by Bella King
I knew the truth now, though. She would often drive intoxicated, and Austin didn’t like that. I understood why they weren’t together anymore. I wouldn’t have tolerated that either.
“You have some issues, Brittany, but you need to realize that you don’t own Austin,” I said, backing all the way up to the window.
“Fat chance, slut,” she shrieked. “You’re not getting away with this.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to fight with you.”
“Then drop out,” she snarled, stepping closer.
“No,” I said defiantly. Nobody was going to bully me into quitting school. I had already made up my mind for good. Brittany, Austin, Aunt Martha – they didn’t matter more than school did. I was going to get my degree, whether they liked it or not.
“I’m going to make you drop out, bitch,” Brittany said, coming even closed with a fist balled up and pulled back, ready to swing.
“I’m going to call the police this time,” I said, pulling out my phone.
I was too late.
Brittany came down on me with a rain of fists, beating me back into the window. I bounced off, rolling onto the ground with a loud yelp. She climbed onto me, pulling my hair and yelling obscenities into my ear as I struggled to kick her off. She was stronger than she looked, and her rage was only making it worse for me.
“Drop out, drop out, drop out,” she chanted with insanity leaking into her voice as she punched and smacked me as hard as she could.
I blocked my head with my arms to keep my brains from being pummeled out of my skull and tried to roll over to buck her off. No luck. I was trapped beneath her.
“What’s going on in there?” I heard a muffled voice yell through the door to the room. I recognized it as Austin’s.
“Help!” I yelled, throwing an elbow towards Brittany’s face, hoping to knock her back. I made impact with her jaw as the door rattled.
Austin couldn’t get in to save me because it was locked. I had to fight Brittany on my own or succumb to her fury.
The blow to Brittany’s chin made her fall back, giving me just enough time to slip out from beneath her and jump onto my bed. I could have tried to run for the door, but she was already standing by the time I thought to do so. Instead, I leaped from the bed, tackling her into the wall.
Her back slammed against the plaster, breaking through part of it in a dusty crunch. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to deter her from fighting me. Her fist met with my face with heavy force, toppling me over onto the ground.
The pain was sharp and tight like my face was already beginning to swell with blood. I would have a black eye for sure. I didn’t get up in time to prevent Brittany for coming for me again. She threw a kick into my rips as I lay vulnerable, coddling my eye.
Suddenly, the door burst open, and Austin charged inside. I didn’t see what happened, but I heard a shriek as his solid body made contact with Brittany, hurling her away from me like a football player tackling the opposition. He had managed to get into my room without the key for a second time. I suppose he knew how to pick locks.
I crawled to my feet, still holding the place where Brittany’s knuckles had made contact with my face. I scrambled for my phone to call the police. Committing assault while out on bail was certain to get Brittany put in jail at the very least. Hopefully, I would never see her at East Bridge University again.
Just like that, the day was saved. I had tried to fend Brittany off by myself, but Austin was the real hero here. He had more than redeemed himself for the misery he had once caused. As I spoke to the police department over the phone, he kept Brittany in a tight hold, not allowing her to escape. Security footage from the hallway would be enough to prove that Brittany had been the aggressor.
All this, and school hadn’t even started yet.
Chapter 22
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Austin said with a goofy grin, holding his phone screen to his chest.
I laughed. “I haven’t even seen my scores yet.”
“I bet you that I did better,” he said.
“No way. I always get As,” I replied, but I was nervous that I would have a B in that one class that always threw me for a loop. I guess there was only one way to find out.
Austin and I were sitting on his bed together after having slaved away the entire semester to see who could score higher on their final exams. I was used to being the one who knocked everyone out of the park, but Austin was clever. He was notorious for getting perfect scores on his exams.
Austin smoother his hair back with a large hand. It was starting to get longer and unruly, but I liked it that way. It was more difficult for him to keep up his perfect image during finals week. He let it slip just the tiniest bit, and I found it ridiculously sexy.
“Show me,” I said, pointing to his phone.
“You first,” he replied.
I picked up my phone and rolled my eyes. I hadn’t even checked the website even though I knew that my grades had been posted. I had received an email about it, but I had been too afraid to check them. I would be crushed by a B, as unreasonable as that was.
“Come on,” Austin said, bouncing on the bed with his legs crossed.
“I’m checking, hold on,” I said, waving a hand for him to calm down.
He raised an eyebrow at me but relaxed a little so that I could check my phone.
I typed in the webpage to the phone’s browser, waiting for it to be completely loaded before scrolling down to my scores. My eyes widened, and I felt a rush as I saw them. “Straight As!” I announced, shoving the phone toward Austin’s face.
“Fuck,” he said, turning his phone to me. He had all A’s, except one of them was an A-.
“Aww,” I said, pouting at him playfully. “I beat you.”
He pushed my phone away. “Yeah, it’s basically the same. This school is stupid for giving A minuses. Other schools don’t do that.”
