The Pawn: A Reverse Harem Bully Revenge Romance (Coleridge Academy Elites Book 1)

by Lucy Auburn

  It's time to take them down for good.

  "How about this." Approaching Blake, I look up into his brown eyes and try not to let the sight of him staring down at me make me feel inferior. "I bet you that I can scare the shit out of you at the Hallow's Eve Festival, and if I win, you have to leave me alone. No, wait," I say as another thought occurs to me, "if I win, you have to help me pass our calculus class."

  Blake asks, "And if I win? Because the only thing I want is you out of this school."

  He stalks close to me, so close I can feel the heat of his body.

  "Blake," Lukas mutters in warning, voice low, an edged expression to his normally soft blue eyes. "Watch it."

  "I am watching it," he says, meaning me. "How about this, Brenna Cooke."

  So Lukas doesn't know my real name, then, just as I thought. "Spill it."

  "If I win, you have to get up in front of the school and tell them the truth. The whole truth. No detail spared."

  I wonder if he knows what he's really asking.

  The whole truth isn't just my name, or my sordid history, or even how I got into this school.

  There's another piece of the truth, a piece I think the Elites still haven't figured out. The rope, the tree, the snake in the grass, my brother's body in a casket.

  I look up into Blake's eyes and wonder if they'll still be as cold when he finds out what he did to my brother—all of it.

  Confused, Lukas asks, "What truth do you mean?"

  "Deal." I hold out my hand, ignoring Lukas's confusion. "Get ready to have your socks scared off you, Blake Lee."

  "Get ready to be run out of this school." He smirks, leaning so close to me that I can see the amber in his brown eyes, and my heart does a funny dance against my ribs. "Good luck fooling him," he murmurs for my ears alone. "When Lukas finds out the truth, he'll get rid of you—completely."

  I jerk my hand out of his grip, wiping my palm against my legs. "See you this weekend."

  "See you."

  Blake gives Lukas a dismissive glance, then prowls out of our section of the library, and good riddance.

  "What was he talking about?" Lukas asks, frowning up at me. "What is the truth or whatever?"

  "Nothing you need to worry about," I lie, wondering what I've gotten myself into. "Question: do you have any computer skills? Because if this is broken beyond repair, I'm pretty sure I will be failing out this semester, no matter what I do."

  I hold the laptop out to Lukas, and he stares at its cracked case. Opening his mouth, he looks for a moment like he's going to push the issue of "the truth," and I wonder if this is the end of us—whatever us really is.

  But then he just says, "Sure, I might be able to fix it. Let's get it over to that table under the light so I can see if anything got broken when it fell."

  I send a little prayer of thanks up that he didn't probe any further into the darkness inside me. Given all his light, I doubt a boy like Lukas DuPont would see me—all of me—and want to stick around after.

  Chapter 33

  "I think these screws got a little loose, and this wire came undone. Hold on..."

  Lukas has, of all things, a tiny set of screwdrivers in his bag, which of course he uses to help me figure out what's going on. "There. I'll boot it up, and if you could login so I can check that the hard drive is in working order, it should be all good."

  Relief fills me. "Thanks so much."

  "No problem." He watches me as he holds down the power button. "This computer means a lot to you, I sense."

  I can't tell him the real reason why it does: because it's the last thing I have that connects me to Silas. Instead, I give him another, still truthful, reason.

  "I can't afford a new one."

  "Ah. Of course." Bright pink flushes his cheeks, making him look embarrassed. "That should've occurred to me. I'm thoughtless sometimes about issues concerning..."

  He's so blue blood he can't even say the word. "Money?"

  "Yes." A sigh, and an arch of his blond brow. "It's very pretentious, isn't it? But I just forget it's an issue for anyone else, because it's never been an issue for me."

