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

by Elle East

  The fear started leaving my body and was slowly replaced with boredom. It felt like hours had passed. I looked at my phone and it had only been an hour so far. I wondered what their end game was. They had managed to lock me in there so I was completely at their mercy for whatever sick joke they wanted to play on me. I kept waiting but the prank never came. Slowly I realized that this was the prank. They had locked me in an abandoned boathouse and would leave me there for the entire night.

  This SUCKS, I thought as I crossed my arms and leaned back into the wall. I still had studying to do for a huge English test that we had tomorrow. If they didn’t let me out of here soon, I would have to pull an all-nighter—which I had been planning to do anyway because I assumed I would be at the party for a couple hours, but the fact that I was just sitting there wasting time pissed me off.

  As the hours trickled by I wondered when they were coming back. My eyelids were getting heavy and a couple times I nodded off before catching myself and sitting back up straight. I kept checking my phone—which I needed to stop doing because it was draining my battery and I was already down to 15%. The time crawled by. At one point I woke up and realized I had been curled in a ball on the floor, fast asleep. I looked at my phone and it was five in the morning. It was then that it truly sunk in that they weren’t going to let me out.

  I stood up and shook the sleep from my vision. I needed to get out of there. I took another look around, but the only way for me to escape would be to jump in the freezing cold water and swim under the large barn door covering the exit to the ocean. The water in this part of the country was always cold, but at this time of the year I was begging for hypothermia—and I still had a long way to walk back to the school, I wouldn’t make it.

  I sat back down, utterly defeated. I would not have time to study, which wasn’t too bad, I had only planned to do some last-minute revision to make sure I got the dates and themes down, but I knew the material enough that I would do ok without it. But the more time that passed, the more I realized that they didn’t mean to let me out before school started. If I didn’t make it to class, I would fail the test, Crestmoore had an extremely strict academic policy—actually, all their policies were strict.

  Maybe that was their plan all along. Trick me into a place where they could lock me up so that I failed that test and then I’d be kicked out of the top ten. It made more sense now about why they would have a party on a Sunday instead of a Friday or Saturday.

  I was helpless to stop this bullying campaign against me. I didn’t know what I had done to deserve this. I wasn’t the best person, but I didn’t think I was this bad. And I didn’t deserve to be treated like this just because I was poor—what a stupid reason to hate someone.

  As dawn broke over the water, the gray light slowly trickled in to the boathouse—which looked much less sinister in the daytime. I could see that I was still just as trapped. I looked at my cell phone which was now down to 5% battery and there was still no signal. I stood up. My stiff muscles ached from a night spent on the hard wooden floor. I went over to the window to look out.

  There were the woods and the path I had taken to get here. In the distance the school sat on the hill, seeming to taunt me. There was no one in view.

  The sun rose higher in the sky. I looked at my phone, battery 3% and the time was 9:45 am, I had missed the test. Anger was flowing through me, anger that had been building up momentum all night.

  Finally, around noon and 1% battery I saw someone coming down the path. I started screaming and banging on the window. The groundskeeper looked startled to see me and hesitated before coming over.

  “Please let me out! I’m locked in here!” I called desperately.

  He looked at me puzzled but went around to the front door; I raced to meet him there. He could barely get the door unlocked with his master key before I was bursting out of it and running past him towards the school.

  “You should be more careful!” he called after me. “Getting yourself locked in here… You aren’t allowed on this side of the island!”

  I didn’t respond; I was too busy sprinting up the path.

  By the time I reached the school I was seeing red. I started walking so that I wouldn’t be out of breath and went straight to the dining hall where I knew they would be.

  I threw open the doors and walked with purpose down the aisle. The other students turned to stare at me—and I didn’t blame them, I’m sure I looked possessed—but I didn’t notice because my gaze was fixed on the head table. Claudia noticed first, and she pointed me out to the rest of the Royalty. All seven of them were there. They slowly turned around to watch me stalk up to them. They had smug looks on their stupid faces.

  I didn’t pause; I went right up to their table and flipped Brett and Archer’s full plates of food right into their faces. I started screaming at them. I was barely aware of what I was saying but I was so angry and all the resentment from being treated so cruelly for months built up and exploded in a flood of hateful words. It was something about how the only way they could beat me was to cheat and that in a fair competition I would win every time. It was also about what cowards they were, making other students do their bullying for them. And that they all suck and could never handle the real world outside of their rich little bubbles where everyone does everything for them. Also about how they aren’t special just because they were lucky enough to be born with silver spoons in their mouths. And lastly, about how much I hated them.

  I quickly felt firm hands on my arms as the teachers tried to pull me out of the room.

  The Kings were all stunned, but then those turned into looks of anger. They had just been disrespected in front of the whole school by the charity case.

  “You will pay for that,” Archer said under his breath.

  “Fuck you,” I said back, venom dripping from my words as I stared directly into his storming eyes. I was done playing by their rules. “I don’t fucking care.”

