by Sofia Daniel
As soon as I stepped through the threshold, the door slammed shut, and the key turned in the lock.
My heart ached. It overflowed with bitter grief that filled my chest, caught in my throat, and spilled from my eyes in a torrent of tears. I was confined. Again. And this time, Henry wasn’t there to keep me sane. He was upstairs, sitting at the head table, hating me for orchestrating his kidnapping. Charlotte was probably holding his hand, explaining that a trollop like me would take any desperate measures to access the Bourneville fortune and its heir.
I walked across the creaking floorboards, lowered myself onto the cot, and slumped. The mattress springs squeaked under my weight. What would Edward think? That I was a calculating whore who had worked out a way to infiltrate the triumvirate? And Blake? I couldn’t even imagine his reaction to my impending arrest. I doubled over, resting my knees on the bed, pressed the heels of my hands into my temples, and dug my nails into my scalp.
Mom would disassociate herself from me if she hadn’t done so already. Once they could arrest me, it would be all over the news that the daughter of Veronica Hobson had kidnapped a British aristocrat. Rudolph might divorce her for the scandal, and she’d have to find a new husband. I blew out a breath. Somehow, I needed to fix things.
In the bare, white room, each interval between the bells felt like days. I almost missed the musty attic room with its piles of broken furniture and curtain-like cobwebs. At least I hadn’t been alone there. A few minutes into second break, the key turned in the lock. I leaped off the bed and rushed to the door.
Henry stepped in, flanked by Edward and Blake, each wearing stony expressions.
A sob formed in my throat, and I rushed to Henry and grabbed his biceps. “You’ve got to believe me, I didn’t even know the kidnappers, let alone arrange for them to abduct you!”
He peeled my hands off his arms and held me at arm’s length. “I told you not to call the police.”
Tears welled in my eyes. “But they were threatening to take you again. I couldn’t let that happen!”
He glanced at Edward, who shook his head. “She doesn’t get it.”
“Get what?” I asked.
Blake wrapped a hand around my arm, guided me across the room, and pulled me down to sit. Then he stepped back and said, “You meddled, and now you’re paying the price.”
“But I was trying to help.” My voice broke.
Edward leaned against the wall. “We had it under control. The kidnappers were never a threat.”
“How could you know that? You never even met them.” I turned to Henry. “They were threatening to take you again!”
Henry sighed. “They were just trying their luck with empty threats.”
I shook my head. Why did they seem so resigned? And why did they care more about my calling the police than my involvement in the kidnapping? Blake stood over me, brows raised with the kind of anticipation of a middle school teacher watching a slow kid struggling with a math problem. Edward pursed his lips, disapproval etched over his face, and Henry stared at a point on the floorboards next to my left foot. There was a piece of the puzzle that hadn’t yet fallen in place, and none of them would tell me what I’d done wrong.
“I shouldn’t have called the police.” My voice was dull.
“Correct,” said Edward.
“The kidnappers weren’t as big a threat as I’d thought.” I was just summarizing what the boys had told me. My mind was so thick with fog, I couldn’t put together any conclusions. “Why?”
“That’s a rather leading question, don’t you think?” drawled Blake.
I glanced up at Henry. He was the least cruel of the group. The one I knew the most, but he wouldn’t look into my eyes. I dropped my gaze to my knees. What was I missing? Just before the abduction, they’d been at their cruelest and had left me duct taped in a sleeping bag out where anything might have happened to me. But when I returned, Edward and Blake were immediately apologetic. I’d thought they had felt bad about their actions, and how they’d driven me to chase after Henry the day he’d been kidnapped.
My throat convulsed. What if there was a more nefarious motive?
An idea dropped into my head, making it snap up. “The school trip… T-that campsite… How did the kidnappers know where to find you?”
Blake grinned. “I think she’s finally getting it.”
“Oh, do be quiet,” snapped Edward.
