“I’m very sorry this happened, Laney,” he said, brows pulling down. “And I understand that it’s not your fault. You’re under a lot of stress.”
I swallowed hard and bowed my head, cheeks burning up. The way he said he understood it wasn’t my fault made me feel like he and everyone else in the room definitely thought it was my fault. They were just too polite to say it.
Ten minutes later, I arrived back in my dorm. I took another shower to wash the dirt off my feet, and then I got back into bed.
As soon as my head hit the pillow, I froze. There was something lingering in the air here. A smell. It was subtle and woodsy with a hint of spice.
Cologne. And not just any cologne.
Hunter’s cologne.
I recognized the scent from earlier this evening, when he pushed me up against the abandoned building in the clearing. I must’ve been too scared to register it in my mind while I was being attacked on my bed, but now it instantly triggered the memories, hitting so hard they seemed physical. I could practically feel Hunter’s hands on my neck and his breath on my face, as if he were still with me, holding me in his dangerous grip.
“You fucking bastard,” I whispered, heartbeat hammering in my ears.
I really thought I was losing my mind a few minutes ago. I really thought there was a chance Headmaster Sanders was right and everything that happened tonight was just a nightmare.
Now I knew better. I had no idea how Hunter pulled it off, or how he got away from my room without anyone seeing him, but I did know one thing for sure.
He did this.
12
Laney
“Laney?”
I glanced up from my seat in the school’s main admin office to see Ms. Flores smiling at me. She directed me into her office and shut the door behind me.
“Take a seat,” she said. “Do you want a drink? Tea, coffee, water?”
I shook my head. “I’m fine, thanks.”
“All right.” She sat behind her desk and tucked her hair behind her shoulders. “I’m glad you made an appointment to see me. I was hoping you would.”
My face turned warm. “Because of what happened on Friday night?” I said in a small voice.
“Not exactly.” She cleared her throat and leaned forward. “The thing is, I’ve been hearing some not-so-nice chatter in the hallways, and I’m concerned. So I have to ask: are you being bullied?”
I nervously twisted my hands on my lap. I shouldn’t be embarrassed to admit I was being bullied, but I was. It felt like I was admitting some sort of shameful weakness.
There was another insidious thought wriggling around in my brain, too, telling me there was a chance I actually deserved it. Like there was something I might’ve done to incur Hunter’s wrath, and I’d just conveniently forgotten all about it.
It was the same when I was assaulted by my piano teacher all those years ago. I spent months afterwards feeling terrible guilt and confusion, wondering if I’d done something to provoke it, even though the logical parts of me knew I was completely innocent.
That was the thing about bullies, rapists, abusers, and other nasty pieces of work out there. They had a way of making you feel like the abuse was somehow your fault. As if things would’ve been different if you’d just done everything the right way. Their way.
“Laney?” Ms. Flores tilted her head slightly to the side. “This is a safe space. You can tell me anything, and if you don’t want it to leave this room, it won’t.”
I took a deep breath and finally spoke up. “It’s been pretty bad,” I said softly.
She let out a short sigh. “So it’s true.”
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry. That’s awful to hear,” she said, brows pulling downward. “Tell me as much as you can, and I’ll see what I can do to help.”
I haltingly went over everything from the start—the blacklist, the cruel pranks, the mean text barrages, the abuse hurled at me in the hallways, the lottery trick at the charity gala, and most recently, the dorm break-in.
I hoped she would believe my side of the story when it came to that incident.
I knew I wasn’t crazy. None of that night was a dream, aside from the actual dream I remembered having. Hunter obviously got in my room to terrorize me, and he wrote all that stuff in my bathroom before I woke up, knowing I’d run in there to escape.
That was why he didn’t enter the bathroom, even though he obviously had keycard access. He just knocked creepily, like a horror film serial killer, because he wanted to scare the absolute shit out of me. He also wanted me to feel trapped in there so that I’d be forced to go out the window and down the trellis to escape. That gave him and his minions time to clean up after themselves, making me look like a crazy liar when my room came up empty after I ran screaming for help.
In hindsight, it was clear how they did it. I was a fool for thinking my keycard simply fell into a different pocket in my bag the other week when I was changing at rowing club.
Hunter was there that day. He must’ve sneaked in and swiped the card from my bag while I was changing. Then he cloned it and returned it to my bag, thinking I’d never even notice it was gone.
I’d done a bit of Googling over the weekend, and I’d discovered that it was surprisingly easy to copy keycards with handheld electronic devices. Anyone could purchase these things online, as long as they had access to the deep web and the right amount of money.
Once they had the device, all they had to do was take a keycard and swipe it through the side. The information stored on the card would copy over to the device, and then it could be loaded onto another card.
Quick. Easy. Barely any chance of getting caught.
I was willing to bet that on Friday night, Hunter ordered a couple of his Princes to hang around outside my door while he terrorized me. As soon as he heard me go out the window, he let them in, and they all went into my bathroom. It would’ve only taken them two or three minutes to wipe the abusive graffiti off the walls together, if it was written with special craft paint for kids that was designed to wipe straight off most surfaces.
