Ruthless Bishop: Dark New Adult High School Bully Romance (Sinners and Saints Book 3)

by Veronica Eden

  I follow, unable to shake the uneasiness clinging to me. “Is he here, or…?”

  “No. Left early and wouldn’t say where he was going.” She stops and turns on her heel when we reach the kitchen. “You can wait here for him. Would you like some tea?”

  “Okay.” I take a tentative seat at the island. “Thank you.”

  She smiles without moving the upper half of her face. It’s disconcerting. “Be right back.”

  I’m not waiting long before she returns with a manila folder. She must be working from home. She paces on the other side of the island.

  “Sorry again for interrupting.” I gesture at the folder she’s flipping through. “I haven’t heard from Connor in a few days, so I was worried and wanted to stop by to see if he wanted to go to the holiday market downtown.”

  Vivian lifts a brow with her attention on the contents in the folder, but doesn’t answer.

  “I’m going to make you an offer,” she announces after a stretch of awkward silence.

  “I’m sorry?” I lick my lips nervously.

  Snapping the folder shut, she plays with it as she studies me with a tight expression. “You’ve worn out your usefulness for the campaign’s family-centered message. Leave my son. Stop seeing him. Don’t call or text him.”

  “What?” The air sucks from the room as I grip the edge of the counter. “Why would I do that? Connor and I—” I close my mouth. It sounds stupid and cliche saying we love each other to his mom while she’s trying to drive me away. “I won’t do it.”

  She sighs like I’m a big inconvenience. “How much do you want?”

  “You can’t pay me to stop dating Connor.” I gape at her. “That’s horrible.”

  Vivian coos at me, the sound derisive. “That’s how the world works, darling.”

  I straighten my spine. “No thanks. No matter how much you try to bribe me with, I wouldn’t do that to him. I don’t like lying.”

  “Well, aren’t you good at playing wholesome?”

  “Playing?”

  I’m about to jump up from the stool when she smirks. “Connor doesn’t want or need you. Why do you think he hasn’t contacted you?”

  Denial clogs in my throat. No. He wouldn’t ghost me. He’s too proud for it. If he wanted to end things between us, he’d tell me to my face. I shake my head.

  Vivian clucks her tongue. “With your…promiscuous proclivities, you don’t foster the right kind of image. It’s best for everyone if you disappeared from his life.”

  “Disappeared? Promiscuous proclivities?” My head is spinning. “What are you talking about?”

  She tosses the folder across the counter. It lands between us, pages spilling across the gleaming granite. They’re…me. Photos of myself. Dread seeps into every inch of my skin as I stare at printed pages from my blog.

  No. No, no, no. This can’t be happening.

  “I’ll take your stunned silence as agreement.” Her words tear me from my stupor. She clicks a pen, poised over a checkbook she pulled out while I was in a daze. “How much will it be?”

  What a horrible woman. I’m never voting for her.

  Sucking in a fortifying breath, I face her. “If Connor doesn’t want me, why would you have to pay me to stop seeing him?”

  I’m proud that my voice only shakes a little.

  Vivian taps the tip of her silver pen against the blank check. “Insurance.”

  My lips part. Forget this, standing up to her is pointless. I swipe the pages from my blog and hop down from the stool.

  “I have to go,” I say.

  “Those aren’t the only copies, dear. Be smart. Tell me your price, or I’ll show my son.”

  A wild laugh escapes me as I back away from her. “You think you can blackmail me?” It’s kind of hilarious, actually. I wish Connor was here to see this. He would get a kick out of it. “Bye, Mrs. Bishop.”

  Heart in my throat, I get the hell out of there. On the way, my phone rings. I wait until I’m in the Bishop’s driveway before I pull it out. When I see who it is, a sound catches in my throat.

  “Connor!” I answer, pressing the phone to my ear in a white-knuckled grip.

  “Thea? Are you—? I’m almost home. Can you meet me in the pool house?”

  I turn back to face his house, my stomach roiling. The last twenty-four hours weigh on my shoulders after facing off with his mother and my own.