“You knew them, didn’t you?” I glared at Henry, who still wouldn’t look at me. My glare turned to Edward. “He arranged it himself. That’s why the kidnappers drugged me and not him.”
Edward stared back, blue eyes wintry. “You only have yourself to blame for your predicament.”
My heart beat the tune of a war drum, and my hands balled into fists. I stood from the cot, ready to swing. “When you failed to kill me with sheep, you arranged for those hippies to abduct me!
Edward rolled his eyes. “Don’t be so melodramatic. Not everything we did revolved around you.”
“Then why did you do it?” I spat.
“We needed the money,” Henry finally said. “You weren’t supposed to be there, but the chaps panicked and took you along with me before you could raise the alarm.”
My arms drooped to the side. “What would you need that much money for?”
“That’s none of your business,” said Edward.
The sight of them made me sick, and I closed my eyes. Everything had been a lie, and they’d probably meant to frame me for the kidnapping all along.
The bell signifying the end of second break rang, and the boys filed out of my little prison without a backward glance. Mr. Carbuncle stepped into the doorway, keys in hand.
“Did you hear that?” I asked. “They arranged Henry’s kidnapping. I’m innocent.”
The huge man rolled his eyes and placed the key in the lock. “I don’t get paid to eavesdrop, girl.”
Chapter 20
I didn’t see the boys again after that initial visit, but for the next few days, I stared at the white walls, going over every interaction I’d had with the triumvirate. All that bullshit about wanting a relationship with me had had a sole purpose: to keep me quiet when I eventually discovered they had scammed Henry’s parents. They had even devised a contingency plan with the kidnappers in case I ever went to the police. For an extra share of the ransom, the kidnappers would say I had been working with them, keeping Henry and the rest of the triumvirate out of trouble.
I lay back on the cot, letting my arm trail off its edge to the floor. What an idiot I had been. What an arrogant fool. I had thought I was different. Special, somehow. That beneath their hatred and resentment for me was the suppressed desire for a relationship.
I snorted a bitter laugh. “Yeah, right.”
Maybe Rita’s strategy to keep to the shadows was the only way to survive Mercia Academy. She was the best of us all. Always cautious, always vigilant, always fearful of the wickedness that hid behind the triumvirate’s handsome facades.
Each day blurred into the other with only the briefest interaction with the matron, who delivered plastic bottles of Evian and cheese sandwiches wrapped in paper, the upper-crust equivalent of bread and water rations, I supposed. After five days of captivity, I stopped counting and gave into despair.
Noelle and I had lost contact, but she was in no position to help. Mom had probably found a way to disassociate herself from me, Rudolph Trommel didn’t care, and Dad was probably scrounging together the money for a plane ticket to England… if he hadn’t already relapsed with the shock of discovering his daughter was a kidnapper.
I pushed the morbid image out of my head and fumbled under the bed for my water bottle. What were the triumvirate doing? Toasting themselves at their triumph over the trollop?
Of all the stunts they had pulled, this one had to be the cruelest because they had made me ache for them. The worst bit about it was that a part of me still did.
“Fool.” I pushed myself up onto the bed, bent my kne
es to my chest and hugged my shins. “Fool.” My rocking back and forth made the bedsprings creak. “I’m the biggest, fucking fool.”
The key turned in the lock, and I sprang to my feet. Mrs. Jenkins usually knocked before entering. This had to be someone else.
Mr. Carbuncle filled the doorway, his lips twisted into a smirk. “Climbing the walls, then?”
“That’s Spiderman.”
He wrinkled his nose, spreading the bristles of his broom handle mustache. “Headmaster wants to see you.”
“Right.” I smoothed down my shirt. It was rumpled from near-constant wear.
“Now, unless you want to stay in there for another seven days.”
“Seven—“ I stopped myself from giving him a reaction. Mr. Carbuncle was the symbol of my oppression. He’d worked behind the scenes on at least three of the so-called pranks. The man was probably observing me so he could describe my every weakness to the triumvirate.
