Chapter 3

Aria POV:

At seven in the morning on my final day, I walked into the university's central administration building to pick up my sealed academic exit portfolio.

The Borealis Initiative required my physical research transcripts and verified hardware certifications.

The marble corridors of the engineering wing were already humming with early-morning activity.

As I approached the registrar's office, the sound of shrill laughter echoed from the main stairwell.

Three girls from Calla's sorority were leaning against the lockers, blocking the entrance.

In the center stood Sabrina Vance, Calla's closest confidante.

When Sabrina saw me, her eyes lit up with malicious delight.

"Well, look who decided to show her face," Sabrina announced, loud enough for twenty passing students to turn their heads. "The abandoned bride."

I kept walking, holding my leather folder against my chest.

"Excuse me," I said.

Sabrina stepped directly into my path, crossing her arms.

"Where do you think you're going, Aria?" Sabrina sneered. "Did you come to beg the dean to give you your admission back? Calla already took your desk in the lab. We moved your dusty old junk into the recycling bins this morning."

"Move," I said.

Sabrina leaned in, her eyes dropping to my collarbone.

Around my neck hung a small, circular titanium pendant-a custom miniature camera and sensor casing my mother had engineered for me before she died.

It held my mother's voice logs and our earliest field data from the northern stations.

Before I could react, Sabrina reached out and grabbed the chain.

"What's this ugly piece of metal?" Sabrina laughed, tugging it hard. "Did you steal this from the robotics lab on your way out? Let me see."

The chain dug into the back of my neck.

My reflexes took over.

I dropped my folder, caught Sabrina's wrist in a vise-like grip, and twisted outward with forty pounds of leverage.

Sabrina shrieked in pain, her knees buckling as her wrist bent back.

"Let go!" Sabrina screamed. "You're breaking my arm!"

"Don't touch my mother's things," I said, my voice dead and low.

I released her wrist, pushing her back.

Sabrina stumbled into her two friends, clutching her red arm, her face pale with fury.

"You psycho!" Sabrina yelled, her voice echoing down the hall. "Who do you think you are? You're just a scholarship charity case who latched onto the Sutton family! Jorden dumped you the second Calla came back, and now you're acting like a violent animal!"

The surrounding students stopped, whispering and pulling out their phones.

"Did you hear?" a girl whispered. "Jorden proposed to her on Friday, but took the ring back on Saturday."

"I heard she tried to sabotage Calla's medical records so Calla would be forced to leave the city."

"She's pathetic. Imagine clinging to men who clearly prefer someone else."

I picked up my leather folder from the floor.

Down the long marble hallway, the heavy double doors swung open.

Four men walked in, surrounding Calla like a presidential security detail.

Dylan was carrying Calla's designer backpack over one massive shoulder.

Alec held a stack of freshly printed syllabi.

Karson was adjusting the wireless headphones around Calla's neck.

And Jorden walked at her side, his hand resting firmly on the small of her back, guiding her through the crowd with effortless authority.

When Jorden saw the commotion, his eyes darkened.

He took long, purposeful strides toward us, the crowd parting instantly before him.

Calla rushed forward, her hands clasped over her mouth.

"Sabrina!" Calla cried, running to her friend's side. "What happened? Why is your wrist so red?"

"Aria attacked me!" Sabrina sobbed, pointing a shaking finger at me. "I just asked her about her class schedule, and she twisted my arm! She's out of her mind, Calla!"

Calla turned to me, her eyes wide with theatrical sorrow.

"Aria, how could you?" Calla whispered, her voice carrying across the entire corridor. "If you hate me, take it out on me! Don't hurt my friends! Sabrina didn't do anything to you!"

"Shut up, Calla," I said flatly.

Dylan stepped forward, his face dark with rage.

"What did you just say to her?" Dylan growled, dropping Calla's bag to the floor.

Jorden raised his hand, stopping Dylan.

Jorden stood in front of me, his height casting a shadow over my face.

His jaw was clenched tight, his dark eyes burning with cold reprimand.

"Is this how you behave in public now, Aria?" Jorden asked, his voice low and vibrating with suppressed anger. "Attacking students in the hallway? Creating a scene like a common delinquent?"

"She grabbed my mother's pendant," I said.

"I didn't touch it!" Sabrina lied instantly, crying behind Calla. "I just pointed at it!"

Jorden didn't even look at Sabrina.

He didn't care about the truth.

He only cared about decorum and control.

"You have humiliated this circle twice in forty-eight hours," Jorden said coldly. "First at the St. Regis, and now here. You are representing the Sutton name whether you like it or not until you board that plane."

"I don't represent you," I said. "And I never will."

Jorden leaned in, his voice dropping to a harsh hiss.

"Go back to your apartment. Right now. Pack your bags and stay inside until the transport arrives. If you cause another scene before three o'clock, I will personally revoke your father's research pension from the foundation."

My blood went cold.

My father spent thirty years working in the Sutton industrial labs, losing three fingers to frostbite in an engine test.

