by Sofia Daniel
With a huffed breath of frustration, Henry threw his hands up in the air. “Didn’t you learn anything from last time?”
“Yes.” I folded my arms. “Not to call the police if you’re trying to frame me for your own crimes.” My insides cringed. We were more than even. Why did I keep bringing it up?
Edward’s lips thinned. “The academy has already suffered enough scandals for a century.”
“And what about the collateral damage?” said Blake. “Everyone misbehaving in that party might be exposed.”
“Like Paul,” muttered Henry.
I scowled and pushed myself off the sofa. “Mr. Frost was a criminal who got what he deserved.”
“Anyway…” Blake stood and placed his hands on my shoulders. “You are hereby summoned to Edward’s office on Saturday after classes.”
“What for?”
“It’s been ages since we’ve put you in your place,” he said in a low, smoky voice. His gaze flickered to my lips. “You’re stepping out of line and clearly in need of…”
Heat tingled between my legs. “What?”
“A long, slow, and humiliating inspection.” His arms encircled my waist, and his hardness pressed against my ass. A bolt of arousal shot through my core. “With our tongues.”
I bit down hard on my lip and glanced at Edward, who gave me a wink and a smirk. It looked like my stint as Edward’s birthday present had given them an indication of what they had been missing.
Henry ran a finger down one of my nipples, sending jolts of pleasure sparking down between my legs. At my indrawn breath, his verdant eyes danced with excitement. “We’ll have you on the desk.”
“On your hands and knees,” said Blake.
Edward scooted forward and cupped my ass. “I’ll perform the internal inspections, of course.”
Heat flooded my body, and the muscles of my core pulsed with need. A horny triumvirate was tempting, but I only had a single chance to deal with Charlotte. I still owed her for the gauntlet and for the countless other pranks she participated in during my first term.
Later, as I walked through the hallway to Creative Writing, I caught sight of one of Coates’ friends, a rugby player who stood five feet seven inches tall but had the bulk of someone much larger. The bridge of his nose twisted to the left like a parenthesis symbol and ended in a bulbous tip, and a few of his front teeth had been knocked out. I pursed my lips. Obviously, the team members weren’t doing so well without Henry.
The boy grabbed the arm of a younger girl, a fifth year who wore her hair in a blonde bob that framed her delicate features. She and her friends stopped to glare at the rugby player.
“What do you want?” she snapped.
He let go and stepped backward. “You haven’t replied to my texts.”
I stood close by and pretended to study the plaque beneath the painting of a serious-looking man clad in a gray wig. It curled past the collar of his burgundy velvet jacket down to his shoulders. Apparently, he was one of the headmasters during the seventeenth century.
“What do you expect?” she hissed. “I told you to stop damaging yourself with rugby. You’re no good at it, but you didn’t listen.”
The boy glared at the girl for several moments before saying, “You’ll change your tune at Underwood’s party.”
“What does that mean?” she replied.
I held my breath. What could he think to achieve in less than a week to impress her?
Instead of answering, he walked away with his hands in his pockets. I glared after him. Was he just trying to create a bit of intrigue for himself, or did Charlotte plan something nefarious?
The girl followed after him. “Patterson-Bourke?”
They disappeared into the crowds, and I sent my boys a silent apology. As much as I wanted to play their games, I needed to know what Charlotte had planned.
On Saturday after classes, I rushed back to my room and shimmied on a tank top, skinny jeans, and a leather jacket, then snuck out of the academy grounds in an Uber and took the train to London. It was still light by the time I arrived in Victoria, and I took the number eleven bus to Fleet Street. Not having any allowance since I’d told Rudolph I wouldn’t spy for him had taught me the virtues of being frugal.
Jackie waited for me at the Saturday Correspondent’s office with Tom, the tech guy, and a group of interns. She made me sit on a desk chair by to bank of computer screens while Tola, the black intern with chin-length braids from the Valentine’s Day Massacre, arranged my hair with cameras disguised as hairpins.
