The answer is merciless because it refuses to argue. It simply allows the truth to stand there unfinished.
Kara’s voice thins. “What else?”
Rafi looks off-screen for a moment, then back. “We looked at the culinary school incidents you described. We couldn’t access private disciplinary records without more process, but public competition results and archived student press gave us a timeline.”
“No,” Kara whispers.
Sloane’s eyes soften slightly. “Kara.”
“No. Don’t make that part of this.”
“I wish we didn’t have to.”
Kara turns away from the table, one hand pressed against her mouth. “That was years ago.”
“It was,” Sloane confirms.
“It was over.”
“Maybe for you,” Sloane says.
Rafi speaks quietly. “You were scheduled for a regional culinary showcase in March that year. You withdrew after an ingredient contamination incident. The alternate from your program took your place.”
Kara’s hand lowers. She already knows. She says it anyway, like saying the name might make it not true.
“Vanessa.”
Rafi nods. “Vanessa Moreau placed second. After that, her profile in the program rose. Three months later, she was featured in a local food blog as one of Orlando’s emerging culinary voices. The article mentions you too.”
Kara’s laugh is small and awful. “Let me guess. Rising star derailed by pressure?”
Rafi does not answer. He does not need to. Kara closes her eyes.
I want to break something. Not because evidence is ugly. Evidence is often ugly. But because someone hurt her once, then stood beside her while she bled and called it loyalty. That kind of cruelty deserves a darker word than jealousy.
Sloane slides a page across the table. “There’s more. Old public posts. Interview language. A pattern of comparison between the two of you. Vanessa as talented but overlooked. Kara as magnetic, modern, camera-ready. When your streaming career took off, those comparisons got sharper.”
Kara does not touch the paper.
“She was proud of me,” she says.
Her voice is barely there.
“I believe part of her may have been,” Sloane says.
Kara looks at him then, eyes bright with tears and anger. “That’s worse.”
“Yes,” Sloane says. “It is.”
My phone buzzes. I glance down at an unknown number. It’s a text. I go cold before I open it.
Tell her to answer Vanessa. She always answers Vanessa.
No image this time. Just words.
Sloane reads it over my shoulder. “Forward it to Rafi.”
I do.