  The teachers started pulling me away with an insistence that I couldn’t ignore. As I was being dragged away, I saw Victoria’s cruelly smiling face, like this was all just for her amusement.

  “Also, FUCK YOU, Victoria, you two-faced bitch!” I screamed.

  I saw the smug smile fade from her face to be replaced by anger and I was happy. I turned away and let the teachers lead me out of the dining hall. There were a couple laughs and hoots like the students couldn’t believe what they had just seen and then I was out the door.

  Not surprisingly I got detention. They were talking about expelling me, but I explained what had happened. They said I couldn’t prove who had done it since I had only overheard a couple students talking about the party.

  “But they spoke about it in front of me because they knew that I would hear! They were tricking me into going!” I said incredulously to the headmaster in his office.

  “You can’t prove that, Miss Baker,” the headmaster said stoically and the juxtaposition of his calmness against my agitation only made me angrier.

  “Well, how did I get locked in the boathouse? Ask the groundskeeper, he found me at lunch.”

  “You aren’t allowed in that area of the island.”

  I threw up my hands in exasperation. “I know that, but they tricked me into going there and then locked me in. That’s why I missed my test this morning. Ask the groundskeeper!”

  “Be that as it may you were being aggressive with other students in the dining hall.”

  “Because they made me miss that test! I was mad, I’ve been working so hard at this school and now I’m going to lose my position.”

  I fell back in my chair; I was exhausted.

  “You aren’t allowed to yell and swear at other students, Miss Baker.”

  “I know,” I sighed.

  “We treat bullying very seriously at this school.”

  I snorted at that and his eyes narrowed at me. I could tell that I would not win this argument and needed to get out of it with as little damage as I could manage.
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  “I know and I’m sorry,” I said through gritted teeth.

  The headmaster sat back in his chair and brought the tips of his fingers together in front of him as he was thinking. It was such a pretentious gesture that I also hated him at that moment. I hated the whole school.

  “We are going to let you off with a warning this time, Miss Baker. See that it doesn’t happen again because if it does we will not be so lenient.”

  “Ok, thanks, I won’t let it happen again,” I managed to say with a straight face.

  “You’ll of course have detention.”

  “Of course,” I said through clenched teeth.

  So that was why I was walking into detention, yet again. I had never gotten detention ever in my life before coming to Crestmoore, but now I was a regular. I had been a good student at my old school but here I was a degenerate.

  It didn’t surprise me to see Grayson. He was sitting in the spot I normally chose, the one at the front of the room, as far away from his usual seat at the back as possible. But I’d had enough for one day.

  “Don’t talk to me,” I said as I went to the back of the room to sit.

  “Someone’s still pissed off,” he teased.

  He turned around with his arm on the back of his seat, his dark brown hair falling into his face and he swept it back with his hand.

  “I loved your show in the dining room.”

  I glared at him with such anger that I could see it caught him off guard.

  “I haven’t seen anyone do something like that to any of the Royalty before,” he continued after a beat, a bit more cautiously. “It was awesome.”

  I snorted in contempt. “I threw food all over your best friends, embarrassing them in front of the entire student body. There’s no way you think it’s ‘awesome’. You’re trying to get back at me somehow.”

  “Well I might feel differently if you had thrown it on me.” He gave me his patented smirk.

  “You would have been next if I had had more time,” I said coldly.

  He looked surprised.

  Did he really think that I liked him more than the other Kings or something? Grayson had been equally as horrible to me as the rest of them. I wished I had thrown it on him too, and I meant what I said, I would have done it if I could have. Archer and Brett just happened to be sitting next to each other, and they were the ones I was competing with for marks, so they were my natural targets at that moment, but it just as easily could have been Grayson.

  He furrowed his brow like he was thinking of something.

  Shortly after that, the teacher came in and Grayson left without another word to me. Did he even have detention or was he just coming here to mess with me? I couldn’t imagine the teachers giving any of the Kings detention, and even if they did get it I was sure they could buy their way out of it anyway.

  As I watched Grayson leave, I decided something. The Kings of Crestmoore had gone unchallenged for so long that they were starting to think they were invincible. I would prove that they weren’t. I was going to destroy them.

  Chapter 23

  I had a new mission. Getting revenge on the Kings was what occupied my mind. I didn’t know how I would do it though. It needed to be something big, something that would take them down a peg. The Queens would come later, but first would be Archer, Brett and Grayson.

  I was passed my breaking point—they had pushed me passed it. I knew that I should have been concentrating on helping my mom, but I couldn’t let it go. I needed revenge. I couldn’t just sit by and let the world be this unfair of a place. They needed some type of karma.

  I was in Chemistry class when inspiration struck and I finally figured out what I would do.

  Our teacher was lecturing and Grayson and Archer were sitting at the back of the room. Just being in the same space as them made my blood boil. It was like I could physically feel them there behind me.

  My mind was racing over all the possibilities and that was when I heard the teacher telling us to be careful with a substance that we were about to handle because it dissolved hair.

  Bingo, I thought gleefully. That was it. A huge smile spread across my face and I’m sure I looked crazy but I didn’t care.

