33. Justin
JUSTIN
Istand in the corridor and stare at my phone until the screen dims.
Everything about today is wrong.
Not the violence. Violence is common. Predictable. People do horrible things when they think they’ll get away with it.
The wrong part is the way the pieces don’t fit.
William Scott-Evans collapses at a public event with witnesses everywhere. Not in an alley. Not in a private room. Not in a place where a quiet hand could finish him without anyone asking questions. Because I’m pretty sure whoever poisoned him meant to kill him.
And the dean… the dean has been acting like a man with a knife to his throat. It’s not just concern - it’s fear. Real fear - the kind that slithers into your bloodstream and lays dormant, waiting for the next tragedy to strike.
He didn’t just want answers. He wanted control over the answers.
I scroll through the preliminary report Silas sent again, even though I know it well enough to recite from memory.
Scott-Evans is a problem. That much is obvious.
His name surfaces again and again in quiet complaints stretching back to his time as a student at St Augustine’s.
Too many girls changing dorms halfway through a semester.
Too many parents calling administrators, only to be soothed until they stopped calling altogether.
The university operates like a machine designed to protect itself.
They should have called Goliath back then, when Scott-Evans was still a minor threat roaming campus.
They didn’t. Someone intervened. The volume of withdrawn complaints and internal cover-ups during that period is higher than at any other point in the college’s history.
Someone was protecting him.
And yet I’m still standing here, trying to put the puzzle pieces together, returning more questions than answers.
Something doesn’t sit right with me.
Rowan couldn’t save her sister. So she went looking for a system she could punish. That’s what she hoped to accomplish, isn’t it?
Not for payback or to get her revenge. She wanted proof. Proof that the universe isn’t random and that men like Scott-Evans are not untouchable. Because if she can touch him, she can touch all of them.
I leave the corridor and move through the church quietly.
We haven’t opened the church to outreach yet. Everything is set up and orderly, as if the place is paused in readiness. Chairs are stacked. Tables are arranged. The space is empty, but it doesn’t feel abandoned—it feels expectant.
Waiting.
The same way I am, standing here with too many unanswered questions and the sense that the pieces are close, just not aligned yet.
Bethany is still inside, filing paperwork into a cabinet. She looks up when she hears me approach.
“Is she okay?” I ask.
“She was exhausted,” Bethany tells me. “I told her to lie down for a while.”
She pauses, then studies my face more closely. “You look like you haven’t slept in days.”
“I haven’t.”
She closes the cabinet and steps closer. “What’s on your mind?”
“Rowan,” I say. “And the things she isn’t telling me.”
Something in Bethany’s expression tightens. Concern.
“Everyone has secrets,” she reminds me.
“Not like this,” I reply. “I can’t make the pieces fit.”
Bethany leans back against a table, folding her arms. “What do you think she’s hiding?”
I don’t answer. The moment I do, it stops being a theory and becomes something else. Something I’ll have to reckon with.
Not because I doubt Rowan’s capacity for extremes. Because I don’t. I think she’s capable of them without hesitation—and I don’t know what that means for either of us.
Bethany shifts, reading the silence. “I don’t have all the facts,” she says carefully. “Rowan didn’t open up to me much. But when we talked about VOC and outreach…” She trails off, then shakes her head. “Her eyes lit up. Like she was seeing something she’d needed once and never had.”
I stay quiet.
“She wasn’t excited because it was interesting,” Bethany continues. “She was excited because it mattered. Because it was personal. Whatever she’s been carrying, it’s heavy. Don’t be too quick to judge her, Justin. Some people survive things that would destroy others.”
She meets my gaze. “And whatever Rowan means to you—remember this. Be grateful she made it as far as she did.”
Rowan looks up when I enter the room.
Her eyes lock on mine.
There’s something in her expression that tells me she knows and she’s just waiting for me to ask the question.
I don’t ask it.
