The filtered Cruelty

ARIA POV

“Did she actually think a guy like Blake Reed would ever look at someone like her? What a desperate pig!"

A sharp, cruel voice echoed across the crowded university hallway, shattering the last remaining pieces of my fragile confidence.

The video playing on my phone screen wasn't just the clip of me on my knees in the library. Someone had maliciously edited it. Worse than that, they had warped it using obnoxious, humiliating video filters, adding giant cartoon clown tears to my face, sparkling gold coins raining down around me with every sob to mock my mother's marriage, and flashing text overlays calling me a “desperate gold-digger” and a “pathological slut trying to seduce Blake and cause a fight between two best friends.”

The comments section was moving at a blinding, terrifying speed. Hundreds of students from across Crestwood University were tearing me apart piece by piece, accusing me of throwing myself at Blake just to climb social ladders.

"Look at her pretending she didn't plan the whole thing," another mocking voice whispered loudly from near the lockers.

I flinched as if I had been physically struck. My fingers trembled so violently I almost dropped my phone onto the linoleum floor. I pressed the power button, plunging the screen into darkness, and shoved the device deep into my sweater pocket.

"Just walk. Ignore them. Just get out of here," I chanted quietly to myself, my eyes stinging with hot, humiliated tears.

I kept my head down, pulling my oversized gray sweater tightly around my body like a shield as I hurried toward the exit. But the mockery followed me every single step of the way. Freshmen pointed and giggled behind their notebooks; senior guys laughed out loud as I passed; and by the time I pushed through the heavy iron gates of the campus and made my way back to the Hayes estate, I felt completely hollowed out.

Even inside the grand, quiet foyer of the house, the digital nightmare clung to my skin. One of the housemaids was dusting the mahogany table near the stairs; when she heard me walk in, she quickly turned her face away, avoiding my eyes entirely. Word had clearly traveled fast. I was a laughingstock, completely exposed and humiliated for the entire student body to see.

I dragged my feet toward the grand staircase, desperate to lock myself in my bedroom and disappear from the world.

"Where do you think you're going, fatty?"

The cold, sharp voice stopped me dead in my tracks.

I turned around slowly, my heart sinking. Jaxon stood leaning lazily against the open doorway of the estate's private study. He wore a dark charcoal sweater, his messy dark hair falling over his forehead, and his gray eyes carried a hard, unyielding glint. There was no apology on his face for the library scene, no acknowledgment of the viral video his friends had likely helped circulate. Just pure, burning annoyance.

"I'm going to my room, Jaxon," I muttered, keeping my gaze locked firmly on the floor.

"Not yet, you're not," Jaxon snapped, pushing off the doorframe and stepping into the hallway. "Professor Thomas emailed me an hour ago demanding our initial research framework for the Economics thesis. Since you've been too busy playing victim all afternoon, we are starting tonight."

My stomach flipped over with pure dread and exhaustion. "I don't want to study tonight, Jaxon. Please. Just leave me alone."

"I don't give a damn what you want," Jaxon sneered, his voice dropping into that familiar, condescending tone that made my skin crawl. "Do you think I want to spend a single second longer than necessary looking at your miserable face? My father told us not to fail this course, and I refuse to let your incompetent baggage drag down my GPA. Get into the study right now."

I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw my backpack at his arrogant face, pack my bags, and walk out into the pouring rain. But I couldn't. I had nowhere else to go, and my mother was away on her luxury vacation.

Dragging my feet like I was marching to my own execution, I walked into the private study and dropped my heavy backpack onto the long mahogany table.

Stacks of reference books, economic data printouts, and legal pads were already spread across the surface. Jaxon sat at the head of the table, tapping a silver pen impatiently against the wood, looking like a king passing judgment on a peasant.

"Sit down," he ordered, not even bothering to look up from his notes. "And try to use what little brain cells you have, because we have a lot of ground to cover if we want to salvage this project."

I pulled out a wooden chair as far away from him as possible, sinking into the leather seat. For the next hour, the room was filled with the scratch of pens, the turning of pages, and Jaxon's relentless, biting sarcasm. Every time I suggested a data point or market trend, he sighed heavily, rolling his eyes and tearing my ideas apart with cruel precision.

"Are you always this slow, Aria, or are you just trying to punish me?" Jaxon muttered, leaning back in his chair and rubbing the bridge of his nose in frustration. "A high school freshman could analyze market logistics better than this nonsense you wrote down."

"If my ideas are so terrible, Jaxon, why don't you write the whole paper yourself?!" I snapped back, my patience finally reaching its absolute breaking point. "You're the one who acts like a genius billionaire heir!"

Jaxon’s head snapped up, his gray eyes flashing with lethal danger. He slammed his pen down onto the table. "Watch your tone, Aria. You're living under my roof, and you're dragging my grade down. You don't get to talk back—"

KABOOM!

A violent crack of thunder shook the heavy glass windows of the estate so hard the window frames rattled.

Instantly, every single light in the study flickered twice and died completely. The room plunged into absolute, pitch-black darkness, swallowed up by the raging storm outside.