  “Yeah.” I sniffle, wiping my nose. “Of course. Are you okay?”

  “We need to talk.”

  My stomach drops.

  The call cuts off.

  “Connor? Connor! Damn it.”

  I almost drop the phone as the printed pages slip from my grasp, cascading all over the driveway. Doubt engulfs me as I crouch to gather the pages blaring my secret.

  Between the ideas both our mothers planted in my head, I dread what Connor needs to talk about.

  Thirty-Three

  Thea

  There might as well be a singed path in front of the pool house from the serious, stressed-out pacing I did in the last ten minutes waiting for Connor. The entire time I had myself half-convinced we’re breaking up, like both our mothers want.

  My inner critical voice wreaks havoc, running rampant with the worst things I think of myself, clawing at my mind with one berating thought after another.

  Not enough, silly girl, my mind chants.

  The anxiety has ratcheted so high, I’m sure any second I’ll puke up all the sugary confections Maisy and I gorged ourselves on last night. Double chocolate fudge cake is coming back for a gruesome revenge.

  I threw out the printouts I took from Vivian, but what if she already told Connor?

  The tense, resolute expression on Connor’s face when he finally rounds the house to the backyard with a laptop and thick file in hand doesn’t help alleviate any of those poisonous thoughts. I smother a sound that should belong to a dying animal, not a girl seeing her boyfriend for the first time in days.

  The last time we were together, we talked about loving each other. Now I’m certain those were our last happy moments. Something in my bones braces me for the impact of this conversation shattering my heart.

  One smile from him could save it.

  “Hi,” I say hoarsely when he’s close.

  Connor doesn’t smile. The first crack in my fragile heart splinters, catching me off guard.

  “Come inside.” He glances around, watchful of our surroundings. “We need to talk.”

  “Yeah, about that,” I croak, wringing my hands. “You’re kind of freaking me out. Maybe you can put a girl out of her misery over here? I’ve had a rough couple of days.”

  “You and me both, baby,” Connor rumbles, reaching for my hand and squeezing it.

  It’s a brief ray of light breaking through the clouds of despair hanging over my head, but it helps me breathe a little easier and soothes some of the anxiety, bringing me back from the brink of an emotional breakdown. Once we’re inside, he sits me down on the bed, kneels in front of me, and opens his slim laptop with a grim expression.

  The tension is killing me. I haven’t fully calmed down from what his mom tried to pull, let alone the bomb dropped on me last night.

  “Your mom wants to bribe me to stop seeing you.” I put one thing out there, shoving the weight off my shoulders so I have help bearing it before it crushes me.

  Connor stills, dragging his attention from the screen to stare at me. He pinches the bridge of his nose.

  “Fucking bitch. Don’t listen to her. Whatever poison she tried to feed you, it’s bullshit.”

  My body sags in relief. “I thought—when I couldn’t get a hold of you. I thought you didn’t want me.”

  “Thea.” He puts the laptop on the floor and slides his palms up the sides of my thighs. “I want you. I love you. Everything I’ve been doing is for you. All of it. I’m ready to tell you why I’ve been distant the last few days.”

  I lean in, resting my forehead against his. The earthy scent uniq
ue to him twines around me as he strokes his thumbs against my legs.

  After a minute, he taps my thigh and picks up the laptop again. “We have to prioritize this. Time is running out and I’m not waiting around anymore.”

  “What is it?”

  Connor sighs. “You know I’m good at weeding out people’s secrets?”

  I nod.

  “Back when you and I…well, before I revealed myself to you, I did some digging. It wasn’t hard to access for someone like me. I told you I’m good with computers.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “It’s better if I show you what I stumbled on.”

  Connor turns the laptop, the screen full of several windows showing photos of necklaces, email transcripts, and Mr. Coleman’s photo.

  “What is this?”

  “Something sinister. Chief Landry won’t listen. That’s where I was this morning, begging him for an arrest or an investigation after I did all the damn legwork. ‘Evidence obtained illegally is useless’.” Connor pulls a face, imitating Maisy’s dad’s gruff voice. “Bullshit, right? Whatever, like hell I’m waiting around. We’ll get him ourselves if we have to.”