Tom watched the screens and instructed Tola to make adjustments to improve the sound quality. Once they were both satisfied with the cameras in my hair, Tom handed me a soda bottle, a watch, and a necklace then explained how each hidden camera worked.
Jackie sauntered back from a cigarette break, reeking of tobacco. I asked her, “Won’t anyone else be at the venue with me?”
“We’ll send a couple of girls five or ten minutes after we see that it’s not a group of brats playing spin the bottle.” Jackie smirked. “My interns won’t have any trouble gatecrashing if Charlotte Underwood is really holding a sex party.”
I blew out a long breath. “This is the last time.”
“Yes.” Jackie coughed into her fist. “Rudolph is grateful for any assistance you can provide.”
Yeah, sure. “Even if it turns out they’re only playing spin the bottle, this will still be the last time.”
Jackie ran a hand through her bleached hair and pursed her lined lips. “He knows.”
“I’m just checking. Last time, he didn’t honor our agreement.”
“The school is ticking along nicely with Carbuncle’s cameras in secret locations.” She raised her shoulders. “We only need you to infiltrate Charlotte underwood’s party and get the name of her older man.”
I narrowed my eyes. That wasn’t an answer, but then, no one could really speak for Rudolph.
A delivery guy brought some Chinese takeout, then at eight-thirty, I rode with Tola in the front of Tom’s screen-filled van, which she explained would receive footage from my cameras via the internet. A quartet of female interns, clad in party dresses, sat in the back. Tom took the scenic route around London and drove on the roads closest to the River Thames. The traffic wasn’t bad at this time of the evening, and I relaxed in the front seat and enjoyed the view. When we sped past Chelsea Bridge, near the mansion apartment Sergei rented, I said, “I thought the party was in Chelsea.”
Tola nodded. “It’s in Chelsea Harbour, on the other side.”
We stopped at an ultra-modern, marina development, complete with its own hotel and train station. As expected, Chelsea Heights was a high-rise block that boasted panoramic balconies that stretched around the entire exterior of the building. My breath caught. Did Charlotte’s benefactor live in the penthouse? I pictured Mr. Frost, who had probably made a fortune selling illicit items to wealthy school kids at horrific markups and shook my head. If it was him, he probably only rented the apartment for the sex party.
“Good luck.” Tom gave me a thumbs-up as I stepped out of his van. “If things don’t heat up after two hours, leave as many cameras lying about as you can and come down.”
“Right.” I walked toward the building and was about to buzz when a young man walked out from the foyer and opened the door. A breath of relief whooshed out of my lungs. It might have been difficult to explain to whoever was on the other end of the intercom that I was Emilia Hobson, Charlotte’s arch enemy, and soon-to-be destroyer. He probably should have asked if I was a resident or guest, but I wasn’t going to inform him of his security breach. “Thanks.”
The man gave me a nod and strolled out in the direction of Chelsea Harbour station, and I headed for the lift. It arrived as soon as I had called it, and I stepped inside and pressed the highest floor, which was twenty-five. That had to be the penthouse, right? When the elevator reached the top, I walked around the doors, but the numbers only went up to fifteen. I pulled out
the invitation to check the address. It said number sixteen, as I had remembered, and the apartment name was correct.
“It was all a fucking hoax,” I snarled and headed back to the elevator.
Behind me, a door opened, and heavy footsteps approached.
Before I could turn around, a fist smashed against my temple, and I lost consciousness before I reached the ground.
Chapter 13
A throbbing on the left of my face forced me awake, only to find myself lying on my side. I stifled a groan. Déjà fucking vu, except tight ropes bound my ankles and wrists, and I wasn’t stuffed in a moving trunk with Henry.
Heavy footsteps, presumably belonging to the bastard who had punched me unconscious, dragged around a room. I would have cracked my eyes open if my head didn’t hurt so much. The one on the left was probably swollen shut from the way the flesh seemed to pound in time with my rapid pulse.
Everything ached. The back of my head, my shoulder blades, pelvis, hamstrings, even the backs of my calves. It was as though someone had turned me onto my front and beaten me with a club while I had lain unconscious.
