"I've always lived here alone! When did I ever let him through my door?"
One of the guards stepped forward at my aunt's signal, holding up his phone.
On the screen: a man keying the code into my front door. The door opened. A girl came out of the apartment and threw herself into his arms, and the two of them kissed as the door swung shut.
"Nothing to say now, is there? He comes by every few days. Even the building security knows him."
"And you said you'd only met him once!"
"Ava, don't make me say this as your aunt—an unmarried girl who's let her reputation rot this badly."
"I haven't even blamed you for disgracing the Bennett name, and here you are turning it around on us!"
My aunt's voice dissolved into noise.
I stared at the grainy footage on the guard's phone, cold crawling down my spine, vertebra by vertebra.
How was this possible?
He'd been walking in and out of my home—and I never knew.
And the woman clinging to him. Who was she?
"This video is fake! That's not me!"
"You made it with AI!"
Sebastian looked at me, bored. "Enough. Things have gone this far. Can you just stop lying?"
"I never wanted to show these. You're the one who had to push it this far."
He swiped open his phone gallery, and a spread of obscene photos jumped off the screen.
The face on that screen, eyes unfocused and glassy, was unmistakably mine.
Like someone had blown a whistle, the people around me pounced all at once, voices crashing over each other.
"A worn-out piece of trash like you—my son's willing to marry you and you should be thanking your lucky stars!"
"I've worked this building three years. Seen plenty of women like her."
"Oh, she puts on a real good show during the day, but past midnight those delivery boys just keep heading upstairs, one after another. You think they're bringing food?"
"I always wondered how a girl that young could buy a place here. Now it makes sense—she laid her way to every last penny."
"Couple weeks back, she came downstairs in a little spaghetti-strap dress to pick up a delivery and smiled right at me. You tell me that's not flirting. I knew right then she wasn't the decent type."
Sebastian's lips curled into a smug grin. "Well, the evidence speaks for itself. Nothing left to discuss."
"Ava, filial piety comes first. Start by kneeling and apologizing to my mother."