says quietly. “Every file you don’t destroy will be one more nail in your coffin, Belle. Think carefully about what you want your future to look like. Prison orange isn’t your color.”
He leaves without another word, his footsteps echoing down the hallway. My mother releases my wrist, standing to follow him.
“Do as your father says, darling,” she murmurs, touching my hair with practiced affection. “Family protects family. It’s the Gallagher way.”
When I’m finally alone, I allow my perfect posture to crumble, collapsing back against the sofa. My hands shake as I reach for the remote, turning the television back on in time to catch the end of Luna’s testimony.
“I’m not here for revenge,” she’s saying, her voice steady despite the tears glistening in her eyes. “I’m here because what they did—what they’re still doing—has to stop. No one else should suffer like I did. Like we all did.”
The camera pans to the gallery, where Erik Stone sits watching her with a mixture of pride and pain.
Beside him, his older brother David—the DA who’s built this case piece by painstaking piece.
And there, in the back row, is Professor Austin, whose book on power structures and exploitation is already causing waves in academic circles.
Luna has allies. Protectors. People willing to stand with her against the monsters.
I have no one.
***
The following morning, I board my father’s private jet for the short flight to the port, where I’ll take the small ferry to the island where Shark Bay University is located.
The pilot doesn’t question my early return, doesn’t comment on the tension radiating from my every movement. He’s paid not to notice such things.
The campus is nearly deserted when I arrive, most students are still enjoying their winter break.
The somber Gothic buildings loom against the gray February sky, their shadows stretching across the snowy grounds like reaching fingers.
I make my way to my father’s office in the administration building—a “donation” to secure his position on the university’s board of trustees.
The key slides into the lock with a soft click.
Inside, everything is immaculate, controlled, perfect.
Just like him. I move to the hidden panel behind his desk, pressing the sequence that reveals the wall safe.
The combination—my birthday, because he’s never bothered to be original—opens it with ease.
Inside are stacks of folders, USB drives, and photographs. The evidence of decades of corruption, manipulation, and abuse. The secrets that could destroy not just my family, but dozens of powerful figures across finance, politics, and entertainment.
I should burn it all, as instructed. Instead, I find myself flipping through the files, my heart pounding as I read names, dates, descriptions of “services rendered.” Each page is more damning than the last, a meticulous record of depravity disguised as business.
A particular folder catches my eye—labeled simply “SB Assets.” Inside are surveillance photographs of Luna and me at Shark Bay, along with reports detailing our movements, conversations, interactions.
There are private text messages I sent to friends, emails I thought were secure, phone calls I believed were private.
They were watching us. Both of us. All the time.
I set that folder aside, my fingers now trembling as I reach for another—this one unlabeled, sealed with red tape. Inside are photographs that make bile rise in my throat.
Me, at a party I don’t remember attending.
Luna, beside me on a velvet couch, her eyes glazed and unfocused.
Both of us, clearly drugged, posed like dolls next to a young woman I recognize from news reports—Janet Wilson, the missing daughter of Senator Robert Wilson.
Her disappearance a few years ago sparked a nationwide search that eventually went cold.
In the photos, she’s alive, smiling vacantly at the camera with the same drugged expression Luna and I wear. There are other pictures—Janet dancing, Janet drinking, Janet being led away by a man whose face is just out of frame.
And then, most disturbing of all, a final photo of just Luna and me, unconscious on that same couch, Janet nowhere to be seen. The timestamp shows it was taken three hours later. On my wrist is a gold bracelet I’ve never seen before. On Luna’s neck, a thin line of what looks like blood.
I stare at the images, trying desperately to remember that night.
There’s nothing—just one of the many blank spaces in my memory, the “blackouts” my parents always dismissed as too much champagne, too much excitement.
But I know better now. They drugged me, just like they drugged Luna. Just like they drugged Janet Wilson.
What happened that night? What did they make us do?
My stomach lurches, and I barely make it to the wastebasket before vomiting. The evidence in these photographs isn’t just damning for my parents—it implicates me. Us. Makes us look complicit in whatever happened to Janet Wilson.
I can’t destroy these. Not yet. Not until I understand what they mean, what really happened that night.
With shaking hands, I begin separating the files. Most I place in the sleek metal trash can, ready to be burned as instructed. But others—the most damning evidence, including the photographs of Luna, Janet, and me—I slip into my designer tote bag.
It’s a small rebellion, my first real act of defiance against my parents. They’ve controlled my entire life—what I wear, who I befriend, how I speak, who I become. They’ve molded me into the perfect spy, the willing accomplice, the dutiful daughter who never questions, never refuses, never fails.
Until now.
As I light the match that will destroy most of the evidence, I watch the flames consume years of secrets.
The heat warms my face, but inside, I’m ice cold.
This fire won’t purify me, won’t absolve me of my role in their schemes.
But perhaps, just perhaps, it’s the first step toward something like redemption.
Or at least, toward the truth.
I wait until the files are nothing but ash, then carefully sweep the remains into a plastic bag that I’ll dispose of later. The evidence I’ve kept is hidden at the bottom of my bag, beneath textbooks and makeup, beneath the carefully constructed facade of Belle Gallagher, perfect daughter.
As I lock my father’s office behind me, I feel something shift inside me. The photographs burn against my consciousness, demanding answers I’m not sure I want to find. Who was Janet Wilson to us? What happened at that party? Why can’t I remember?
Back in my dorm room, I hide the stolen evidence beneath the loose floorboard under my bed—one of the few hiding places in my room I’ve used for years to keep secrets from my roommates, from the school, from my parents’ spies.
The irony isn’t lost on me: I’m using the skills they taught me against them.
I sit on my bed, hugging my knees to my chest as I stare at the patch of floor hiding my secrets. For the first time in my life, I’ve directly disobeyed my father. I’ve kept evidence that could destroy him, destroy us all.
Luna’s words from the testimony echo in my mind: “I’m here because what they did—what they’re still doing—has to stop.”
What they did to her. What they did to me. What they may have done to Janet Wilson.
I’ve spent my life being what my parents made me—the perfect daughter, the willing spy, the keeper of secrets. But as I sit in my empty dorm room, with evidence of unimaginable crimes hidden beneath my feet, I realize I have a choice to make.
I can continue being their weapon, their shield, their accomplice. Or I can be something else. Something they never intended me to become.
I can be the one who brings it all crashing down.
The thought is terrifying. Exhilarating. Impossible.
But as I lie back on my bed, staring at the ceiling of a room that suddenly feels like both a prison and the first place I’ve ever truly been free, I know my decision is already made. I can’t go back to being who I was. Not after what I’ve seen. Not after what I suspect.
Whatever happened that night with Janet Wilson, whatever gaps exist in my memory, I need to find the truth. Even if it destroys me. Even if it destroys everything.
And for the first time in my life, that destruction doesn’t feel like failure. It feels like justice.