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CHAPTER TEN – Sins of the Mother
Some betrayals don't scream.
They echo.
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Emily sat alone in the old library basement, the glow from her laptop washing over her pale face.
Her mother's name still stared at her from the screen.
Margot Hale.
Scholar. Former journalist. Failed wife.
Now: the woman who handed over her daughter's secrets like a pawn in a political game.
Luke hadn't said a word since she showed him.
And Emily hadn't stopped shaking.
She opened the message again.
> "They'll listen to you now. This is the only way I could help."
Help?
It felt more like a hit.
---
She met Luke at the chapel again. It had become their unspoken safe zone.
No lies. No games. Just them — stripped raw.
"She used me," Emily said.
Luke didn't ask who.
"She wanted to get back at my dad. Expose the board. And I was the perfect weapon. Loud. Brilliant. Angry."
Luke watched her, quiet.
"She sent my file to Crestwood before I even applied. She wanted me here. She used my trauma as leverage."
Emily laughed bitterly. "She didn't raise a daughter. She raised a detonator."
Luke moved closer. "Then let's burn the whole place down."
---
The next morning, Emily left campus. No warning. No permission.
She got on a bus to Connecticut, where her mother lived in a little yellow house with too many rose bushes and not enough soul.
She knocked once.
Margot Hale opened the door like she was expecting a ghost.
"Em."
"Don't," Emily said. "Don't call me that."
Her mother stepped aside without a word.
The house smelled like old books and wine. Always had.
Emily didn't sit.
"Why?"
Margot looked tired. Not guilty — just worn down. "Because this place was killing you. You just couldn't see it."
"So you lit the match?"
"I gave you a chance to become something more."
Emily's laugh was hollow. "By ruining my life?"
"No," Margot whispered. "By making you impossible to ignore."
---
They argued for hours.
Emily cried once.
Margot didn't.
But before she left, her mother said one last thing:
> "They'll bury Luke. You know that, right?
Crestwood always protects its crown.
You were never their future — but he was."
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When Emily returned to campus, everything had changed.
A protest had broken out in front of the administration building. Students carried signs.
Justice for Hale
Truth Doesn't Expel
Crestwood's Rotten Core
And standing in the middle of it all — like a prince exiled from his throne — was Luke.
Bruised.
But not broken.
Emily walked straight through the crowd. Straight to him.
"They're coming for you," she said. "All of them."
"I know."
"You lied to protect me."
"I'd do it again."
She reached for his hand.
"I'm not running anymore."
---
That night, they snuck into the locked archives.
Emily had one goal: expose Crestwood for everything it had hidden.
They found files sealed for decades — proof of scholarships denied to minority students, professors paid to falsify grades, students silenced over assault.
Emily photographed everything. Every name. Every date.
Until Luke stopped her at one file.
She opened it.
And froze.
Her father's name.
And under it — Luke's father.
"What is this?"
Luke read the page slowly. "Your father… tried to stop the Wolf System."
"But—he was silenced. Discredited. Expelled."
Luke looked sick.
"It was my father."
---
Emily backed away. "So this was always about our parents."
Luke stepped toward her. "No. This is about us now."
"You lied to protect me. What will you do to protect him?"
Luke didn't answer.
Because silence is the only sound betrayal makes when it's your own blood.
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Emily left without another word.
Luke watched her go — and didn't chase her.
Because this time,
he didn't know if he could fix it.
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