The footsteps approached and stopped close to my head. I swallowed hard, trying not to let the man notice I’d regained consciousness. He crouched down, radiating a sickening warmth over my body and filling my nostrils with the scent of stale tobacco, strong coffee, and mint chewing gum. My nostrils twitched involuntarily.
“Awake are you?” asked a familiar voice.
My right eye opened, and the mustached face of Mr. Carbuncle stared down at me with pitiless, gray eyes. I flinched away, a scream catching in my throat. “What’s… Why are you here?”
A hand the size of a bunch of bananas jerked forward and grabbed me by the chin. He bared stained teeth and snarled, “You got me fired.”
My heart jumped into my throat and galloped at the speed of a runaway horse. “Th-that wasn’t me,” I said with my jaw pinned down by the man’s thick fingers. “Mr. Chaloner kicked the door down and brought the police. I only came to see what was happening.”
“Who else could have grassed but you?”
I exhaled a frustrated breath. Why was he out of prison already? “I…” Wriggling out of his grip was futile. The man was too strong. “I don’t know, but if you have a list of suspects, I might be able to help.”
Mr. Carbuncle’s features smoothed out into a blank expression I’d never seen on his miserable face. He released my chin, wrapped his arms around my neck and hoisted me up into a sitting position. A sharp pain, probably from a bruised hip, spread down my legs, making me wince. Dread rumbled through my insides, and I gulped. There was no one I could blame for his arrest but the former headmaster, but Mr. Carbuncle hadn’t found me convincing the first time I had mentioned Mr. Chaloner.
With a rage-filled snarl and an ugly twist of his mouth, he drew back his arm and backhanded me across the face. My head snapped to the side with the force of his blow, then my entire body swayed in the same direction. Pain radiated out from my nose and cheek. I stuck out my elbow, in an attempt to cushion my fall, but when it smacked against the parquet floor, a mix of pain and funny bone tingles shot up my arm.
I squeezed my eyes shut, and tears gathered behind my lids. Where were the interns? Surely they were on their way. Maybe they couldn’t find me and were waiting for me to gather some clues.
“Where am I?” I asked for the benefit of the cameras I hoped were still in my hair.
“Tucked away where no one will think to find you,” he said with a sneer.
“Mr. Carbuncle…” If the cameras were still running, I was sure they had recognized him by now, but I had to make sure his name was recorded in case I ever got out of this mess alive. “Why are you doing this? I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“That’s not what I heard.” He laced his fingers through my hair and yanked me back up by the roots. My scalp burned with the pull, and a whimper reverberated in my throat. He shook me so hard, my teeth rattled, and something thin and metallic bounced off my hair and onto the ground. “Now, tell me what you told the bloody cops, or I’ll lay into you!”
My heart froze, and ice ran through my veins. If anything happened to those cameras, they might never track me to this featureless room.
“I didn—” He released my hair and slammed his fist into my belly. Pain battered through my insides, and I doubled over with a groan.
He lowered his face to mine, his heavy, excited breaths tickling my ear. “I could go on all day, but something tells me you can take a beating.”
My heart slammed against my ribcage. If he threatened to cut my face or something equally as hideous, I might not be able to hold out until Tom and the interns found me. I gasped out a sob. Where were they?
“They tell me you’ve been fucking those three boys.” His large, calloused hand stroked my stinging cheek. “That true?”
“No,” I said through clenched teeth.
The janitor’s rough, thick-fingered hand skimmed my neck in a parody of a lover’s caress. Disgust rippled up and down my gullet, and I wanted to hurl the contents of my stomach into his face.
I jerked away, but he shuffled onto his backside, and wrapped an obscenely strong arm around my back, holding me in place.
My bound hands automatically rose, to cover my breasts with my forearms, but he slipped his fingers underneath them and wrenched at my nipples. I shuddered and tried shrinking away, but that arm tightened around me, bringing us closer.
“I’ve always wanted one of these model types,” he crooned.