  At the end of class I “borrowed”—no, actually, I admit that I “stole” this time—all the leftovers of the chemical we’d been using. I hoped that it was enough for what I had in mind. The second part of the plan would be a lot harder than the first. I needed to get the chemical into the Kings’ shampoo, but how?

  It would be too hard to sneak into one of their rooms, let alone three. I needed to get access a different way. I needed a time when they were all going to be showering, because if one of them had it happen to them they’d immediately tell the others. Only Brett and Archer played football so I wouldn’t be able to do it while they were at practice. I thought about the Kings’ schedule and realized that I knew they all had gym class at the same time—the Queens had mentioned it in an offhanded remark. That was perfect.

  I had to wait until the middle of the week for them to have gym class. I had art at the same time so my plan was to ask to go to the washroom then race over to the field house, sneak in and do the deed, then race back to class and hope no one would notice how long I’d been gone. The plan wasn’t great; it had a lot of elements that could go wrong, but it was all I had so I was going with it.

  I slipped the small bag of chemicals into my blazer pocket before putting up my hand and asking to be excused. I calmly walked into the hall, but once I was out of view of the classroom I started running.

  I burst outside and ran towards the woods that bordered the field house. I looked out and saw that the Kings’ gym class was playing lacrosse. Even though I knew nothing about lacrosse, I could still tell that Brett and Archer were the starring players. Grayson was off to one side of the field not paying attention to the game at all and staring at his phone. I snorted. Typical, but also perfect, no one would be inside.

  I dashed to the field house. I knew I didn’t have much time and the longer I took the more chance I had of getting caught, so after a quick glance around I opened the back door and snuck inside. I waited for a second, listening to see if I could hear anyone inside but there was only silence so I crept forward into the brightly lit boys changing room.

  In the girls changing room we all had our own cubbies with our names on it—though mine had “Miss Baker” crossed off and someone had written “Miss Trash” in permanent marker that I couldn’t wash off—and I was pleased to see that it was the same in the guys’. Darting along the row, I read out each name quickly until I found “Mr. Hughs”. The nervousness I was experiencing was being replaced by excitement, everything was going according to my plan.

  I grabbed Brett’s gym-bag and threw it open. I rummaged around until I found a mesh bag with his shampoo and soap in it. Taking out the shampoo, I quickly unscrewed the cap—which was hard because my hands were shaking—and was momentarily overwhelmed by the manly, fresh scent. This is what Brett’s hair smells like. I shivered before shaking my head, get a grip on yourself.

  I took the baggie from my pocket, poured a third of the chemical into the bottle, re-capped it and put it back in the mesh bag. I replaced his gym-bag back in his cubby, trying to make it look like it had never been touched.

  One down, two to go.

  “Mr. Moore” was next, and then “Mr. King”. All three had lockers right next to each other, so I was done in no time and then I was running out the back door and racing up the hill. I glanced back at the field and saw that the guys were done with their game and were starting to head inside. Phew, finished just in time, I thought.

  I sprinted into the school and back to class, slowing down when I got close and walking into the room calmly. I slipped back into my seat. My breathing was still a little fast, but no one seemed to have noticed that I had been gone longer than it normally takes to go to the washroom.

  I breathed out a sigh of relief. It was done, and it had all gone per
fectly. This was my first plan that was actually successful and it felt good. As I sat there basking in my triumph, I started to have the first seeds of doubt. Maybe I had gone too far? Then I reminded myself of everything that they had done to me and I realized that I hadn’t. Maybe I hadn’t gone far enough.

  At breakfast the next morning I was sitting in the dining hall by myself, reading a book for English class and eating a huge meal. I normally skipped breakfast but last night I couldn’t eat dinner because my stomach had been in knots worrying about the repercussions from my shampoo prank, so this morning I had woken up starving and headed down early. A lot of students were like me and skipped breakfast so the dining hall wasn’t crowded in the mornings.

  I was about halfway done when I heard the doors bang open violently. I looked up, startled, and saw three angry Kings storming towards me. They all had identical, extremely short buzzed haircuts and yet somehow they looked just as handsome as before. Life wasn’t fair. My plan hadn’t worked at all. They still were three of the hottest guys I had ever seen—besides Dean that was.

  “We need to talk,” Archer said in a low voice, fury evident in every word.

  “About what?” I asked innocently, but I realized I was playing with fire and started to get nervous—they looked like they wanted to burn me.

  “Now,” Brett commanded with no room for argument.

  I stood up and gathered my things. They made me walk in front of them until we were in the hall and they led me to a secluded alcove. I was nervous. What were they going to do to me? They all seemed pretty pissed, despite the fact that their new hairstyles did nothing to take away from their looks. I didn’t know what else they could possibly have done to me that was worse than what they were already doing.

  Once we were in the alcove, they surrounded me to form an intimidating cage of large, angry Adonises. My back made contact with the cold stone wall behind me. I looked up, clutching my books to my chest for protection.