I kept my head up as I walked through the humid, basement hallway, past the cleaning and kitchen staff too busy with their duties to cast me a glance. Behind me, Mr. Carbuncle’s keys jangled with every step. It was like the ringing of the bell to my walk of shame.
He ushered me up the stairs, and when I reached the ground floor, my heart stopped. Students stood in rows on both sides of the hallway, forming an obscene gauntlet of burgundy blazers.
“They all left the dining room to see you off,” murmured Mr. Carbuncle into my ear. “Isn’t that nice?”
I would have asked him why he was being such a sadistic dick, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing his actions had gotten to me. At the end of the hallway, the double doors stood open, revealing a bright December morning. Cameraphones pinged into action, and a third of the goons turned their raised screens in my direction. I’d bet Rudolph’s fortune that the videos of my leaving would grace the Mercia-Net before the hour was out.
I squared my shoulders. Whatever they said or did, I would not react. I’d die before I give them the satisfaction of a scene.
“Go on, then.” Mr. Carbuncle prodded the small of my back with his this finger.
Disgust rippled through my spine, but I suppressed the reaction. The first step toward the gauntlet was agony. The second was excruciating. As I neared them, the students stepped away from the walls, narrowing my path.
“Trollop,” hissed a voice.
“Whore,” whispered another.
The chant spread, a cacophony of filthy slurs, all undeserved. A well of despair emptied into my gut, filling my innards with its foul contents. If I hadn’t cared for Henry and tried to protect him, none of this would have happened. If I hadn’t accepted Edward’s invitation to sit at the head table, none of this would have happened. If I hadn’t succumbed to Blake’s seductive ways and let him demonstrate how good it could be with more than one boy, none of this would have happened.
Mr. Carbuncle gave me a harder poke in the back. “Hurry up, girl.”
I clenched my teeth. One day, I’d make sure he felt the same misery as he’d arranged for me.
I swallowed hard and stepped through the crowd. The burgundy-clad vultures pounced. Some shoving, some punching me in the back, some pulling my hair. I clenched my teeth and grimaced through the pain, breathing hard to quieten the whimpers in my throat.
“Whore!”
“Slut!”
“Yank!”
“Trollop!”
“Gold digger!”
I kept my head down and continued on through the interminable crowd of bullies. Many of them didn’t even belong to Elder House. Whoever had arranged this with Carbuncle, Edward perhaps, had wanted to send me off with maximum pain and humiliation.
A hand went up my skirt, and I jerked away, suppressing a scream. The crowd closed in, blocking my way, and I had to push through the attacks, the insults, the hatred. A little voice in the back of my mind noted that no one had called me a kidnapper, extortioner, fraudster or any combination of words related to the crime I’d supposedly have committed. Someone kicked at my ankle, and I stumbled forward. The crowd parted, leaving me to land hard on my hands and knees.
Hooting laughter filled my ears, as did comments that I was in the right position for whoring. My throat thickened. My heart rate tripled. And the well of despair rose to my throat, forcing out a sob. The confusion of taunts and blows and groping hands drowned out the sound.
Mr. Carbuncle blew a whistle. “Everybody, stand back!”
The jeers and insults subsided, and the crowd parted, presumably to reform the gauntlet. I no longer cared. I’d reached the halfway point down the hallway, and anything, even the custody of Chief Inspector Faust and his sergeant, would be better than these upper-class savages.
“Get up,” the janitor hissed.
My arms trembled, barely able to hold my weight.
He wrapped a strong arm around my bicep and yanked me to my feet. “Move!”
I stumbled to keep up with his fast strides through the hallway. Only one side of the gauntlet attacked. The other probably didn’t want to incite Mr. Carbuncle’s wrath by getting too close. I looked around for signs of Henry, Blake, and Edward, but they weren’t in the crowd. The bastards probably couldn’t show their faces after what they’d done.