After that, they probably spent a few more minutes aiming my hairdryer at the walls to make sure they didn’t look wet from the clean-up job. Then they left my dorm, ran across campus to their cars, and sped away from the academy before I even managed to find the security guard who helped me. Either that or they simply hid in one of their cars until everything died down. That would explain why no one saw anyone suspiciously returning to the lake party around that time. If the remaining party guests were telling the truth, that is.
Even though Sanders didn’t think it was possible for anyone to have pulled off such a cunning attack, I’d spent the last four days going over it again and again, and I knew it wasn’t just possible for Hunter and his friends—it was easy.
It took me a good eight to ten minutes to make it down that trellis, painfully-slow and petrifying as it was, and then it took me another couple of minutes to recover from the fall into the garden below. After that, it took five more minutes to find the security guard.
That gave the guys at least fifteen minutes to clean up everything in my bathroom and escape the scene before the guards even thought about organizing the investigation and campus search.
So simple and yet so unbelievable, according to all of the adults involved.
“Anyway, that’s why I’m covered in scratches,” I said to Ms. Flores after recounting the whole story. “Some of the hallway bullies have been going around telling everyone it’s self-harm, though, as if it’s totally okay to make fun of people who are really going through that sort of stuff.”
She slowly shook her head. “This is all terrible to hear, Laney.”
“I understand if you don’t believe me,” I replied, lowering my gaze to my lap. “I know some of the stuff sounds crazy, and Headmaster Sanders didn’t believe my side at all.”
Her lips tightened. “I believe every word you said,” she replied. “I wish it reall
y was some sort of waking nightmare you experienced on Friday, but after some of the things I’ve seen at this school over the last three years, I know it wasn’t. I’m barely even surprised that it happened.”
My brows shot up. “You really believe me?”
“Yes. One hundred percent.”
“Why?”
“I’ve seen a lot of bullying on this campus before. Never against a scholarship student, like I told you when you first arrived here, but still… a lot. Some of these kids are budding psychopaths, and the administration does absolutely nothing to stop them. Even if the teachers want to help, they can’t. They’re basically powerless.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps powerless isn’t the right word,” she said, forehead creasing. “It’s more that they don’t want to lose their high-paying jobs. There’s nowhere else that pays $150,000 a year for high school teachers, after all. So they turn a blind eye. If they don’t, the students and their families complain and get them fired.”
My shoulders slumped. “Great. So it’s just like Adam and Trina told me, then. No one will help me.”
Ms. Flores shook her head. “Not necessarily. I can try to help you,” she said. “I’ve intervened in bullying cases before.”
“What happened when you did that?” I asked, brows puckering.
“Long story.” She sighed and folded her hands on the desk. “Do you know a student named Jessica Fitzgerald? She’s a senior like you.”
An icy knot tightened in my stomach. “Unfortunately, I do,” I muttered.
“Around six months ago, a sophomore came to me complaining about bullying. Jessica was the ringleader. In my position, I have the power to discipline students, so I gave her a suspension, and all of her friends received month-long Saturday detentions. I also made them all sign up for an anti-bullying seminar with a therapist.”
“I bet that went down well.”
She smiled ruefully. “I got fired. So to answer your earlier question: that’s what happened.”
“Wait, what?” My eyes widened. “How are you still here if you got fired?”
“Well, Jessica complained to her parents, who complained to Headmaster Sanders. He launched an inquiry, which in these cases essentially means you’ll be fired within a week for going against the school’s unofficial ‘turn a blind eye’ policy. Luckily for me, my older sister is a top lawyer in this state, so I had her step in and help me. Turns out they can’t let me go for any reason other than misconduct until I finish my contract, and that doesn’t end until the middle of this school year.”
“So as soon as it ends, you’re gone?”
She sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. But until then, I can do as much as possible to help students like you. The administration can’t exactly fire me twice, can they?”
“They could try to pin something on you to prove misconduct. Then they could force you out before the end of your contract.”
She casually waved a hand. “Sure, they could try that, but they haven’t yet,” she said. “They’re probably worried my sister would find some way to get back at them. They’ve got access to some of the best lawyers, but she still runs circles around all of them.”
“So you’ll really help me?”
“Of course,” she replied, nodding fervently. “I’ll do whatever I can.”
I swallowed hard. “Thank you,” I said softly.
“Can you start by giving me some names?”
I rattled off every name I could think of, including the Princes. Then I pulled out my phone and showed her some screenshots I’d taken.
“These are some of the messages I get sent on a daily basis,” I explained. “Everyone sends them on the Messenger app, which has this ‘secret’ option to make messages disappear just a few seconds after the recipient reads them. But sometimes I’m quick enough to get a screenshot before they vanish.”
Ms. Flores nodded slowly as she typed some notes on her keyboard. “This is good. There are quite a few names attached to those messages,” she said. “I can haul every one of those students in here and discipline them right away. I’ll just need you to send me the screenshots for the official records.”
