“You helped me not to drop out of my master’s program last year, so please, let me help you today,” the girl added while handing over the scarf.
Selena wanted to refuse, but she knew she couldn’t afford to be stubborn, so she tied the soft, wine colored scarf around her head and kept walking toward the department.
At eight nineteen, she received the first message from Hunter, his digital tone sounding like a gunshot in the quiet hall.
“Do not do this, just come back home and we can fix everything,” the screen read.
Then another message popped up, this one even more manipulative than the first.
“Mom did not want to go that far, but you pushed us into it, and you know it,” he wrote.
And the last one, which was worse than all the others combined.
“If you go into that room looking like that, they are going to tear you apart, and nobody is going to respect a woman who looks so unstable,” he warned.
Selena turned off her cell phone completely, deciding that they had already tried to take away her dignity, and she wasn’t going to let them take her concentration, too.
Her thesis advisor, Dr. Rebecca Tran, was sitting by the coffee table when she saw her enter the small departmental auditorium.
Horror flashed across Rebecca’s face before she could even attempt to hide it with her professional demeanor.
“Selena, good heavens, what on earth did they do to you?” Rebecca gasped, standing up from her chair.
For the first time since the night before, her legs truly weakened, and she felt as if the floor might simply disappear beneath her.
“My husband and his mother thought that if they humiliated me enough, I would not show up,” Selena whispered, her voice cracking.
Rebecca closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them, her initial shock had already hardened into a cold, protective fury.
“We can postpone the defense, because no one would require you to appear today after such a traumatic event,” Rebecca insisted.
Selena shook her head, denying the offer with a finality that surprised even her.
“If I do not go in there and finish this, they win, and they win forever,” she said.
Rebecca stepped forward and held her by the shoulders with an almost maternal, grounding firmness.
“Then you are going in there, and after you finish, you are going to report them to the authorities for what they did,” Rebecca commanded.
By eight fifty five, the panel was complete, featuring Dr. Dominic, who was famous for tearing theses apart with a single calculated question, along with Dr. Samira, who was brilliant and incredibly tough.
There were also other academics, students, and colleagues from the department, but Selena avoided looking at the front row as she walked toward the podium.
She just wanted to reach the microphone before her body remembered that it was allowed to tremble.
But then, she saw it, and the sight stopped her breath entirely.
A tall man in a dark gray suit stood in the front row, looking at her with an unreadable expression.
It was her father, Carson, whom she hadn’t spoken to for almost three years, not since the brutal argument where he told her that marrying Hunter was lowering her standards.
She had replied back then that she was tired of a father who only supported what he could boast about to his friends, and they hadn’t exchanged a single word since.
And yet, there he was, standing in the front row of her defense.
He didn’t smile, and he didn’t raise his hand in greeting, he just slowly stood up from his seat.
Behind him, like an unstoppable, silent wave, the entire department began to rise as well.
They didn’t stand out of pity or because they knew the story of her hair.
They stood out of pure, hard earned respect.
Rebecca was by her side, the students were in the back, and even Dr. Samira stood up, all of them looking at her as one looks at someone who has walked through hell and still chose to arrive at the destination.
Selena took one deep breath and began her presentation.
Her voice was raspy at first, but it didn’t break, and she explained the archive, defended her complex methodology, and connected years of data with a precision she didn’t even know she possessed.
Each slide was a physical blow against everything they had tried to reduce her to, and each answer she gave was like another door slamming in Hunter’s smug face.
When the questions were finally over, the synod asked to deliberate in private, and Selena left the classroom with freezing hands.
Rebecca hugged her, a couple of students squeezed her fingers, and then her father approached until he was standing right in front of her.
“Hunter called me last night,” Carson said, his voice grave and low.
“He tried to convince me not to come today, and he told me that you were unstable and had completely lost your mind,” he added.
Selena felt the ground move beneath her feet, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
“And did you actually believe him?” she asked, bracing herself for the answer.
Carson swallowed hard, his eyes reflecting a deep, painful realization.
“No, and after that call, I discovered something that Hunter does not even imagine I know,” he said, glancing toward the closed door of the room.
The verdict had not yet been released, but what her father was about to say was going to change everything.
PART 3
Carson was not a man who was accustomed to apologizing, and he certainly wasn’t a man who was used to his voice shaking while talking to his own daughter.
But in front of Selena, in the quiet auditorium hallway, he had the broken look of a man who finally understood exactly how much he had missed during those three years of silence.
“I did not believe him because the call sounded entirely too rehearsed,” Carson continued.
“Hunter spoke as if he were trying to construct a narrative before I could hear your side of the story, and then his mother called me later, crying and saying you were out of control,” he explained.
Selena froze, staring at him.
“Did you go to the apartment?” she asked.
“Yes, and the doorman told me he saw you leaving with a backpack, crying, at midnight,” he admitted.
“Then I found you at the motel, and even though I didn’t go up to your room, the receptionist told me you had borrowed scissors at three in the morning,” Carson added.
Selena lowered her gaze, not out of shame, but out of the sheer, overwhelming pain of being seen so clearly.
Carson took one step closer, his posture softening.