  His shoes probably cost more than this laptop, and I don't want to think about how much his actual computer cost. Now that it's been spoken out loud, though, I can't help but feel the impossible divide between his position and mine. There's nothing but a table between us, but it might as well be the Pacific Ocean when you talk about things like money and class.

  "The login screen is up now." Instead of talking further about the one subject we can't discuss, I type in Silas's password, thankful I was able to change his user name so I don't out myself. "It looks fine... oh, what's that warning?"

  Lukas turns the computer towards him. "Your hard drive is full. You won't be able to save any new files until that's fixed. How odd... it has a one terabyte drive." Frowning, he clicks through a number of window so quickly that I can barely skim them, much less understand what they say. "Huh. You'd have a lot more space for your schoolwork if you got rid of this partitioned part of your drive."

  "Partition?" I frown; I have no idea what he's talking about.

  "There's a separate operating system on here. It's hidden away, but you can find it. If you login and move everything over from the partition onto your main operating system, it'll greatly increase your free disk space." Studying me—I must look clueless—he adds, "Or you could just delete all your caches and any duplicated files."

  "Yeah, I'll just... do that."

  Lukas's mouth curves up into a soft, kind smile. "Or I can do it for you."

  "Could you? I have no idea what you're talking about."

  "Sure. Just give me a moment." He turns the computer towards himself, fingers flying on the keyboard. An awkward silence descends for a moment, and he breaks it by asking, "So what was the deal with you and Blake just then? It seemed like something more than simple animosity on your end."

  "He threw out my test to try to get me to fail calculus," I point out, skirting around other, darker reasons that I have for hating him. "And you saw that video of him going mental in that club in Seoul."

  "That was a dark moment in his life. We all have them."

  This, more than anything, is what frustrates me about Lukas. There's always an excuse for his friends' behavior—even when that behavior should be in inexcusable.

  "Can you blame me for disliking him?" I raise my brows in his direction. "He wants me out of this school. He said as much. So have Cole and Tanner."

  Lukas's mouth tightens into a thin line. Beneath his breath he mutters, "We shouldn't talk about this."

  Of course. Stamping down on my anger, I hate myself a little for the kiss we just shared. It was a foolish moment, born of foolish, hormonal impulses. Lukas will always be this: the boy I can't get along with unless we leave gaping holes in our conversation where the Elites should be.

  It takes a few long moments for Lukas to fix up my hard drive. I watch his face as he does it, studying the way the blue-tinged light of the screen plays off his pale cheekbones. For some reason, this moment feels precious and fleeting, as if it'll slip from my hands and never return.

  I don't want to have to pick between having moments like this, where's I'm free to stare at him up close and personal, and my vendetta for revenge.

  Too bad for me I don't have to pick. The world is going to pick for me.

  "There. All done." His face is placid and neutral as he closes my laptop and slides it over to me. "I'll text you when I'm ready to meet again."

  Clearing my throat, I murmur, "See you this weekend at the Hallow's Eve Festival?"

  Standing, bag in hand, he stares down at me. I feel my heart surge up into my throat; I want nothing more than to know what he's thinking.

  "See you this weekend, Brenna."

  There's a moment, standing at the threshold of the salon, where I have the chance to make a choice.

  I can turn around now. Walk back towards the bus that Mrs. Reynolds drove to take us into
town on our latest shopping trip. And tell her that I'm all done.

  Technically I am all done, at least with our main mission here. I took Mariana's list of supplies with me and bought everything we'll need for the SFX makeup, using the business card Mrs. Reynolds gave me for the event. I've got the receipt in my purse, carefully tucked away for expense purposes.

  But there's something else I came here to do. Something that, in the part of my heart that's still beating, I know I shouldn't do at all.

  The thing is, though, I lost half my heart the day Silas died. And I find that I really don't care anymore about the consequences of my actions—even the reckless, ill-advised ones. So I step into the salon, give the receptionist my name, and wait for my appointment.

  I could stop the moment the hair stylist leads me back.

