Chapter 8 Zoë
Zoe
The apartment smells like vanilla candle wax and expensive tequila.
It’s a specific kind of sensory overload—the kind that only happens when you cram five Type-A women into a living space designed for three.
I’m sprawled on the floor of Maya’s living room, my back against the base of the sofa, staring up at the ceiling fan as it spins lazily, chopping the humid air.
My sketchbook is open on my knees. Without realizing it, my hand has moved. The page is full now.
A cage.
The bars are thick, heavy, unevenly spaced, trapping a dark, empty center.
I can’t focus on lines and fabric drape while the room vibrates at a frequency that grates against my nerves. My shoulders sit tight, jaw locked, a low, restless energy humming just under my skin—irritation, I tell myself. Only irritation.
“Pass the bottle,” Clara says from the couch.
Her voice stays calm, but there’s an edge to it—the kind she saves for board meetings and incompetent interns.
Talia, sitting cross-legged on the rug beside me, hands over the tequila without a word. She’s been quiet tonight. Stillness is her default setting, but this feels tuned differently. Like she’s listening to a frequency the rest of us can’t catch.
Genny perches on the armchair with her legs tucked under her, scrolling with a frown that deepens by the minute.
“Okay,” Genny says, looking up, “I can’t be the only one seeing this.”
“Seeing what?” Maya asks from the kitchen island.
She’s slicing limes with a knife that moves a little too fast for someone who’s been drinking.
“The way the campus is losing its mind? Yeah. I’m seeing it.”
“Not just the campus,” Genny corrects. She turns her phone screen toward the room. “The Briarcliff Whisperer just posted again.”
The room cools.
The air shifts.
I don’t want to look. I know what’s on that screen before I see it. I’ve heard the whispers all day—low, insidious currents that followed me through the design studios and the cafeteria. They were there yesterday. Today they’ve sharpened. Grown teeth.
But I look anyway.
The post is a photo.
Grainy. Dark. Taken with a flash that bleaches the shadows into something cruel. A wrecked car—front end folded like accordion pleats, windshield shattered into a spiderweb of white frost. The hood buckled, steam or smoke still curling off the engine block in the frozen image.
Violent. Final.
It sits in what looks like a ditch, tall grass pressing up against the shattered windows like it’s trying to swallow evidence.
Below the image, the caption reads:
Some people walk away from wreckage like it never happened. Guess whose name was on the title? #BriarcliffWhisperer #CleanUpCrew
A pulse jumps low in my stomach—sharp, unwelcome. I shift where I’m sitting, pressing my heel into the floor, grounding myself.
“Jesus,” Clara breathes. She leans in, eyes scanning the twisted metal. “Is that recent?”
“Hard to tell,” Talia says softly.
She hasn’t looked up from her own hands. “But that kind of damage… that’s high speed.”
“It’s a hit piece,” Maya says, slamming the knife down onto the cutting board.
The sound snaps through me.
“Someone is trying to crucify him.”
“Are they wrong?” I ask.
The room goes quiet.
Maya turns, her expression caught between surprise and irritation. “Zoe.”
It’s a warning.
“I’m serious,” I say, pushing myself up to a sitting position.
The sketchbook slides to the floor, the cage staring up at the ceiling like it’s watching us back.
“That car is totaled. If he was driving and walked away without consequences because of who his father is, why shouldn’t people be angry? That’s not nothing.”
“Because there’s no context,” Maya argues. “Because it’s anonymous. For all we know, he wasn’t driving. Or he got run off the road. Since when do you believe everything you read online?”
“I don’t believe everything,” I say. “But I believe patterns. And Gio Rossi? He moves through the world like the rules bend around him. If someone finally aimed a spotlight at that, I’m not rushing to defend him.”
“Spotlight?” Clara asks, taking a slow sip of her drink. “Or accelerant?”
“Same result.”
“No,” Clara says. “It’s not. One exposes. The other just burns.”
I stare at the photo on Genny’s phone. The shattered windshield stares back. My chest tightens with anger first.
