Chapter 63 *
Scarlett’s POV
"Romano Family Daughter's 1600 SAT Score Under Investigation"
"From Montana Foster Care to Ivy League: How Scarlett Romano's Story Doesn't Add Up"
I clicked on the main article.
Started reading.
Every paragraph made it worse.
They had screenshots of my high school transcript. My grades clearly visible.
Math: B- English: C+ Science: B History: C
GPA: 3.2
Class Rank: 78/200
Then the SAT score. 1600. Perfect.
The comments section was a nightmare.
This is the most obvious case of cheating I've ever seen.
Rich families buying their way into college. Disgusting.
How stupid does she think we are?
The Romano family are literal criminals. Of course they'd cheat.
I studied for two years with expensive tutors and only got a 1520. She expects us to believe she did it with zero prep?
Montana public school to perfect SAT in six months? Not possible.
College Board needs to revoke her score immediately.
This is just like the Varsity Blues scandal. Throw her in jail.
There were thousands of comments. Tens of thousands.
My phone started buzzing. Messages flooding in.
Classmates. Old friends from Montana. Random numbers I didn't recognize.
All asking the same questions.
Is it true?
Did you really cheat?
How could you do this?
I turned off my phone.
Closed the laptop.
Someone had done this deliberately.
This wasn't random internet drama.
This was planned. Someone wanted to destroy me.
And they'd done a damn good job.
I couldn't sleep.
The bedroom was dark. I was alone with my laptop and a hundred million people calling me a cheater.
My phone buzzed on the nightstand.
Unknown number. I picked up.
"Scarlett." Lorenzo's voice came through.
My stomach dropped.
"Did you cheat on your SAT?"
I almost laughed. "What do you think I am, Lorenzo?" My voice came out sharp. "You think I bribed the College Board? Or maybe I hacked into their servers?"
"I'm asking you a direct question."
"And I'm giving you a direct answer. Figure it out yourself."
I hung up. Threw the phone onto the bed.
My hands were shaking.
Three seconds later, my phone started ringing again.
Different number. Still unknown.
I answered without thinking.
"Scarlett Romano?" A woman's voice. Too cheerful. "This is Jennifer Walsh from the New York Post. We're running a follow-up on the SAT cheating allegations. Care to comment?"
"No comment."
"Our sources say you had a 3.2 GPA in Montana. How do you explain jumping to a perfect 1600?"
"I don't owe you an explanation."
"Did the Romano family pay for your test results?"
My jaw clenched.
"The Romano family didn't pay for anything. I earned that score."
"We have data analysts saying the statistical probability of your score improvement is less than 0.01%." Her voice got sharper. More aggressive. "What do you say to that?"
I felt exhaustion wash over me. Deep and heavy.
"I say your data analysts need better jobs."
I hung up.
Turned off my phone completely.
Silence.
For about ten seconds.
Then my laptop started going crazy.
Instagram notifications. X mentions. Text messages syncing from the cloud.
Hundreds of them. Thousands.
I opened Instagram. My DMs were flooded.
@SarahMontana_2005: did u really cheat? everyone's talking about it
@ColumbiaPrep_Jake: yo Scarlett what's going on? the group chat is going insane
@RandomUser8472: FRAUD. You're a FRAUD. You don't deserve Harvard.
I scrolled through them. Kept scrolling.
People I went to school with in Montana. People I'd never met. Random accounts with anime profile pictures.
All asking the same thing.
Did you cheat?
How did you do it?
Are you going to jail?
My chest felt tight.
I closed Instagram. Opened X.
Worse.
My name was trending. #ScarlettRomanoCheating had 847K tweets.
I scrolled through more comments.
She thinks we're stupid.
The entitlement is insane.
Montana foster kid to Ivy League overnight? SCAM.
Rich people really think they can buy anything.
I wanted to laugh.
Rich?
I'd spent three years sleeping in a shipping container in Syria. Ate one meal a day if I was lucky. Wore the same clothes for weeks.
Entitled?
I'd killed my first target at fifteen. Spent my eighteenth birthday extracting a CIA asset from a warzone.
Fraud?
The only fraudulent thing about me was pretending I gave a shit about their opinions.
But the comments kept coming.
She doesn't deserve Harvard.
Yale should rescind her acceptance.
This is everything wrong with America.
I closed the laptop.
My hands were shaking again.
Not from fear.
From rage.
I'd survived things these keyboard warriors couldn't imagine. Faced enemies that would make them piss themselves.
And now I was being destroyed by people hiding behind anime avatars.
My phone buzzed again. Text message this time. It was a link. I clicked it.
Video file. Posted on some sketchy gossip site.
The thumbnail showed my father. Sal Romano. At what looked like some kind of event.
I pressed play.
The video quality was shit. Clearly filmed on someone's phone from across a room.
But the audio was crystal clear.
"—want to make something clear." My father's voice. Loud enough to carry. "Scarlett Romano is no longer under the Romano family's protection."
My blood went cold.
The camera zoomed in slightly. Sal was standing near a bar. Expensive suit. Surrounded by men I recognized.
Other family heads. Underbosses. Connected people.
"Whatever happens to her, it's not our concern." He took a sip of his drink. Casual. Like he was discussing the weather. "She made her choice."
Someone off-camera said something I couldn't hear.
Sal smiled. Cold.
"The Romano name doesn't cover her anymore."
The video ended. Then it started auto-playing again.
His face. Calm. Almost pleasant.
Like he was talking about the weather. Not disowning his own daughter.
Stupid. So fucking stupid.
My chest felt tight. Like something was pressing down on it.
I wanted to scream.
To break something.
To do anything that would make this feeling stop.