All Chapters of The Professor’s Canvas : Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

~Elena’s POV~My phone explodes with notifications before Marina even finishes speaking.Messages from everyone I have ever known. Classmates, professors, people from high school I haven’t spoken to in years. All sending the same links, the same videos. My body is on display for the entire world.“Don’t look,” Mateo says, reaching for my phone.I pull away from him and I open the first link.There I am, bent over Mateo’s desk in his office. His hand fisted in my hair. The angle shows everything, my face twisted in pleasure, his body slamming into mine. Audio crystal clear: my moans, his groans, the filthy things we said to each other.I click to the next video.The studio. Me naked on the platform but we are not modeling, we are fucking. His mouth between my legs, my hands gripping his hair. The timestamp shows 2 PM on a Thursday, when he should have been teaching Renaissance Art.There are six more videos in the thread.“Elena, stop.” Sofia tries to grab my phone from the front seat.

~Elena’s POV~“What do you mean, someone from the Sandoval family?” I grip the phone so hard my knuckles turn white.Agent Torres’s voice is crisp and official. “I can’t discuss details over the phone but we have communications between David Chen and a party claiming to represent Sandoval interests. They may have funded his surveillance equipment. We need your statement.”“When?”“Now if possible. How soon can you get to Comisaría de Valencia?”I look around my father’s hospital room, David being wheeled out on a stretcher, my mother collapsed in a chair, nurses cleaning vomit off the floor, Mateo standing frozen by the window.“Two hours,” I tell her. “Maybe less.”“We will be waiting, and Miss Vega, bring Professor Sandoval. We need to question him separately about his family’s involvement.”She hangs up.Mateo is watching me. “What did they say?”“Your family helped David.” The accusation comes out flat. “The police have evidence.”“That’s impossible…”“Is it?” I turn on him. “Isab

~Elena’s POV~“I was running from Madrid.” Mateo’s words hang in the sterile air. “There was another complaint last year. Before I came to Barcelona.”My hand slips from his.“Another student?” My father’s voice is steel despite his weakness.“A colleague, another professor.” Mateo won’t look at me. “We were both teaching at Universidad Complutense. She filed a complaint claiming I made unwanted advances. Created a hostile work environment.”“Did you?” I hear myself ask.“No, we had an affair. A consensual one. She was going through a divorce, I was lonely. When I ended it, she retaliated with the complaint.”“Convenient,” my father says. “Blaming the woman.”“It’s the truth. The university investigated and found insufficient evidence, but my department head suggested I take a visiting position elsewhere while things cooled down.” Mateo finally looks at me. “Barcelona was supposed to be a fresh start. No entanglements. No complications.”“Until me.”“Until you.”My mother speaks from

My father dies at 1:47 AM.I’m not there.I’m in an empty hostel room, staring at an unmade bed, when Sofia’s second call comes through.“He is gone, Elena. I’m so sorry. He is gone.”The phone drops. I sink to the floor of a stranger’s room while my world collapses.Sofia finds me twenty minutes later. Drives me to the hospital in silence. My mother won’t look at me when I arrive, she won’t speak. Just sits beside my father’s body holding his cold hand.“I’m sorry Mama. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here…”“You were chasing after that man.” Her voice is dead. “Your father died asking for you and you were not here.”“I didn’t know…”“You never know. You are always somewhere else. Chasing something else.” She finally looks at me. “Go home Elena. I need to be alone with my husband.”“Mama, please…”“Go.”Sofia pulls me away. Back to her apartment. The sun is rising over Valencia by the time we arrive.I don’t cry. The grief is too massive, too consuming. It sits in my chest like a stone.“You s

*To the University of Barcelona Ethics Committee:**My name was Antonio Vega. By the time you read this, I’ll be dead but before I go, I need to tell you something about my daughter Elena.**Forty years ago, I was you. I was the professor. My wife was the student. We fell in love despite every rule saying we shouldn’t. We hid it for years. When it came out, I lost my career and she lost her reputation. We built a new life from nothing.**I tell you this not to excuse my daughter’s choices. She violated your policies, she made mistakes. But so did I and those mistakes led to forty years of marriage, a successful business and a brilliant daughter.**Elena is guilty of loving someone she shouldn’t have loved. Of making complicated choices in impossible situations, of being human.**If you expel her, you are not punishing misconduct. You are punishing love and love is messy and inconvenient and often inappropriate. But it is also the only thing that makes any of this worth it.**So here i