“I’m Edward’s girlfriend.” Hysteria laced my voice, making my words so high pitched, they sounded like a scream. “Don’t you think he’d be upset with what you’re doing?”
“Mr. Edward didn’t lift a finger to help me when I was on the run from the cops, so he can go fuck himself.”
My eyes shuttered closed. Mr. Carbuncle must have outrun them the day we’d caught him with that red-haired girl in the year above. Tears stung the back of my eyes. How could the police have been so incompetent? If I didn’t think fast and talk my way out of this… I wouldn’t let my mind venture into such dark territory.
He ran his nose up and down my cheek in a sickening rhythm that dragged those rough, stinking bristles over my skin.
“S-sir, so far, you’ve just hit me,” I said. “That’s not a big deal. B-but if you go any further than this, you could get into a lot of trouble.”
His fingertips moved up to my collarbone.
“How about you tell me what evidence you handed over to the police, and I won’t smash your face in,” he growled.
My muscles tensed in anticipation of the inevitable blow. At any moment, he would hit me again, but he would do worse if I told him that I had given the Saturday Correspondent the recording of Alice’s accounts of what he did to girls. It was my fault he was blackmailed into setting up cameras, my fault there was so much evidence in his lodge against him, and my fault that Mr. Chaloner kicked down his door and let in the police.
“Th-that day, I’d just left Elder House, and I saw the police, Mr. Chaloner and Mr. Jenkins. I was curious, so I followed them. You saw the rest.”
“But you knew about my filing cabinet.”
“It was the only other piece of furniture in the room apart from your desk. I got curious, after seeing you with that girl. There’s nothing more to it.”
The hand stroking my collar bone wrapped itself around my neck. “That’s all?”
“Y-yes.”
He slammed me down onto the parquet, sending bolts of pain shooting from the back of my head. “Fucking lies!”
“N-no!” I cried out.
He slid his hand under my tank top, wafting cool air over my bare stomach and lifting my top to my armpits and exposing my bra. “I suppose I’ll have to fuck the truth out of you. I’ll bet those wet-behind-the-ears boys haven’t taken you up the arse yet.”
Panicked, I thrashed out with my bound arms. He jerked his head back. I kicked out w
ith my bound legs and hit him in the shins.
“Little bitch!” he snarled.
“The only way you’ll get to touch me is after I’m dead.” Every word was a struggle, and I fought against the ache in my jaw and in my rapidly swelling lip to speak. “My dad will have you extradited to California, where they have the death penalty. Would you like that, Mr. Carbuncle?”
“Stop,” said a man with a cultured voice. He stood in the doorway with his back to us.
The janitor backed away. “Why do you care what happens to the trollop? She’s responsible for ruining both our lives.”
“We’re here for truth and money, not sex with little girls.” I strained to recognize his voice. He was older, but I couldn’t tell his age, and he spoke with the same kind of accent as most of the people in the school, except he wasn’t as overly posh as Duncan or Coates. “Back away from Miss Hobson.”
Mr. Carbuncle gave my left breast a hard squeeze before drawing back. “Fine.”
I wriggled, and with my bound arms, wrestled my tank top over my bra and most of my stomach. “Thank you.”
“Miss Hobson… Emilia,” he said without turning around. “Do you deny passing information to the press about the staff and students of Mercia Academy?”
“I—”
“Before you answer, listen to my theory. The leaks only started after you returned from a tumultuous first term during which you were framed for a crime you did not commit.”
I kept my face blank. Mr. Carbuncle crouched at my side on his haunches, his oversized forearms resting on his knees. He leaned forward with an ape-like intensity and examined my expression.
“Your stepfather owns a media company and might have in-roads with the Saturday Correspondent.” He chuckled. “The Trommel Group is a mass of subsidiaries and shell companies. Mr. Trommel might well own the newspaper. Who knows?”
My heart flipped. Whoever this man was, he had researched Rudolph but wasn’t an insider. I stared at his back, ignoring the ever-approaching Mr. Carbuncle.