Hearing what Megan just said, Damian Brooks did not waste another second before he started talking again, and the desperation in his voice was no longer something he was trying to manage or contain.“I am sorry,” he said, and he said it the way a person says something they have said before and knows is not enough but has nothing else to offer. “I know that does not fix anything. I know it does not undo a single thing that was done to you. But I am saying it because it is true and because I do not know what else to give you except the truth right now.”He pressed his hands together in front of him, and for a man who had spent the entire morning using his hands to gesture with authority and point with accusation, the gesture looked almost foreign on him.“Please find it in your heart to forgive her,” he said. “I will make it up to you. Whatever you need, whatever would make this easier to carry, just tell me and I will do it. Anything.”He paused for just a moment, and then something

Megan stared at the file.She stared at it the way a person stares at something when their brain has received the information but is refusing, on some fundamental and instinctive level, to process it into something real. Her mouth had parted slightly and her eyes had gone wide and for a moment, just one long and unguarded moment, every wall she had been holding up through the entire length of this morning came down completely and what was left on her face was just pure, unfiltered shock.“I don't believe this,” she said, and her voice came out smaller than she intended, stripped of all the composure she had been carrying since the moment she walked through those doors. “This cannot be real. This is not real.”She looked at the file, then up at the man holding it, then back at the file again, as though one of those things might change if she looked at it long enough.“Are you actually telling me,”she said, and her voice was picking up now, not in anger but in the stunned and breathles

Hearing what Raymond just said, Megan knew there was no going back, and honestly, she didn't want to. She nodded her head, the look on her face showing that she had completely shut the door on mercy."Like I said before," Megan said, her voice carrying the steady weight of someone who has finished second-guessing themselves. "I don't have any other choice. I don't have any other obligation than to let Anita face her judgment. She bullied people. She caused mischief, she made life miserable for those who couldn't fight back, and I am not going to allow that to go unchecked. She has to face it."At that moment, the finality in Megan's words hit Anita like a physical blow. She was still on her knees on the cold floor, but she slumped even further, the last shred of her pride dissolving into pure panic. "I am sorry!" she cried out, her voice cracking into a loud, desperate sob. "I am very, very sorry! I swear I never knew it was going to affect you this badly. Please, Megan, please don't

Raymond looked at her with an expression that was impossible to read, the specific and carefully constructed expression of someone who is holding something back and enjoying the holding of it just slightly more than they should."What if I say no?" he said, and there was something in his voice that was not quite amusement but lived very close to it. "What if I don't comply with what you just said? What then? Are you going to be angry with me?"Megan did not even blink."Not just angry," she said, and the speed with which she responded made it clear that she had not needed to think about it at all. "I will be so disappointed in you. Because you stood right in front of me and told me I had the priority in all of this. You told me I was going to be at the center of every decision made in this room today. You made that promise to me."She held his gaze without moving."So why are you pulling back now?" she said, and her voice carried the sharp and pointed clarity of someone who is not goi

The Chancellor nodded his head so quickly it looked like it might fall off entirely."That is very okay, sir," he said, and his voice carried the specific and thoroughly chastened energy of a man who has learned several important lessons about himself today and intends to carry every single one of them going forward. "Very okay. The disciplinary committee is cancelled effective immediately. There will be no further proceedings and I am going to make absolutely certain, on my position and on everything attached to it, that something like this never finds its way into this school again. Never. I will personally see to it."He said the last part with the conviction of a man making a promise to himself as much as to anyone else in the room.Then, almost before the Chancellor had finished speaking, Damian Brooks was already moving.He crossed the floor with none of the commanding and territorial energy he had carried when he first walked through those doors. He stopped in front of Raymond