Chapter 1 - THE WALK OF FIREThe heavy wooden doors of the Grand Auditorium felt impossibly distant as Selena stood in the hallway. Morning sunlight streamed through the tall stained-glass windows, casting long, fractured shadows across the stone floor—much like the uneven,
Her phone buzzed continuously in her blazer pocket. Hunter: Come home right now. You are making a fool of yourself. Barbara: Respect your husband. Do not step foot in that hall.
Selena didn’t even glance at the screen. She powered the phone completely off, plunging the device into silence.
The security guard at the side entrance, a kindly older man named Arthur who had watched her haul heavy boxes of reference books into the library for years, gave her a warm smile. But as his eyes drifted to her pinned-up hair and the pale, rigid set of her jaw, his smile faltered.
"Dr. Vance," Arthur murmured, holding the door open. "Your committee is already seated. They've been setting up the projector for twenty minutes."
"Thank you, Arthur," Selena replied, her voice remarkably steady. "Wish me luck."
"You don't need luck, child," Arthur said, his eyes scanning her face with sudden, protective intensity. "You've got fire in your eyes today. Go in there and burn them down."
She pushed through the heavy oak panels into the auditorium. The room was vast, echoing with the quiet rustle of papers and the soft clink of water glasses. At the center front sat the five members of her dissertation committee. In the front row sat her colleagues, her academic rivals, and a few close friends who had supported her through the brutal marathon of the past eight years.
And then, sitting near the back, completely out of place in a room full of tweed jackets and academic regalia, sat a man in a crisp, expensive charcoal suit.
Selena stopped breathing for a fraction of a second.
It was her father, Richard Vance.
They hadn’t spoken in two years—not since the day she married Hunter. Richard had looked her new husband in the eye, told her that Hunter had the cold, ambitious eyes of a predator who wanted to clip her wings, and warned her that she would regret it. Blinded by the frantic romance of her early twenties, Selena had chosen Hunter over her father’s warning, accusing Richard of being elitist and overbearing. She had walked out of her family home, and her proud father had locked the door behind her, refusing to compromise.
Yet, here he was. Sitting alone in the third row, his silver hair neatly combed, his expression an impenetrable mask of absolute composure. He wasn’t looking at her hair. He was looking straight into her soul.
Selena swallowed hard, gripped the strap of her leather backpack, and walked up the steps to the podium.
Dr. Alistair Sterling, the chair of the committee and a notoriously merciless historian, cleared his throat. "Good morning, Dr. Vance. We are ready when you are. You have forty-five minutes to defend The Economic Architecture of Post-War Reconstruction. Let us begin."
May you like
Selena connected her laptop to the projector. The blue light cast a sharp glow over her face. She looked out at the sea of expectant faces, took a deep breath, and opened her mouth to speak.
She had no idea that at that exact moment, miles away in their apartment, Hunter and Barbara were about to face a very different kind of reckoning.
