Cruel Riches: A Dark Bully Romance (The Kings of Crestmoore Academy, Book 1)

by Elle East

  “Dammit!” I swore.

  Someone had fucked with my lock.

  I tried more forcefully to move the handle. I tried throwing my body weight against the door to get it to budge but nothing happened. The door was one that swung inwards and try as I might there was no way for me to get it open.

  “Dammit!” I said again before I started pounding on the door and calling for help.

  I hoped that one of the scholarship students would hear me. I pummeled the door and called until my hands hurt and my throat ached. No one was coming.

  I felt defeated. I turned and rested my back against the door, my barrier, the thing that was keeping me trapped. I slid down to sit, put my arms on my knees and hung my head. No one was coming to help me. It would be hours before anyone realized I was missing and came to find me, by that time I would have missed my classes. Any class I missed now would push me behind. I felt so alone.

  I sat there wallowing in pity for a while. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was the thing that finally broke me. If the kids at the school didn’t want me around that badly then maybe I should just leave. What I was trying to do was crazy anyway. There was no way I would get any dirt on the Kings when they hated me so much I couldn’t even get within ten feet of them without one of their minions pushing me to the ground or putting gum in my hair. Foster care or being in an orphanage was better than this.

  I looked over at the clock on the wall. If I didn’t leave soon, then I would be late for my first class. I didn’t know what to do. There was no one I could email to help me and I could try yelling through the door again but I knew that would not work. I needed to help myself.

  I was all alone—and that was ok. I would get myself out. Giving up and going into the foster care system, and going back to public school, would be the easier choice but I wasn’t doing this purely for myself, I was doing it for my mom, one of the few people left in the world that truly cared about me. I would do anything for her.

  I got up and started to figure out a plan. I couldn’t leave by the door so the only other way out of the room was through one of the windows. The lower windows were too small for me to squeeze through so it would have to be one of the higher ones—they were large enough for five of me to fit through. I needed to climb up to the bells.

  I didn’t give myself time to think because I knew if I did then I would overthink it and chicken out. I brought a chair over to the tallest thing in the room, which was a giant dresser, and climbed up on top of it. Standing on the dresser, the top of my chest was level with the bottom of one of the tall, narrow windows. I was lucky that the latch to open it was at the bottom. I unhooked it and the lower half of the window swung outwards.

  I didn’t think I just grabbed the window ledge and pulled myself up. My traction-less shoes slipped on the smooth stone of the wall but I managed to scramble up to a position where I was straddling the windowsill, one leg still safely inside my room and the other hanging out over the steep drop to the forest many stories below. I chose not to look down. My hands were already sweaty, and I was in that weird fog that you get when you are truly afraid and your adrenaline is pumping. I was closer to the bells than I had ever been; they were about five feet above my head. Up close they were even more massive and solid-looking.

  From up there I could see the ocean stretching away to the horizon on the right and in the distance on the left I could see the rough Maine coast. I tried to focus on what was in front of me so I wouldn’t look at how high up I was. I didn’t have time to think about anything; I needed to get to class.

  There was a small lip of stone that ran around the outside of the tower right under the window. I swung my other leg out and carefully stood up, keeping a tight hold on the window ledge. I looked over to my left and was met with nothing but air and trees far beneath me. Looking to my right, I saw that the stone lip met a steep roof that I thought I could climb on to.

  My hands were shaking so much it terrified me I was going to shake myself off the building and plummet to my death. It’s lucky I’m not scared of heights—oh wait, yes I am, I thought sarcastically. Heights and spiders were my two greatest fears.

  I gripped on to the rough red bricks that covered the outside of the school; they gave me a decent handhold and so I was able to slowly shuffle my feet across the narrow lip of rock. It wasn’t too technically challenging but the thing that made it scary was the stakes. If I fell I was high enough that I would probably die—or at least get very, very injured. The climb to the nearest roof wasn’t too far, but it felt like an eternity.

  Finally, I was close enough that I could reach out and place my toe on the dark shingles of the roof. I slipped slightly and gasped. The angle was steeper than I had thought. I took a deep breath and regained my position to try again. This time I made sure my foot was firmly on the roof before I tried to maneuver the rest of my body. Next I was able to transfer my hands away from the brick then swung myself so that I ended up clinging to the shingles.

  I had thought this would be the easy part, but I was wrong. The roof was way steeper than I imagined and I needed to be so careful not to slip as I made my way slowly across it. I was trying to find a place where it intersected with something that would allow me to climb down. I eventually found an area where the grade wasn’t as steep and I used that to take a quick break and reassess.

  Once I looked around I realized that I needed to keep going because I was starting to freak out. All around me were steep rooftops that seemed almost impossible to climb, and beyond that was just air and a sheer drop.

  Eventually I came to a part of the roof that I recognized as the top of a long open air hallway that ran along one side of the school. I slowly came to the edge and looked over. I saw the railing of the hallway and knew I could reach it if I lowered myself down, I just needed to be very careful not to fall because if I did and I missed the railing I would be falling several stories to the grass below.