I cross the room and sit in the chair, the same one I sat in earlier, keeping distance I don’t want to keep.
Rowan shifts slightly under the blanket. “You’re thinking too loud.”
“I’m thinking,” I correct.
She watches me. “You went to see that man.” It’s more a statement than a question.
I don’t respond.
Her mouth tightens for half a second as she gets defensive.
“I want to know who would send someone to kill you, Rowan.”
“I already told you - I don’t know.”
I feel my pulse slow, my attention sharpening. I don’t move, but internally I go still. Because I need to know who she thinks might be invested in getting rid of her.
“Rowan…”
Her hands are tucked under the blanket, hidden. Her shoulders are relaxed. She should look nervous, but she’s not.
She isn’t. She’s steady.
And in the quiet, with the timeline in my head and the dean’s fear snapping into place, I finally understand what I’ve been circling without naming.
Not the whole truth, but enough of it. Enough to know I’m about to ask her something that will change what we are. Knowing that whatever answer she gives me, I’m not going to be able to unhear it.
I keep my voice flat. Neutral. Controlled.
“Rowan,” I say.
She lifts her chin slightly, like she already knows what’s coming.
I don’t ask the question yet. But the temperature in the room changes anyway. Because we both know I’m getting close.
I lean back slightly, folding my hands. I maintain a neutral, nonthreatening posture. The kind of stance meant to put her at ease and invite a conversation rather than a confession.
“Tell me something,” I say. “When you write, do you start with the conclusion or work your way toward it?”
Her mouth curves faintly. “Depends on the piece.”
“Humor me.”
She thinks about it. Actually thinks. “I start with what I can prove, and I let the rest follow.”
I nod once. “So, you don’t speculate.”
“I don’t need to.”
Interesting answer. I glance at the wall, then back to her.
“That mock trial you presented in class,” I say evenly. “It was an interesting piece. You wrote the argument yourself, didn’t you?”
She nods. It’s just one small nod, almost nothing, but it’s enough.
The room doesn’t change—but my understanding of it does. The last loose pieces slide into place, not with drama, but with quiet inevitability. This isn’t about whether she’s capable. It’s about whether she’s willing to let me see the truth she’s been carrying.
She didn’t just write an exercise for class. She wrote a rehearsal.
A controlled scenario. A defense mapped out in advance. Every argument placed where it would do the most damage—reasonable doubt, intent, plausibility. She knew exactly how it would play if it ever mattered. She knew where the law bends. She knew she’d likely walk.
Not because she was reckless, but because she was prepared.
“William Scott-Evans collapsed in a room full of witnesses.”
Her eyes don’t flicker.
“In a public place,” I continue. “A place with high visibility; not exactly subtle.”
“That’s unfortunate,” she mutters. “But relevance?”
There it is—the lawyer coming through. Calm. Controlled. I watch her hands beneath the blanket. They aren’t tense, but they aren’t still either. Her fingers move subtly, like she’s thinking rather than reacting.
“The substance that knocked him out,” I continue evenly, “was fast-acting, but it wasn’t lethal.”
Rowan shifts slightly, adjusting the blanket. A small, controlled movement. I take that to mean she’s done lying.
Her lips press together, just briefly. She looks at me like she’s weighing something. Perhaps how much truth she thinks I can handle.
I soften my voice, just a fraction. “What did you want to happen to him, Rowan?”
Her head snaps up. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what?”
“Don’t reduce this to a sound bite,” she hisses. “You don’t get to ask that question like it exists in a vacuum.”
“I asked.”
“And I heard you.” Her hands move beneath the blanket now, restless, sharp movements she doesn’t bother to hide. “But you’re framing it like I sat there wishing for a specific ending. Like this was a fantasy. It wasn’t.”
“Then tell me what it was.”
She laughs once—short, humourless. “It was years of watching nothing happen. It was reports buried, complaints ignored, people choosing not to see because seeing is too much work.”
