Nights Burn With Regret — by Nathan Perez 143

 

Chapter 143 

Chapter 143 

Violet 

65 vouchers 

I sat back on the chair, my body relaxed even though the air around me felt tense. My thumb scrolled slowly through the school website, through article after article, image after image. Whoever uploaded it wasn’t even trying to hide the target. My name was there. My real picture was there. My department, my year, my scholarship status, every detail laid bare. 

The headline made my lips curve into something almost cold. 

Medical Student’s Secret Life with Wealthy Benefactor Revealed. 

Below it were pictures, some real, stolen without my permission, taken from angles meant to make things look worse than they were. Others were painfully fake. Photoshopped images of me entering hotels with older men I had never seen in my life. Intimate images that weren’t even my body, pasted with my face, shared confidently as proof. 

I scrolled past them calmly, and reached the