Reborn to Destroy the Lie That Ruined Me

2: 2

I got to the academic affairs office and shoved the door open to find the Dean's face black as thunder.

He grabbed a thick stack of printouts off the desk and hurled it at my feet.

"Joseph Joyce, you're the youngest associate professor this school has, a talent the department has invested everything in cultivating. And what have you done? Used your position to coerce a student! What happened to your integrity?"

I picked the pages up off the floor and turned through them one by one.

The so-called evidence was exactly like last time: transfers I'd supposedly made to Dora Fox, plus a string of explicit messages.

I set the pages back down on the desk.

"Dean, how are you so sure this is me? Couldn't Dora Fox have fabricated it herself?"

The question left him tongue-tied. He stared at me for two seconds, then flew into an even greater rage.

"Joseph Joyce, do you even hear yourself? She's a clean, decent girl. Why would she drag her own reputation through the mud to slander a professor?"

Dora lifted her red-rimmed eyes and looked around at the roomful of colleagues through a blur of tears.

"I never wanted to make this public..."

"Professor Joyce harassed me day after day. He said if I'd be with him, he could get me into the graduate program."

At that, her sobbing grew worse.

"All I wanted was money for the abortion so I could graduate quietly. But he turned right around and reported my pregnancy, trying to ruin my whole life..."

The tearful, broken speech had every eye in the room turning on me with contempt.

"No wonder he was cruel enough to report a student. Guilty conscience. He was scared it would come out, so he struck first."

"You really never know what's behind a face. How can an animal like this stay at a university? Isn't the school going to expel him?"

The Dean rubbed at his brow, pained.

"Three thousand dollars. If you'd just lent it to her back then, would we be sitting in this mess now?"

"Joseph Joyce, at this point you hand in your resignation, say publicly that you're leaving over a private dispute, and at least you keep some dignity."

Dora buried her face in her hands, her whole body shaking with sobs.

"So that's it, it all just gets waved away? I'm a girl with no one to lean on. I've lost my good name, and I'm carrying his child on top of it, and I can't even get one apology?"

I looked down at her and nearly laughed out loud.

So this was what they'd been waiting for.

Last time, I'd panicked. All I could think about was steadying the situation, so I bowed my head and apologized in front of everyone.

And she'd turned right around, taken the video of my apology, and spread it all over the internet. I became the hypocrite in a scholar's robes that everyone spat on.

While she became the internet's darling, the face of "standing up to patriarchy."

Ten million followers overnight, and money pouring in.

I walked over to her, unhurried, and stopped in front of her.

"Fine. Since you insist this child is mine."

"When did you get pregnant, and where?"

Dora's eyes swam with tears. She choked out the words.

"Professor Joyce, do you really have to force me like this? That day you used a conference as an excuse to take me out, lured me to a hotel, and I fought as hard as I could..."

"Which hotel."

"The Ritz... the Ritz-Carlton, room 4203."

It shot out of her.

"What time."

"Three months ago. Professor Joyce, stop pushing me. I'll drop the complaint, all right? I'm begging you, let me go."

And with that she dropped to her knees in front of me and started knocking her head against the floor, over and over.

The perfect picture of a victim backed into a corner.

The Dean was so furious he swung and slapped me across the face.

"Joseph Joyce! What is it you actually want? This could all be settled with one apology, and you insist on blowing it up?"

I worked my jaw, ignored the Dean, and kept my eyes on Dora.

"At three months along, a hospital can run a paternity test."

"And every administrator happens to be right here, witnesses all present. Let's go to the hospital right now, draw blood in front of everyone, and find out exactly whose child this is."