“Okay. But what about Hunter and his friends? Or Jessica? Or Talia?” I asked. “They’re the worst ones.”
She frowned. “Do you have any proof? More screenshots with their names, perhaps?” she asked. Before I could respond, she held up one palm. “It’s not that I don’t believe you. I do. I just need some sort of evidence before I can discipline the students in question. Otherwise they could try to claim I’m unfairly targeting them for no reason. Unfortunately, that could then count against me as—”
“Misconduct,” I cut in.
She nodded. “That’s right.”
My shoulders slumped. “Damn,” I muttered. “What about my friends? They know what’s going on. Will their word count for anything?”
Ms. Flores twisted her lips. “Probably not. It would be nice if it were that easy, though.”
“Well, I don’t have any other proof. So what can I do?”
“For now, do your best to gather any evidence that you can bring to me. If you can get enough, I might be able to nail them all.”
I sighed. “Okay. I’ll try.”
“I’m sorry. I really wish I could do more, Laney.”
“I know,” I replied, giving her a small smile. “I’m just glad you’re helping me at all. I wasn’t sure if you would. Or if you’d even believe me.”
“Don’t worry, I definitely believe you, and like I said before, I’m not even surprised,” she said, lips pulling into a grimace. She hesitated for a moment. Then she spoke again, voice lower than before. “Do you mind if I’m brutally honest and completely unprofessional for a minute?”
I smiled. “Not at all.”
“The students here are the children of some of the richest and most arrogant people in the country. You know what that means?”
“What?”
“It means a lot of them are taught to thrive on power and control over those they deem lesser than them, and they end up having no morals or remorse. They just do whatever they want and rule everyone around them with terror. Like mini dictators.” She paused and leaned forward. “If you ask me, extreme wealth is the main cause of it. A lot of the parents in these uber-rich families actually encourage the God-complex behavior in their kids so they can keep their place in the hierarchy. They end up creating entire dynasties of people who inflict their egocentric crap on everyone else with basically no checks from society, because they’re able to get away with everything due to their money. So basically, the kids usually turn out to be little assholes. Totally detached from the rest of humanity.”
“I’m starting to see why they fired you,” I said, eyes crinkling around the corners with amusement.
Ms. Flores laughed. “I guess you could say I’ve become a little disillusioned about this place in my time here.”
“I don’t blame you.”
Her laughter faded, and she sighed and went on. “Anyway, I know calling the children of the Royal Falls elite ‘little assholes’ isn’t exactly the most professional thing for someone in my position to do, and I never would have done it before they tried to get me fired… but it’s true. Some of them really are the brattiest little monsters in the world.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I’m living proof. Out of a job in a few months because some of them didn’t like getting detentions for viciously bullying an innocent girl,” she said. She leaned back in her chair and let out a deep sigh. “Anyway, Laney, you have to remember—they’re not better than you or me, like they believe. They’re just narcissists.”
“I know.”
She straightened her shoulders and cleared her throat. “I trust you won’t repeat this little rant of mine to anyone. That really would be grounds for misconduct, and Sanders would probably have me out of here within the hour.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” I said. “Believe me, I
want to rant about the bullies just as much as you.”
“Understandable, given everything you’ve told me today.” She smiled thinly. “Just try to hang in there for now. I know you’ve probably heard that from your friends already, and you’re probably sick to death of it, but I really hope you keep at it. You earned your place at RFA fair and square.”
Something ticked over in my mind. “That reminds me,” I said slowly. “Can I ask you something about the RFA scholarships?”
“Sure.”
“How exactly do they work? Does the school somehow keep track of every student at every school in the state and then award the scholarships to the best of them? Or do they go by recommendations?”
“It’s a bit of both. The school keeps track of high-performing students in various ways, but members of the founding families can also issue recommendations. The school will check those recommendations, and if the student is found to be worthy—stellar academics or athletic performance, for example—they’ll receive a place in the scholarship program.”
“How did I get mine?” I asked. I’d been curious about this for months, because my scholarship seemed to come from out of the blue.
“Like I said before, you earned your place fair and square. Your grades at your old school were top-notch.”
“But was I recommended by someone, or was I just discovered by RFA staff?”
She rubbed her jaw. “I’m not supposed to give out that information. Sorry. I’m sure you can understand why.”
“Yes. But I promise I won’t feel like I didn’t earn my spot properly if I find out it was from a recommendation, because like you said, I’ve always had good grades, which means I could’ve been discovered on my own anyway,” I said. “I’m just curious. Really, really curious.”
“Well, I suppose….” She trailed off, one brow rising. “If I went to use the bathroom, and the information just so happened to be on my computer screen, and then you just so happened to glance at it… that wouldn’t be my fault, would it?”
“No, it would be mine for nosing around,” I said, immediately catching her drift.
Savage Prince: A Dark High School Bully Romance (Royal Falls Elite Book 1) Page 16