A wave of disgusted murmurs rippled through the three hundred guests. The air grew instantly hostile.

“When the security company finally called and we rushed back to the city, Maya had already dragged you out onto the front lawn,” Richard said, his tear-filled eyes finally meeting mine.

There was no defiance left in them, only the emptiness of a man who had lived a cowardly lie for a decade and a half. “We panicked. We blamed the incident on Maya.

We told the press she was playing with matches. We told our elite friends she was deeply troubled. We hid her away in dark clothes and distant boarding schools because every single time I looked at her scars, I didn’t see a hero.

I just saw my own unforgivable failure staring right back at me.”

The silence on the patio had turned sharp and hostile. A girl in the front row, one of Chloe’s former sycophants, audibly whispered into the quiet, “You are sick.”