Jorden knew that pension was my father's only source of medical coverage.

"You touch my father's pension," I whispered, "and I will burn your family's logistics server to the ground."

Jorden's eyes flickered with a brief spark of surprise, then hardened into pure stone.

"Try me," he murmured. "Go home, Aria."

I didn't speak another word.

I turned around, walked into the registrar's office, took my sealed envelope from the clerk, and walked out the back exit.

Thirty minutes later, I was in my studio apartment, double-checking the locks on my duffel bags.

The sudden crash of wood splintering shook the room.

My front door flew open, slamming against the plaster wall.

Dylan marched in first, kicking my kitchen stool out of the way.

Behind him came Karson, Alec, and Jorden, with Calla trailing behind, dabbing her eyes with a lace handkerchief.

"Where is it?" Dylan roared, storming toward my bedroom.

"Get out of my apartment," I said, standing in the center of the living room, my hands clenched into fists.

"You stole it, didn't you?" Dylan snapped, his face purple with fury. "Calla's custom sapphire pendant! The one her grandmother left her! It was in her locker this morning, and after you caused that scene in the hallway, it vanished!"

"I didn't touch her pendant," I said.

"Search the place," Jorden commanded from the doorway, his coat unbuttoned, his voice utterly devoid of warmth.

"This is private property," I warned, taking a step toward Jorden. "You do not have a warrant. Get out before I call the federal marshals."

"Call whoever you want," Alec said coldly, pulling open my closet doors. "The building lease is registered under a Sutton subsidiary. Technically, you are a tenant on corporate property."

Karson swept his arm across my bookshelf, sending textbooks and technical journals crashing to the floor.

Dylan tore through my desk drawers, flinging pens, calipers, and technical blueprints across the rug.

I watched them ransack my home.

For years, they had treated this apartment like their second clubhouse.

They had keys.

They slept on my couch when they were drunk.

They raided my fridge and left their laundry for me to wash.

I had thought it was intimacy.

I had thought it was family.

It wasn't.

They had never seen me as a human being with boundaries.

I was just an amenity that came with their childhood.

Dylan opened my bedroom wardrobe, tearing through the hangers.

He stopped, looking at the empty shelves.

"Where are your clothes?" Dylan muttered, confused.

Karson opened the hall closet.

"There's nothing in here," Karson said, glancing back at Jorden. "Just two duffel bags by the door."

Alec walked over to the kitchen table.

Sitting on the counter was the thick, dark-blue binder containing my official Borealis contract, stamped with the silver eagle of the United States Department of Energy.

Alec picked it up, flipping through the pages.

"She really signed it," Alec murmured, his voice tightening. "Look at the seal. It's a Level-5 classified assignment. Permanent assignment to the 73rd parallel."

Jorden glanced at the binder, his lips curling in disdain.

"It's a scare tactic," Jorden said, waving his hand. "She thinks if she packs her bags, we'll beg her to stay. She's been doing this since middle school."

"I found it!" Calla suddenly cried from the corner of the room.

She was kneeling by the desk, reaching into the narrow gap between the wooden drawers and the radiator.

When she stood up, she was holding a delicate platinum chain with a teardrop sapphire.

"It was jammed behind her radiator!" Calla gasped, holding it out to Dylan. "Why would it be back there? Did it... did it fall?"

"It didn't fall," Dylan snarled, glaring at me with raw disgust. "She hid it there before she left the campus. She wanted to sell it or throw it away."

"I didn't put that there," I said, looking directly at Calla.

Calla shrank behind Dylan, clutching the necklace to her chest.

"I just wanted to find it," Calla whimpered. "Aria, if you wanted a sapphire, I would have bought you one. You didn't have to steal my grandmother's."

"You planted it," I said, my voice steady and cold. "You slipped it in when Dylan kicked my stool over."

"Shut up!" Dylan yelled, taking a menacing step toward me.

Jorden walked past Dylan, stopping in front of my desk where my secondary laptop was sitting.

He opened the screen.

"Karson," Jorden said, his voice flat. "Did she finish the video edits for Calla?"

Karson walked over, clicked the trackpad, and saw the empty project file.

"No," Karson said, his jaw tightening. "She didn't touch it. She left the raw files sitting on the drive."

Jorden didn't hesitate.

He reached down, pulled the external hard drive from the port, dropped it onto the hardwood floor, and brought his heavy leather boot down on it.

The plastic shattered.

The internal magnetic disk cracked with a sickening snap.

"If you won't help Calla celebrate her milestone," Jorden said, his eyes cold as ice, "then you don't need these memories either."

He wiped his boot on my rug.

"Let's go," Jorden told the group. "Leave her to freeze. She'll realize what she threw away within forty-eight hours."

They walked out, one by one.

Dylan slammed the broken door behind them.

I stood alone in the wreckage of my apartment.

I looked down at the crushed hard drive on the floor.

Then, I looked at the digital clock on the wall.

11:00 AM.

One hour until my escort arrived.

I picked up my duffel bags, walked out the shattered door, and didn't look back.