  Jump out of the salon chair and declare that I don't want my highlights refreshed after all.

  Reach up and take her hand before the bleach formula hits my hair.

  But I don't.

  And so, an hour later, my hair freshly bleached and tinted, I hand over a credit card that doesn't have my name on it, and give the receptionist a smile.

  Then I take a few steps across the street to the makeup store—a different one this time, just like the salon I picked is different—and get more of the foundation and skincare items I'm running low on.

  As long as I've fallen this far, I might as well secure my own special circle in Hell.

  This time, I can't tell myself that it's about revenge, or that I'm getting back at someone who treated me poorly.

  The truth is, I want what Holly Schneider has, in a terrible green-eyed monster kind of way.

  After I'm done, I take the receipts from my ill-gotten adventure and throw them in the trash. Then I pull the credit card out and start to fling it into the trash can too.

  I stop at the last second.

  If I get rid of the card now, after all, I won't have any way to refresh my look before the Blind Ball at the end of the semester.

  A sick feeling in my gut, I shove the card back down into my wallet and shake away my guilty energy.

  When I get back in the bus, though, I can't meet Holly's eyes, especially when she declares that she loves my newer, blonder hair. So I fake like I'm tired and close my eyes, leaning my head back on the seat rest the whole ride home, ignoring Georgia's gossip about her new guy Hass.

  I tell myself I haven't done the unforgivable—not yet.

  Even though it feels like I'll never come back from this.

  Chapter 34

  Mariana's fingers are cool on my face as she presses latex shapes against my skin.

  "Stay still for just another minute. I want to see what you look like with bits of mangled flesh all over your cheeks." Smirking, she adds, "This is definitely going to be a scary costume, not a sexy one, so it's a good thing that's what you're aiming for."

  It is—especially now that I've truly gone off the deep end and made a bet with Blake Lee, of all people. I've already taken him down; the kids of Coleridge may have forgiven him, but in South Korea he's been given a nickname: Hothead Woo Bin. His family's entertainment company still hasn't quite recovered from their stock plummeting after the scandal.

  So why is it that I don't feel like I'm done with him completely? It's not just because he's kept messing with me since. Some part of me wants to jab at him, not for revenge, but to see what was on those tapes: his darkness, alive in his eyes and absolute. It called to me in a way that makes me feel uncomfortable—even as I'm tempted to play games with him just to see if it's the same kind of darkness that lives in me.

  Madness. I'll jump scare him tonight, get him completely freaked out, and have free math tutoring for the rest of the semester.

  Or I'll fail, Lukas will finally be told the truth about me, and I'll get to see what I look like reflected in his disappointed blue eyes.

  "Alright, you can move your face now." Jumping back from me, Mariana grins and motions to the open bathroom door. "Go check it out in the mirror and tell me what you think. And remember: this doesn't include the hair yet. Once we darken that beautiful blonde you've got going on, make it really limp and stringy, you'll be able to scare the living daylights out of everyone."

  Checking my reflection in the mirror, I don't recognize the person I see, only this time it's for a completely new reason. The Brenna who got made over in a stylist's chair is gone, replaced by a dark specter from beyond.

  I'm pale as a corpse, my eyelids sunken into my skull, ash and soot smearing my skin. Burn scars twist their way up my neck towards my jaw and ears and drag down one corner of my mouth. My eyes look bloodshot from red eyeliner, and when I tilt my chin down and snarl, I almost scare myself.

  "This. Is. Amazing." Clapping my hands together, I whirl around and throw my arms around Mariana. "I can't believe you pulled it off! I mean—wow. When I've got the rest of my costume on and I'm holding that burning candle, it'll all be over."

  She beams at me. "I'm glad you like it. It's going to be really fun to do it all over again tomorrow. Plus your nails and teeth, and then all the other girls. It'll be the best haunted house Rosalind Hall has ever seen."

