Amybeth Schnapp screamed. "It's going to happen again!"
And every phone in the council room started beeping.
All of them. At once. A rainfall of chimes and buzzes, pockets and purses lighting up around the room, and Aislinn watched forty pairs of hands reach for forty screens with the doomed synchronization of an orchestra, and heard, from forty tiny speakers, slightly out of phase with itself, a fist hitting a door and a voice sayingOpen up, it's me.
The footage was grainy and high-angled and completely unmistakable.
The room watched a drunk man swing. Watched him miss, twice, and be warned, twice, and pull a knife on a man in a suit who never once raised his voice. Watched what happened after that, all of it, right up until the suit stepped over what was left and walked out of frame without checking his hair.
Somewhere in row three, a father quietly put his phone face-down and stared at the wall.
When the video ended, they all looked at him.
Valerio smiled pleasantly. "I believe this is all a misunderstanding. Isn't it?"
It was remarkable, truly, how many people could agree with one man in under a minute. It was a stampede of agreement. It was misunderstanding, absolutely, completely, everyone had always said so, and chairs scraped and fabrics rustled and the room emptied with the orderly desperation of a theater that has smelled smoke, and within sixty seconds, it was just them.
Aislinn sat in the echoing council room, still in a daze. "I don't understand."
"Which part?"
"Any of it. All of it. They watched that video, Valerio. They know what you did to Gumwood, and they still walked in here this morning to pick a fight with you."
"People who've never lost anything real believe reputation is armor."
She stared at the abandoned chairs, at the doors still swinging from the stampede. "I spent eight years being scared of the bake-sale committee."
Valerio pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. "Don't ever change."
That was when Minna came back through the doors, folder still crisp, expression very slightly satisfied, and Louis's head came up from his father's side.
"Where did you go, Aunt Minna? I didn't notice you leaving."
"I just had a nice little chat with the principal." She crossed to Valerio, leaned in, and whispered in French, "Quelqu'un l'a payée pour rendre la vie de ta famille misérable."
"What are you talking about?" Aislinn asked.
"They said someone paid Principal Abdul to make our lives miserable."
"Louis!" Minna and Valerio said together, with the exact same wince.
"Why would anyone do that?" Aislinn's voice came out thin.
Valerio exhaled. "Since there's no point hiding—who is it, Minna? Did you get a name?"
Minna looked at Aislinn. "Do you know a woman named Jane Smith?"
"No, and that sounds like a fake name."
"It is a fake name." Minna took her phone out. "But this is what she looks like. Do you know her now?"
Aislinn paled.
"You know her then," Valerio said grimly.
"She's a friend from college." The council room had gone very cold, or she had. "She's the one whose friend saw you cheating on me."
Chapter Thirteen