Then something else coils—restless and unwanted.
I shove it down.
“You’re enjoying this,” Maya says quietly, watching me.
“I’m focused,” I say, too fast. “I’m staying out of it.”
“Intervening how?” Talia asks.
She looks at me then, her dark eyes steady. “What would you do?”
“I do nothing,” I say. “That’s the point. I stay out of it. I let him take the narrative head-on if it’s true. Let him handle it. That’s what power is for.”
Maya exhales. “I saw him yesterday.”
My spine goes stiff. “Who?”
“Gio. In the café. Right after the whispers started.” She studies the ice in her glass like it has answers. “He looked… worn down.”
“Tired,” I repeat flatly.
“The tired that settles into your posture,” Maya says. “He said nothing. He just… absorbed it.”
“Because he’s guilty,” I say, “or because he thinks he’s insulated enough to wait it out.”
“Or because he knows saying the wrong thing makes it worse,” Talia murmurs.
I look at her. “You’re defending him now?”
“I’m saying silence can be containment as much as guilt,” she replies evenly. “Sometimes it’s containment.”
I swallow. My throat feels tight, heat curling low again—annoyance, I insist.
“He still has everything,” I say. “Money. Status. A team that treats him like a religion.”
“Maybe he doesn’t,” Clara says quietly.
I turn to her. “Explain.”
She sets her glass down with deliberate care. “Power isn’t just resources. It’s freedom of movement. Autonomy. And right now? He doesn’t have that.”
“Because of a picture?” I scoff.
“Because of what it triggers,” Clara says. “Speculation. Pressure. Control. This is leverage. A picture like this gets used as leverage.”
The word lands heavier than it should.
I think of him in the lecture hall. Watching. Measuring. My pulse skips—sharp and irritating.
“He still put himself in that position,” I say. “Whatever happened—it’s his mess.”
“Maybe,” Genny says, zooming in on the comments. “But it’s escalating. They’re not just talking about the car. They’re dragging his father. The foundation. It’s turning feral.”
“Good,” I say, taking a hard sip of tequila.
It burns all the way down.
“That’s what happens when you live above consequences.”
Maya snorts. “You’re terrifying tonight.”
“I’m honest.”
“You’re angry,” Clara corrects. “About Milan. About doors closing. And you want this to mean something.”
The words land clean. Precise. My fingers tighten around the glass.
“Don’t,” I warn.
“I’m pointing out the distortion,” she says calmly. “You hate mob logic. Tonight, you’re leaning on it.”
I look away. At the sketchbook. At the cage. My pulse bangs loud in my ears.
She’s right.
I hate that more than anything else.
“So what,” I say. “You want me to defend him?”
“No,” Maya says. “I want you to hold off on deciding.”
“It feels decided,” Talia says softly.
I meet her gaze. “You think he did it.”
“I think something broke,” she replies. “And broken things don’t get fixed by shouting.”
Silence settles. The hum of the refrigerator fills the space.
My body feels wound tight—too aware of itself, too aware of the memory of his voice, his attention, the way he never backs off when I push.
I shove that aside.
I think about Gio Rossi. He watches like engagement, not dismissal. He doesn’t flinch when I push back. Under my skin, that awareness curls low, unwanted and persistent.
He’s infuriating. He’s arrogant. He represents everything I mistrust about legacy power.
And he’s standing in the middle of something he didn’t fully control.
If the wreck is his—if someone got hurt because of him—I’ll hold him accountable.
But if this is a narrative tightening around him, then choosing the wrong side of it matters.
“Fine,” I say at last. “I won’t decide.”
Maya raises an eyebrow. “That’s new.”
“I’ll wait,” I clarify. “Because pictures like that don’t surface alone. There’s always more.”
Clara nods once. “Observation without alignment.”
I look down at the sketchbook.
At the cage.
I draw a door this time.
I leave it shut.
We clink glasses. The sound is dull, imperfect.
The tequila still tastes wrong.