  I hope she's right, because I'm not sure I can take the stressed-out, snappish version of Holly much longer. She's put way too much pressure on herself for this one party—especially when it's not even the biggest event of the semester.

  That reminds me. "You'll be coming, right? To the party?"

  A skittish expression crosses her face. "I don't know..."

  "C'mon—you can't just hang out in the planning area doing makeup. You have to show up for the rest, too."

  Biting her lower lip, she murmurs, "It's co-ed, right?"

  Which is when I remember: Mariana isn't just the girl who's amazing at doing special effects makeup. She's also the girl who was sexually assaulted over the summer. And if the expression on her face right now is any indication, the rumor that her rapist is still on campus is correct.

  "You don't have to participate in the haunted house or anything," I scramble to clarify. "Just, uh, you know... the refreshments..."

  Cringing, she asks, "You know, don't you? About what happened to me?"

  I don't know what to say to that.

  "It's okay. Girls talk. I told my friends to warn everyone about... well. I guess it doesn't matter anymore."

  Heart hammering, I dare to ask her, "Do you think you'll ever get justice for what happened?"

  Mariana meets my eyes, her gaze strong and steady. "I've considered it. But I just don't know. Some things you don't want to become public."

  "Yeah." My heart plummets, but I try not to show her my disappointment. "I guess not."

  "Though I've thought of ways to do it anonymously," she adds, as she packs away her materials and tools. "You know, on the internet or whatever. I just don't think I could do it myself. If anyone found out it was me..."

  There's so much pain in her voice that my heart squeezes for her. "Well, you don't have to do anything you don't want to do. It's not like it has to define your life."

  "I know." Her soft smile is enough to break me. "If I ever figure out a way to get justice without exposing myself, you'll find out about it, I can guarantee it. Until then, though, I'm just going to live my best life. I can't let what happened take any more of my happiness away from me."

  I can't stop myself from hugging her again before she heads out the door. Once she's gone, I stare at my reflection for a while, tilting my chin this way and that. It really is frightening, almost as if my darkest impulses have been taken out and put on the outside for everyone to see.

  A sound at the door gets my attention. The mail has been delivered. As usual, there's a bunch of stuff for Holly in the pile, but a large, thick envelope sticks out from the rest. It doesn't have any stamps or a return address. Curious, I pull it out from the stack, then freeze.

  If my face weren't already painted white, I'd be turning pale as a ghost right now.


  The envelope has just one word scrawled across the front in messy handwriting: LEGACIES.

  It's addressed to me.

  Chapter 35

  Curiosity killed the cat, and it certainly won't help the revenge-planning anonymous social media blogger. But I can't resist opening the envelope, even as I wonder who it could be from. The lack of postage seems to suggest it came from someone on campus, but I don't know how anybody could possibly suspect me. I've done all my work as Legacies on an incognito tab of my browser, routed through a simple VPN, or on a separate profile on my phone.

  Somehow I must've tipped my hand, though. For all I know, this packet has some kind of nerve agent inside it. I tip the contents of it out onto my bed anyway, careless and endlessly hungry for a scandal to expose.

  It's not poison, though. It's an entire dossier, one that makes my mouth water and my arms tingle with adrenaline and excitement.

  It takes me a while to sort through the papers and photographs. Spreading them out on my comforter, I sit cross-legged in the middle and study them one by one. I feel like some kind of private detective, albeit a half-cocked one with little understanding of what I'm looking at.

  The first piece I manage to figure out is an accident report. It's been scrawled on by a police officer's harried hand. There are two copies of it, though, I discover as I sift through the papers.

  Both are dated July 12th of last year. Both report the same two license plates were involved in the crash. Both have photographs of the cars stapled to the report: a silver Mercedes and an old beaten-up Ford sedan.

  Those are where the similarities end. One report claims the fault of the accident was a drunk driver; the other says that it was a deer in the road. One report says Lawrence Dawson was driving the car; the other says...