Jonathan's townhouse smelled like old books and lemon oil.
I stood in the foyer with my overnight bag at my feet. I hadn't called ahead. I'd just gotten in a cab at the hospital discharge entrance and given the driver this address.
The door opened before I could knock.
My father stood there in his reading glasses and shirtsleeves. He looked at me for three seconds. Took in the hospital bracelet still on my wrist. The way I was holding myself too carefully. The emptiness behind my eyes.
"What do you need from me?" he said.
Not *what happened*. Not *I told you so*. Just that.
I swallowed. "Two weeks. And a secure laptop."
He stepped aside. "Come in."
I picked up my bag. Walked past him into the house I'd grown up in. The stairs looked steeper than I remembered.
Jonathan closed the door. "Guest room or your old room?"
"My old room."
He nodded. Didn't ask anything else. Just walked toward the kitchen. "I'll make coffee."
I climbed the stairs slowly. Each step pulled at something deep in my abdomen. The doctor had said six weeks for full recovery. I wasn't supposed to lift anything heavy. I was supposed to rest.
I set my bag down in my childhood bedroom. Same pale blue walls. Same desk by the window. The bookshelf still held my undergraduate textbooks and the annotated *Middlemarch* Jonathan had given me.
I sat down at the desk. Looked out at the street below. Bare trees. Gray sky. A man walking a dog.
Jonathan appeared in the doorway. He set a mug of black coffee on the desk. Didn't say anything. Just put his hand briefly on my shoulder.
Then he left.
I picked up the coffee. Took a sip. It was exactly the right temperature.
I stared at the empty desk surface for a long time.
Then I opened my bag and pulled out my phone.
---
The secure laptop arrived the next morning.
Jonathan set it on my desk without comment. Military-grade encryption. No traceable IP. He'd had it couriered from Columbia's legal tech department.
"Thank you," I said.
He nodded once. Left me alone.
I opened the laptop. Booted it up. Stared at the login screen.
Then I opened my phone and pulled up the notes file I'd been keeping. Dates. Times. Details. The Tiffany receipt. The café meeting with Meilani. The twenty-three unanswered calls.
I started typing.
---
Camden's cloud backup login was the same password he'd used for everything since graduate school.
His birthday backwards. The year he got his PhD. No capitals. No special characters.
I'd set up the account for him four years ago when he kept losing files. He'd never changed the credentials.
I logged in.
The backup loaded. Thousands of files. Photos. Documents. Videos. All organized by date.
I started with the photos.
The first explicit image was dated six months ago. Meilani in Camden's apartment. In his bed. Wearing his shirt.
I saved it. Moved to the next one.
There were forty-seven total.
I downloaded all of them.
Then I opened the video folder.
Three video calls. All recorded automatically by Camden's backup settings. All with Meilani. All explicit.
I watched the first thirty seconds of the first one. Meilani's face filled the screen. She was laughing. Camden's voice off-camera: *God, you're perfect.*
I stopped the video. Saved the file. Moved on.
By the end of the first week, I had everything.
Photographs. Videos. Text message logs pulled from the cloud backup. Hotel receipts from Camden's email. Credit card statements from our joint account showing charges in Chicago on the exact night Gerald collapsed.
I cross-referenced the concert venue address with the timestamp on one of Camden's photos. Forty-three miles from the nearest Boston conference center.
I built a timeline. Hour by hour. Every lie. Every location. Every piece of evidence.
I compiled it all into a single encrypted file.
I backed it up in three locations.
I told no one.
---
On the fourteenth day, I called Raymond Holt.
He answered on the second ring. "Alaya." His voice was careful. Warm. "How are you?"
"I'm fine," I said. "I need to ask you something."
A pause. "All right."
"When is Camden's Associate Dean candidacy hearing scheduled?"
Silence on the other end. Long enough that I thought the call had dropped.
Then: "March nineteenth. Ten AM. Full faculty board review."
"Thank you."
"Alaya." His voice shifted. Lower. More serious. "Whatever you're planning. Be certain."
I looked out the window. The same bare trees. The same gray sky.
"I've never been more certain of anything in my life," I said.
I hung up.
Set the phone down on my desk.
March nineteenth. Three weeks away.
I opened my laptop. Pulled up the encrypted file. Reviewed it one more time.
Every photograph. Every message. Every receipt. Every timestamp.
I thought about Meilani standing at the foot of my hospital bed. The bracelet on her wrist. The smile when she said *sorry*.
I thought about Camden's hand on my chest. The window ledge. The cold floor.
I thought about the baby I would never meet.
Then I closed the laptop.
And I started planning exactly how I was going to walk into that boardroom and burn his entire world to the ground.