  “You’re throwing a lot at me,” I say, head jumbled by the battering my emotions took and wary of where this is going. Connor has always had trouble with my favorite teacher.

  “Coleman,” he clarifies, watching me as he taps his laptop screen. He gestures to each of the windows as he talks. “If I didn’t have the comments to compare the conversations to, I might not have figured it out, and then he said that freaky shit to you. It threw up red flags.”

  My lips part to interrupt, but he goes on before I voice my questions.

  “I couldn’t tie him to the creepy knight username concretely with an ip address match at first—bastard’s damn good at covering his tracks—but there are these insane hackers also onto him, and they sent me on a wild goose chase to get one of Coleman’s trophies back. They gave me the unsealed files once I did, but I’d already seen enough after I broke into his place.”

  “Broke in?” I yelp, pushing my fingers in my hair. He broke into our teacher’s house? “Oh my god, Connor. What are you talking about?”

  “I had to.” He squeezes my knee. “I’d do anything to keep you safe.”

  There’s so much to unpack. Between his confusing explanation and the information overload, I’m speechless. One window in particular pulls my focus and my body freezes.

  The relief I felt moments ago vanishes. He already knows my secret. An instinctive refusal rears up, leaving me feeling exposed, but I swallow it back, trying to keep a level head.

  He sees you. All of you.

  “How did you find that?” With a shaking finger, I point at the browser window with my blog loaded.

  “I hacked into your computer and it was in your recent browser history.” Connor shoots me a look that says not the important thing here, and jabs his finger on the screen over Mr. Coleman’s face. “I don’t care about the blog. Although, really, if it’s private you should’ve password protected it, but what matters is it was key in figuring out—”

  “You hacked into my computer.” The disbelief spiraling through me is profound. My voice is quiet, but he goes still at the monotone in it. “You spied on me! What gives you the right?”

  Connor exhales in exasperation, brows pinched together. “Is that really what you’re focused on when I’m showing you all this evidence that Coleman is an online predator? He gets off grooming his victims, knows exactly how to talk to them. He’s a psycho.”

  “A what?”

  My mind screams in denial at the word victim. It’s not true. As much as I try to keep calm, a raw anguish overtakes me.

  Ignoring the predator accusation for a minute, I hold my head in my hands. It feels like my secret has been wrenched from me, but it was mine to tell, not his to hunt down. “This is too much. If you knew about my blog, why didn’t you talk to me about it sooner? Not that I have to explain anything to you, but it’s a sensitive and personal escape for me.”

  Flashes of my conversations with my online boyfriend pop into my head, cut in a harsher light.

  I was the one to give us that label. Henry never did. No. It can’t be.

  It hurts too much to think about. The only thing my brain can focus on is the lesser, but still stinging pain of Connor hacking my computer. Desperation to shut those old questions about Henry behind an iron wall has me pushing all of my anger on Connor.

  “Damn it, Thea. It was before we were really together. I’m sorry I did it. I wasn’t spying. Shit, I know it was wrong, baby. But it helped me find him. What Coleman was doing to you for years. Others, too.”

  Others. Doing to you. I shake my head, air catching in my throat. I’m not a victim. I stopped answering the emails. I never sent nude photos.

  But Henry still controlled you.

  The blog was my safe place to escape the nitpicking from Mom about my body. Henry poisoned it, his infection spreading deep until he had me in his web.

  A pained noise escapes me.

  Connor sets the laptop aside and picks up the thick file, flipping through to show me. “He’s taught at two schools before he showed up in Ridgeview. He was fired from both after sexual harassment reports and complaints for inappropriate conduct.”

  Focusing on the pages as he talks is hard. I barely take in any of the information. My mind keeps chanting no over and over.

  “He doesn’t even hide how he favors his female students. And he was all over your blog comments even though you’re inactive, then he’s so focused on you at school. Think about when he showed up here. He’s going to make you his next prize.”