Her voice rises despite herself. She stops, reins it in, then fails again.
“You want to know what I wanted?” she snaps. “I wanted the noise in my head to stop. I wanted him to stop walking around like he was untouchable.”
“That’s still not an answer.”
Her eyes flash. “Because you won’t like the answer.”
“Try me.”
Silence. Taut. Breathing loud in the space between us.
Then, through clenched teeth—“I wanted him to stop.”
“That’s vague.”
She jerks forward slightly, anger breaking loose now. “Because there is no clean version of this. There’s no checkbox where I get to say this much harm, no further. I didn’t want him dead. I didn’t want him forgiven. I wanted him interrupted.”
The word comes out hard. Deliberate.
Her chest rises and falls once, twice.
“I wanted the pattern to break,” she continues, voice low and shaking now. “I wanted him scared enough to make mistakes. I wanted people to look at him—really look—and not be able to look away again.”
She looks at me, eyes bright, furious, unrepentant.
“So don’t ask me what I wanted like it was that simple,” she bites out. “It wasn’t.”
“You knew it would rattle the dean.”
Her jaw tightens. “He’s been rattled for a long time.”
“You knew he’d push,” I continue. “Dig. Try to contain it.”
“Isn’t that what he’s best at doing?” She’s sharp, bitter.
“And in doing so,” I confirm, “he’d put unwanted eyes on Scott-Evans.”
Rowan finally looks back at me.
There’s no satisfaction in her expression. No sense of victory. Just fatigue pulled tight across her face, like she’s been holding this line alone for far too long.
“They protected him. For years.” Her voice roughens. “Everyone knew. Not the details—no one ever wants the details—but enough. Enough to keep their mouths shut.”
She swallows, hard.
“They let him keep his reputation. His committees. His fucking office hours.” Her hands curl beneath the blanket now, fists at last. “They let him keep his perfect life.”
I don’t interrupt. I don’t soften it.
“I did want revenge,” she admits, voice rising despite herself. “I wanted clarity. I wanted it impossible for them to keep pretending he was harmless.”
Her eyes burn when they meet mine again.
“I wanted the institution to choke on what it enabled. I wanted them scrambling. Afraid. Forced to look at the thing they spent years protecting.”
She exhales, shaky and angry.
“I didn’t break anything that wasn’t already broken,” Rowan says. “I just… wanted to remove the illusion that he’s a saint.”
I sit back. This is the part where I should be angry. This is the part where I should remind her she crossed a line, acted unethically, broke a dozen or so laws.
This is the part where the vigilante in me should condemn the amateur. Instead, all I can think is that she did exactly what I would have done.
Just without the infrastructure I have access to. She did it without backup and without permission, and she doesn’t appear to be apologetic about her actions in any way.
“That wasn’t justice,” I say quietly.
She doesn’t argue. “No.”
“And you were prepared for it to blow back on you.”
Her mouth curves, humorless. “Blow back is nothing compared to what they’ve done to me.”
That’s what finally cracks something in me.
Not what she did. Not the consequences circling it. But the certainty that she expected to pay for it anyway—even believing she was innocent of wrongdoing. That she carried the weight alone, fully prepared to accept whatever came, as if punishment were inevitable.
She never would have been here. Never would have crossed that line. None of it would have happened if Scott-Evans hadn’t already destroyed her.
I stand and cross the room, closing the distance I’ve been keeping between us. I take her hand, steadying her, and draw her up from the bed until she’s standing in front of me.
I study her then—really look at her. The composure she wears like armor. The control she never loosens. And beneath it all, the grief she’s been carrying for so long she’s stopped recognizing its weight.
She doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t look down.
She lets me see everything.
I’m a vigilante. I justify what I do by calling it necessary. By telling myself I’m the last line between predators and justice.
Rowan didn’t wait for a line to form. She drew one herself. And I don’t know whether that terrifies me, or makes me want to protect her from what comes next.