  Carefully I slid one leg over the edge. I was so scared that I felt like I would throw up, but I knew there was no turning back now. Luckily there was a rain gutter that I could use as a handhold and clinging on to that for dear life I slowly lowered first one leg and then the other until my feet met the railing. I quickly jumped down onto the marble hallway and fell onto my back, breathing out the biggest sigh of relief of my life.

  I felt like I could cry, I was so happy to be on solid ground again. There were a couple students walking to class, and they gave me shocked and confused looks. These were the kids who would normally call me “trailer trash” as they walked by, but at the moment they were too stunned to say anything.

  After collecting myself for a couple seconds, I stood up. I still needed to get to class. I hurried down the hall on legs that felt like jello, past the students with their mouths hanging open. I held my chin up high, pretending that that wasn’t the scariest thing I had ever done but rather something I regularly did, and brushed past them.

  I walked in to my first period class a few minutes before the lecture was to start. My eyes met Brett’s hazel ones and his widened in surprise. That look was the first bit of emotion, regarding me, that I’d seen on his serious face other than contempt and it made me feel triumphant. No matter how shaken up I was, I had won this round.

  I sat down at an empty desk at the front of the room, careful not to touch it. I took out a pen and poked at the flat surface, as was my new ritual, and when my pen didn’t stick, I felt comfortable resting my arms on it.

  A few minutes passed and the adrenaline that had been coursing through my body was almost gone. It left me feeling exhausted and drained so I barely noticed when Victoria walked into the room—however, I did notice when she went up to a boy sitting next to me and said, “Move.”

  Without hesitation, he immediately did and Victoria sat down.

  I froze. Royalty never sat at the front, and they especially didn’t sit next to the scholarship students.

  “I thought that was ballsy what you did,” she sai
d in her sweet little voice.

  I was completely caught off guard. “Oh… thanks? How did you know?”

  “Everyone knows,” she said matter-of-factly. “A couple students saw you walking on the roof. You have guts, I admire that. It’s almost Queen material.”

  I was too shocked to say anything. What was going on? I wondered. I couldn’t help but glance at Brett, as if his face might give me a clue, but his eyes had a dark look in them which I didn’t want to see for any longer than I had to and I quickly turned back around.

  When Ava came into the classroom, a couple seconds later, her eyes immediately locked on Victoria and her mouth dropped open in surprise. She looked at me with a “WTF”-look and I shook my head with an “IDK-I’m-just-as-confused-as-you-are”-look. She warily took a seat on the other side of me, away from Victoria, but Ava was staring at her the entire time, like a prey animal who had just had a predator dropped in its cage. Victoria didn’t seem to notice and just took out her laptop and calmly waited for the teacher to start the lecture.

  After class was over Ava and I quickly dashed out into the hall.

  “Why the hell was she sitting with you?” Ava whispered as we walked quickly.

  “I don’t know!” I whispered back. “She just came in and told someone else to move and took their seat.”

  “Did she say anything?” Ava hissed.

  “She said she was impressed with what I did on the roof this morning and that it was almost Queen material.”

  Ava stopped in her tracks and just stared at me dumbfounded like I had grown an extra head or something.

  “She actually said that??” Ava asked after a long pause.

  “Yeah! I don’t know what the fuck is going on, but I don’t like it.”

  After a couple seconds Ava started walking again. She seemed lost in thought like she was processing something that seemed impossible to her.

  We passed through a few hallways in silence when she suddenly asked, “Wait, what were you doing on the roof?”

  Chapter 11

  After that class where Victoria sat next to me, it kept happening. Every class that I had with a Queen she would come sit next to me. I hated it. I could tell they were up to something, but I didn’t know what it was and I hated not knowing.

  I sat at the front of all my classes with the other scholarship students and I could tell that they didn’t enjoy having a member of the Royalty that close to them. They wanted to remain in the shadows and try to avoid attention, but there I was bringing a huge spotlight to shine on us. I could tell that they were starting to resent me and it sucked. I really liked being a part of their gang and didn’t want to ruin it—especially since it wasn’t even my fault, I wasn’t telling the Queens to sit with me. Even if the Queens were being nice to me for the time being, I hated it too.

  Victoria and Jayla were seniors, so they were the ones who were in most of my classes. Victoria was very sweet and pleasant, to my face. Jayla was kind of dumb, but she was being nice enough. I had one class with Grace, who was a junior. I had opted to take art even though it wasn’t a senior-level course, just because I loved it. Grace was like a mini Victoria. I found out that she was known as one of the best artists at Crestmoore and as I got to see more of her work, I didn’t quite agree—she was good, don’t get me wrong, but I felt like her work lacked something. It was perfect technically but something about it made me not love it and I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  Claudia Chow was the only Queen who I didn’t have a course with—and I was happy about that, one less to deal with. Even if I wasn’t super suspicious that they were up to something, they wouldn’t be the kind of girls that I would normally be friends with. However, it’s not like I could just tell them to stop sitting with me. I had no power at the school, something I was painfully made aware of every day.

  My third week at Crestmoore was coming to an end. The week hadn’t been as bad as the first two and I was pretty sure it had a lot to do with the other students seeing the Queens sitting with me and being confused about whether or not they should bully me. I was walking into the dining hall for lunch on that Friday, starving as usual, my breakfast of an apple wasn’t really cutting it, when I heard someone call to me.