  An unpleasant hot and cold sensation flies over my skin. This is insane. How could Henry and Mr. Coleman be the same? It’s so much to think about. I can’t accept it.

  There’s only one thing I can control right now: how I feel about the man I love invading my privacy.

  Isn’t that what Henry did?

  Gritting my teeth, I shove the thought back into a mental abyss. Stop it.

  Connor is acting like he was justified, as long as he got to find out his version of the truth. Forget who it hurts along the way in his search.

  I’d rather deal with Vivian Bishop and my mother at the same time than face the truth—Connor spying on me.

  This is the blackmail king of Silver Lake at his best.

  Is this all I am to you?

  “This is serious.”

  “I know!” Connor shouts. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  “You had no right to worm your way into my secrets without my permission. Your jealousy of Mr. Coleman is out of control. You’ve been obsessed with him for months.” I give a forceful shake of my head as I grasp at straws, unable to believe. “You could’ve fabricated photos to get him fired because you don’t like him.”

  “Are you hearing yourself, Thea? You know me. Would I really put that much effort in when I could get rid of him in other, easier ways? I’m telling you the truth. It’s far scarier than anything I could’ve made up about him.”

  “But you hacked my computer,” I repeat, unable to let it go. It’s the only thing I can process in this mess.

  Twice in the last day I’ve defended him as a good guy. But he’s been lying to me. I swallow, struggling to choose logic over the shaky emotions threatening to drown me. We always talk out our problems, but how can we work out a betrayal like this?

  I thought we tore down our walls to be together. If he’s still hiding behind his, I can’t be with him. I want Connor, not the ruthless blackmail king.

  Maybe it’s time his whole damn castle burned down.

  As soon as the thought hits me, I push it aside. That’s not us. My emotions are wreaking havoc on my mental state. These aren’t rational thoughts. If there’s one thing I’ve learned with Connor, we both need clear heads.

  He cups my face with one hand and I push out of his grasp. He forces out an aggrava
ted sound. “It was—I’m trying to protect you!”

  “I didn’t ask you to!” My yell echoes in the pool house.

  I’m trying to stay calm, but it’s impossible. The evidence he’s forcing me to face is slicing me apart at the seams. My mind races in different directions, a base instinct seeking some way to control this so it stops hurting so much, to hide and go back to ten minutes ago before there was a possibility I could be a victim. That’s not me. I don’t want it to be.

  Tears of overwhelm prick my eyes, turning my voice watery. “I’ve forgiven you for a lot, but I can’t look past you invading my privacy and lying about it. I don’t believe you. You’re just playing god because you’re obsessed with everyone’s business, just like my mom and yours. You’re too afraid to make your own life better, so you just ruin everyone else’s!”

  Connor jerks his head back as if I slapped him. “Why are you so focused on the hacking? So you kept a blog for your pictures—so what? Doesn’t every girl do that these days?”

  When he says it like that, it makes the insecurities I’ve struggled with about my body and feeling invisible seem so small and insignificant. Posting to the blog and finding Henry are the only things that helped me through that time in my life. How can he say it was fine to have my blog but tell me I was groomed by an online predator because of it?

  And my abuser is Mr. Coleman? Rejection surges in my head. Maybe what I had with Henry wasn’t normal and made me feel weird, but Henry isn’t Mr. Coleman. He can’t be. That would mean—

  Before I can face the thought of sitting in class with Henry as the teacher instead of Mr. Coleman, I shut down, going completely numb. I wring my hands, taking unsteady breaths in through my nose to calm myself, like Maisy instructs me when I feel like I’ll fly out of my skin.

  “Are you okay?” Connor asks, backing off when he sees the state I’m in.

  I shake my head, unable to formulate a verbal response.

  “Here.” Jaw tense, Connor pulls out a photo of a teenage girl that’s so similar to the kind of photos Henry would ask for. “He has these on his computer—it’s a big set up like mine, dual monitors. I have an encrypted copy of his hard drive, where I found this. I don’t know whether he keeps them to himself or sells them or what, but he has more than one. We have to stop him.”