Selene pressed the answer button.
“Mr. Shaw.”
Her voice was polite, distant, stripping away any hint of late–night intimacy.
A rich, deep voice came through the line. “I saw the trending news.”
Selene asked quickly, “Is Professor Shaw all right?”
“He’s already asleep.”
Hearing that Theodore hadn’t been affected by the storm of online rumors, Selene finally let out a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding.
Adrian continued, “To make sure he got some rest, I slipped a couple of sleeping pills into his tea.”
Selene was speechless.
After a moment, she asked hesitantly, “Was Professor Shaw very upset when he saw what people were saying online?”
“What really had him shaking with anger wasn’t the accusation that he helped you cheat,” Adrian said quietly. “It’s that people are dredging up what happened between him and Quentin four years ago. Everyone thinks he was just jealous and
tried to hold Quentin back.”
Selene had cut herself off from everything related to Capital University after she dropped out–out of guilt, out of a restless conscience. She’d blocked all news, never asking what had happened there after she left.
She had no idea what Theodore had gone through.
“I know Quentin,” Selene said at last.
Quentin was Clarissa’s husband. Selene had seen him a few times at family
gatherings.
He was always wearing those thick black glasses a man of average looks, simply dressed. He didn’t talk much, but he was quick to read the room and even quicker to help out. The Vaughn family elders could never find fault with him.
Compared to Selene, who had the powerful Thompson family behind her, Quentin had nothing. He’d grown up in a tiny northern town, in a house that barely kept out the cold. He’d studied his way into Hastings College of Education, then fought his
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way into Capital University for his doctorate, and stayed on to teach.
Clarissa never tired of bragging about his “brilliant, sexy mind.”
Earlier that year, Clarissa had gone around telling everyone that Quentin was a shoo–in for dean. He was about to become the youngest dean in the university’s
history.
Selene remembered: Quentin was a mathematician, like Professor Shaw.
“Did something happen between Quentin and Professor Shaw?”
“You probably haven’t seen Quentin’s paper from four years ago, have you? I can
send it over.”
Puzzled, Selene glanced at her laptop. A notification popped up–Adrian had already sent the file.
She opened Quentin’s paper. She barely made it a quarter of the way through before her hand, resting on the mouse, began to tremble so violently she nearly dropped
- it.
No. This couldn’t be happening.
The pale glow of the screen seemed to drain the color from her face, line by line.
Each sentence was like a knife slicing through her chest.
How could Quentin’s paper look so much like her own doctoral thesis?
And then she saw it–her own research data, copied word for word into his work.
It felt as if an invisible hand had closed around her heart, squeezing until she couldn’t breathe. Her heart was crushed flat, blood pounding in her ears, every breath a struggle.
She forgot she was still on the call with Adrian. His voice finally pulled her back, her body numb, fingers icy cold.
“… My dad discovered that Quentin had basically rewritten your dissertation and published it as his own. He was furious. He accused Quentin of plagiarizing his student, and tried to call you, but your number was unreachable.
Quentin told my dad you two were relatives, that you’d left academia to focus on family, and you’d given him your research as a favor. You know, ‘keeping it ir family.‘
My dad was so angry he ended up in the hospital. He blocked Quentin’s application
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for a professorship, made plenty of enemies doing it. Six months later, Quentin’s paper was accepted by a top journal. He became an overnight sensation.”
“I never gave Quentin my thesis!”
Selene’s voice didn’t even sound like her own, raw and torn, almost a sob. “He stole my work!”
Four years. Four years, and only now did she discover that Quentin had stolen everything she’d worked for.
He’d scrubbed her name from the research, published it in a top journal, and rode that wave straight to success.
And now, Selene finally understood: Theodore’s coldness toward her wasn’t just about disappointment. It was a wound that had never truly healed.
