Reborn to Love Mr. Right – Episode 18
The auditorium erupted before the lights returned. Students enlarged photographs of the screen on their phones, passing Derek’s impossible accusation through every group chat in school. Arianna remained beside Emmy while hundreds of eyes shifted between fascination and fear. In one carefully edited minute, Derek had made survival itself look like evidence of guilt.
The principal ordered the projection stopped, but the system rejected every command. Hayden’s security specialist, who had accompanied Arianna that morning, disconnected the network cable. Derek’s image vanished only after the entire control unit lost power.
Ivy seized the silence. She accused Arianna of creating the photograph to frame Derek and asked why an innocent person would keep pictures of herself covered in blood. The question was irrational, yet it offered frightened students an explanation easier than time reversing itself.
Arianna walked onto the stage before the rumor could harden into fact. She admitted that someone had delivered a manipulated image to her home after the gala. She did not explain the original photograph or her rebirth; the truth belonged to Donald and Hayden until she understood the danger. Telling a frightened crowd the impossible truth would only hand Derek a larger weapon.
“Derek accessed school equipment under a false identity,” she said. “He is hiding while accusing everyone else of manipulation. If he believed his evidence, he would present it to the police instead of trapping you in an auditorium.” Her calm redirected attention toward the crime happening in front of them.
Emmy stood and asked Ivy whether she had helped Derek enter the system. Ivy denied it too quickly. The principal checked the audiovisual-room log and discovered that her student badge had opened the door before sunrise.
Ivy insisted Derek had asked her to leave an envelope inside and promised the video would clear both their names. She had not known what it contained. Her confession linked Derek to the attack, but it also confirmed he had contacted her after claiming she ruined him. His contempt had not stopped him from reaching for the accomplice he could manipulate most easily.
The principal suspended Ivy pending investigation. As she was escorted away, she shouted that Arianna had turned everyone against her. Arianna felt no satisfaction. Derek had used Ivy exactly as he once used Arianna, offering affection until she became the easiest person to sacrifice.
Hayden arrived before the assembly ended. He had left a Scott Global meeting when his team detected the school intrusion, and his controlled anger quieted even the students who doubted Arianna. He did not defend her with wealth or threats. Instead, he announced that his cybersecurity team had traced the video upload to a public terminal near North Road.
The terminal stood inside a bus depot scheduled for demolition. Cameras showed Derek entering in a cap and leaving seven minutes later in a maintenance uniform. His next destination could not be traced, but the depot was less than two miles from the abandoned repair shop.
Arianna realized the broadcast had served two purposes. Derek wanted to damage her credibility, but he also wanted everyone focused on the school while he returned to North Road. The stolen drive might not have contained the evidence he needed.
Hayden resisted when she proposed visiting the shop. “You are the person he wants there,” he said. Arianna answered that this was precisely why he might reveal himself. She refused to spend her second life hidden behind locked gates while Derek arranged another accident.
They compromised on a controlled inspection with police notified and Scott security surrounding the property. Donald joined them, unwilling to let either teenager face the danger alone. Rain had begun when their armored vehicle reached the shuttered building. Water coursed from its rusted sign like black veins, making the place seem aware that its secrets were about to be disturbed.
Inside, the shop smelled of oil, damp concrete, and burned plastic. Investigators had already removed the obvious records, but Arianna remembered details from the service sticker in her first car. Its serial number ended with 0714, the date Derek once called the beginning of their real future.
She entered 0714 on a keypad hidden behind a tool cabinet. A section of the wall released with a metallic click. Neither the police nor Hayden’s team had discovered the compartment during the first search.
Shelves inside held duplicate vehicle computers, forged maintenance seals, and photographs of Taylor family cars. The operation had existed long before Derek was old enough to control it. Donald recognized contracts from a former transportation subsidiary he had closed after discovering unexplained losses.
A ledger named Jeff as a courier, not the owner. Above him appeared the initials V.C., attached to payments reaching back fifteen years. Donald went still. Victor Cross had served as Taylor Industries’ chief risk officer until Donald dismissed him for diverting company funds.
In Arianna’s first life, Victor had returned after Donald’s death as Derek’s most trusted executive. She had assumed they met during the takeover. The ledger proved their alliance began while her father was alive.
A phone rang somewhere beyond the concealed wall. Hayden found it taped beneath a shelf, its screen displaying an incoming video call from Derek. Arianna answered before anyone could stop her.
Derek appeared inside a moving vehicle with Victor Cross seated beside him. “You always were good at finding what I left for you,” Derek said. Then he turned the camera toward the bound man in the back seat—Jeff, bleeding from the temple as their car accelerated onto North Road.