  I looked up to see Victoria waving me over.

  I hesitated. It felt like a trick, but she waved more insistently and all the other students in the room were staring at me so I had to go. As I walked passed the charity table, all the scholarship students gave me questioning looks. I shook my head subtly and shrugged, trying to convey that I did not understand what was going on. I could see fear in their eyes, they were afraid for me and I was afraid for myself too. I wanted so badly to just sit down with them, but I couldn’t.

  As I walked up the marble aisle, I could feel hundreds of eyes on me. The room was unusually silent. Victoria was sitting at the head table with the rest of the Royalty. I could feel, as well as see, three pairs of intense eyes digging into me. The looks on the Kings’ faces were not happy ones and I wished that I could be anywhere else but there at that moment.

  All too soon my feet had carried me over to stand beneath the dais. Those seven powerful people seemed to tower over me even though they were seated. Victoria was smiling, her perfect little mouth turned upwards at the corners invitingly.

  “Maddy,” she started sweetly. “We wanted to invite you to sit with us.”

  I could hear an audible gasp from the crowd.

  I think my mouth probably dropped open in surprise, but I wasn’t sure. The Kings were staring at me with venom in their eyes and clearly did not want me to sit with them. The Queens were all smiles and looked welcoming. The juxtaposition between the two unnerved me even more—if that was even possible.

  “I, um—” I stuttered, at a loss of what to do.

  “Please have a seat,” Victoria motioned to an empty chair next to her that I hadn’t noticed before.

  In my three weeks at Crestmoore I had seen no one else besides the Royalty sit at the head table, and there certainly hadn’t been an extra chair and place setting like there was now.

  I couldn’t say no so, feeling like I was in a trance, my legs worked on autopilot and I walked around the table and took a seat next to Victoria. She smiled, happy and satisfied.

  “Welcome.”

  “Thanks,” I mumbled, still in shock.

  We sat in silence as the waiters came and took our orders. There were menus placed on our plates but Victoria told me that you could order anything you want even if it’s not on the menu. I was too shaken to speak so when the waiter asked me I just numbly pointed to the first thing.

  The tension at the table was so thick it felt like a heavy blanket that was lying on top of us, but I seemed to be the only one being suffocated by it. The noise in the room started to get louder again as the other students went back to their conversations.

  I looked over desperately at the charity table and could see my friends looking back at me. I could tell how scared they were for me and that just made me wish I was sitting with them even more. I wanted to laugh about what happened in our classes that day; I wanted to talk about which movies we would watch at movie night, but instead I was at a table full of beautiful and extremely powerful people who were in a silent battle with each other. I wanted to melt into the floor and disappear.

  The servers eventually came back with our food and placed it in front of us. I looked down and realized that I ordered a dish that seemed to be just blue cheese on figs. I didn’t like blue cheese—but I didn’t think I could eat anything at that moment anyway, what with my stomach tied up in tension knots, so it didn’t matter anyway.

  Eventually I could see Archer snap and he said, “Why are you bringing garbage to our table, Victoria?”

  “Yeah, what the hell are you playing at?” Grayson added.

  I looked over at him and he was shooting daggers at Victoria with his eyes.

  Brett said nothing and when I looked at him he was looking down at the ta
ble, his jaw clenched so tightly that I could see the muscles bulging out of it.

  “I want her here. She’s my guest,” Victoria said calmly. “I’m allowed to invite people to sit at my table.”

  “It’s not your table,” Archer hissed through clenched teeth. “It’s the fucking Royalty table, you can’t just invite anyone to sit at it—especially some poor, trailer trash girl, one of the fucking scholarship students.”

  I could hear how mad he was, and even though I had been called worse over my three weeks at Crestmoore it still hurt to hear Archer talk about me that way.

  “She’s sitting here,” Victoria said, unshaken in the wake of Archer’s fury.

  Archer said nothing. He sat back and crossed his arms. He had taken off his blazer and I could see the outline of his muscles through the thin white fabric of his dress shirt. He looked so intense in his anger, but I could tell he was holding himself back.

  No one at the table touched their food. We sat for another few minutes in silence, minutes that seemed to stretch out into eternity. Finally, the Kings, as if they had said something to each other, all stood up at the same time and left. I watched their receding backs as they stalked down the aisle. All eyes turned to watch them go. They slammed through the entrance doors and were gone.

  “Sorry about that.” Victoria turned to me. “They can be so mean sometimes.”

  “That’s ok,” I managed to whisper.

  But I was pretty shaken up by what had just happened.

  We all started eating. I picked a bit at my food, managing to eat a small bite of fig where there was no blue cheese touching it, but I had lost my appetite. I had also never tasted figs before and found out that I didn’t like them either.

  The girls talked a bit while they picked at their salads but I didn’t join in the conversation. I didn’t understand why they were being nice to me. I didn’t understand what they were building up to, I just knew that it was probably going to be awful. From the way the Kings had reacted it seemed like they weren’t a part of Victoria’s plan.