“I thought you said you two just met.”
“We did,” Otto said calmly. “Dean Randolph brought something to my attention that we felt warranted a conversation.”
My eyebrows lifted. “Are we talking about the way he tried to gut my funding package?”
Randolph’s expression barely shifted, but I saw the irritation flicker there for half a second.
“That was an administrative oversight,” he said evenly. “One that’s already been corrected.”
“Yeah,” I shot back. “Because Henry fixed it.”
The second his name left my mouth, the air at the table changed.
Randolph folded his hands together loosely atop the table. “Yes,” he said carefully. “Henry is exactly who we wanted to speak to you about.”
He gestured toward the empty seat across from him. “Won’t you sit down?”
I folded my arms across my chest. “No, I don’t think I will.”
Otto sighed softly beside me, the sound carrying the exact same patient tone he used whenever my mother forgot to lock her back gate or insisted she could carry groceries herself.
Manufactured concern.
I saw it now.
Every goddamn piece of it.
“Archie,” Otto started.
“No, seriously.” I laughed once under my breath, too tense for it to sound real. “You invited me to lunch, not some weird intervention about my professor.”
Randolph cocked his head. “He’s not just your professor, is he?”
The words slid into my spine cold as rainwater. “I don’t know what you’re implying.”
Which was…technicallytrue.
Because if this turned into a conversation about me sleeping with Henry, I might actually throw a latte at somebody. But another part of me—the part that had spent the last two days pulling apart Ashford and Otto and dead boys and fake names—understood instinctively that this wasn’t really about my relationship.
This was about control.
Randolph leaned back slightly in the booth, eyes steady on mine.
“We think you’re involved with a very dangerous man.”
“Is that so?”
My voice came out calmer than I felt.
Inside, fury kept climbing higher and higher, hot enough that it felt impossible my skin was containing all of it. These men sat here with their careful voices and measured expressions trying to feed me half-truths about Henry like I was naïve enough to swallow them whole. Like I hadn’t spent the last two nights wrapped around him while he told me about Philip with grief carved straight through his voice.
Like I didn’t know exactly what kind of monsters sat in front of me.
Otto gestured toward the booth again. “Archie, sit down.”
“No,” I said flatly. “You wanted me here? Fine. Say whatever little speech you rehearsed.”
Randolph’s expression tightened briefly before smoothing back out. “Professor Rothwell is not a safe man.”