Once we’d passed the double doors of Elder house, Charlotte stepped into my path, flanked by Wendy, Alice, Patricia, and a wannabe doppelgänger whose name I’d never learned. Her hazel eyes gleamed with a mix of curiosity and triumph. “I don’t know what you did to our boys, but they don’t even want to hear your name in their presence.”
I shook my head. Even if I told her, she’d find a way to twist things around to her advantage.
“Don’t you have any witty replies, Trollop?” she asked.
I stared straight ahead, heart beating in sync with the throbbing of my aches and bruises. Charlotte wasn’t worth my time. She was just a stupid bitch gloating that she’d protected her territory. One day, she would discover that the triumvirate weren’t worth the effort. I hoped it would be soon.
Mr. Carbuncle hurried me along the path of magnolia trees stripped of their leaves and beautiful flowers. I couldn’t help feeling an affinity with the branches. The gauntlet had laid me bare and stripped me of my dignity. Over something they didn’t even know had taken place.
“How did you like the little send-off I organized?” asked Charlotte from behind.
I stopped and glanced over my shoulder. “You?”
“Come on!” Mr. Carbuncle dragged me through the back doors of the main teaching block.
I kicked myself for giving Charlotte a reaction.
I’d expected Chief Inspector Faust and his sergeant in the headmaster’s office, but Rudolph sat in the seat opposite Mr. Chaloner, clad in a similar suit. Perhaps they used the same designer.
The headmaster stood, but Rudolph remained seated with his arms folded over his chest.
“Where’s Mom?” I asked.
“She couldn’t face her daughter, the kidnapper,” Rudolph said without looking at me.
“Where’s Marissa, then?”
He turned livid, steel-gray eyes on me, anger etching his usually expressionless face. “Do you know what I had to do to clear up your little scandal?”
I parted my lips to tell him the truth, but he continued his rant.
“I repaid the Bournevilles the million pounds you extorted from them, and donated another fifty thousand to the school to erase your records. Even that Chief Inspector wanted a donation to his pet charity!”
My jaw dropped, but no words came out. I turned and stared at the headmaster, who narrowed his eyes, daring me to tell Rudolph he’d been the one who wanted to avoid the scandal and that Rudolph had paid for nothing.
Rudolph stood. “I’m taking you somewhere you will never tarnish our names!”
“W-where?” I pictured an institution deep in Siberia.
“Military school.” He stood, walked out of the room and down the hallway, no
t even bothering to check that I was following him.
I hurried after him. “Rudolph… wait.”
Ignoring my entreaties to stop and listen, Rudolph continued down the marble staircase, through the hallway, and out of the double doors.
Rita stood at the bottom of the stairs, her dark eyes large and solemn. “What happened to you? They packed all your things and wouldn’t say where you’d gone.”
I shook my head and wrapped my arms around her. “The less you know, the better.”
She stepped back. “Have you been expelled?”
“More like wiped out of the academy’s existence.”
“Sorry.” Rita left the rest unsaid. She’d tried to warn me. Several times, but I’d been too stubborn and too confident in my mental strength to listen. It had never occurred to me that the triumvirate would stoop so low.
“Thanks for being there for me,” I said through the lump in my throat.
She pressed her lips together and nodded. “I’ll never forget you.”
We embraced once more, and I stepped out into the wintry day. Out on the courtyard, between the front door and the limo, Henry, Blake, and Edward stood in a form of one-sided gauntlet.
A fist clenched my heart so hard, tears welled in my eyes. I had no words for them. Anything I said would be taken as some kind of triumph over the Yank they never wanted in their precious academy. I held my head high and walked toward Rudolph’s car, keeping my gaze fixed on the driver standing by the passenger seat.
“Emilia,” said Henry.
My step faltered, but I refused to look at him.
“You shouldn’t have called the police.”
“There’s a lot of things I regret,” I breathed hard to keep the tremble out of my voice. “But considering you unworthy swine as anything but unlovable bastards was my biggest mistake.”
Edward stepped forward. “You brought this onto yourself. We were serious about you being our fourth.”