“You would have gotten a B then,” I teased.
“No, that was totally an A,” he said, shaking his head.
I laughed. “Alright, we’re both honor students anyway.”
“For now. We’ll see how you fair next semester,” he replied, putting down his phone.
“Probably better than you,” I said, continuing to drive in the point that I had marginally better grades than he did. I had to be careful with that, though, because he would be rubbing it in majorly next semester if I didn’t beat him again.
“You better watch your little mouth,” he said playfully, grabbing my face in his large hand.
I was like a fish with my cheeks squeezed in his grip. He kissed my lips like that, a way that he enjoyed doing since we had started dating and let go of my face. I kissed him back, more passionately this time, and we fell over in the bed together.
We were just about to go for a roll in the sheets when there was a knock on the door. God, who could it be now?
I jumped up from the bed and went to the door, leaving Austin lying on his side, watching my hips swing as I walked. I opened the door and was greeted by my Aunt Martha.
“Hey Jane,” she said, a smile on her face. “I heard you’re all finished with your exams.”
“Oh yeah, Austin and I were just checking our grades,” I said, motioning back toward Austin as he scrambled to sit up straight on the bed.
My aunt peeked over to him and smiled knowingly. “Well, I don’t want to bother you two. I was just curious to know how you did.”
“Straight As,” I said, beaming.
“Just like your mother,” she said with a warm smile.
Ever since I had convinced her to come to East Bridge to work, she has been so much happier. She had been stuck in our old town for so long that she had forgotten what living well truly meant. She wouldn’t find happiness back home, but she was finding it here, and I was overjoyed to see it.
My Aunt Martha and I had a tough relationship, to begin with, but every relationship had growing pains. Once we worked o
ut a plan that would make us both happy, things improved drastically. It also proved that Austin was on my side since he had orchestrated the entire thing. I couldn’t thank him enough for that.
“Do you want to go out to dinner tonight and celebrate?” I asked my aunt, looking back at Austin to see his reaction.
He smiled and nodded.
“I was going to ask you something similar,” my aunt replied.
“Let’s do it then,” I said.
“Okay, how does seven sound?”
“Perfect,” I said, knowing that Austin and I had nothing to do for a while before classes started again.
“I’ll see you then. Have fun,” my aunt said with a bright smile.
“Okay, I’ll see you,” I said.
She walked off down the hall toward the golden elevator, and I closed the door.
“Have fun?” Austin asked, looking at his silver wristwatch. “I think we have time for that.”
I laughed, skipping toward the bed playfully. “What kind of fun did you have in mind?”
“The kind with your legs back behind your head,” he said smoothly, licking his lips.
I was way ahead of him, already pulling down my black skirt. We had to celebrate our achievements together, and I couldn’t think of any better way.
The End.
Broken Rich Girl
A Dark Academy Bully Romance
Introduction
Darkness broke into my life like a thousand spiders hatching beneath the floors,
Crawling out into the night to surround me while I slept.
I woke up to a nightmare, unable to fall back asleep.
This was my new reality.
Cold, careless, crude… and deadly.
And then there was Trent.
Someone should have warned me about finding the man of my dreams at a boarding school for criminals.
I was broken, so he was able to sneak through the cracks like poisonous smoke.
There was nothing I could do.
There was no hope.
And then, my best friend took her own life.
Maybe I was next.
The knife in my hand was starting to look good against my wrists.
The hands on my neck were starting to arouse me.
I wanted to fall,
And that’s what happened.
Eight months in the county jail or a year at Bayside Academy.
I should have chosen jail.
Three months into school at Bayside, the only friend I had made there killed herself. They found her body lying in a crumpled heap with her legs bent at odd angles from the fall. She jumped off the school building and fell to her death. Some say she was pushed.
I didn’t know what to believe, but I wouldn’t have been surprised by either scenario. Bayside drives people insane. The students here hardly ever get a moment of peace because the school is run by a vicious group of boys that called themselves the Killers.
It was a stupid name, in my opinion, and I refused to refer to them as such. I knew the names of a few of them, but I knew nearly everything about the leader of the group. His name was Trent, and he was the worst of the worst at Bayside Academy.
Normally, I would have stayed far away from a man like Trent, but he didn’t allow me to. He sought me out, watched me, confronted me in the halls after class, and made damn well sure that I knew he was always close by.
Trent. What a douchebag. He was gorgeous, but I didn’t let that cloud my judgment. Bright blue eyes, disheveled brown hair, and a square jaw weren’t enough to make me swoon. I wasn’t into guys like that. I liked them proper and put together, or at least that’s what I told myself. Trent was anything but proper.
Bayside didn’t have a uniform code, but that didn’t stop me from looking nice. Trent, on the other hand, wore a white t-shirt and ripped blue jeans almost exclusively every day. There was a southern vibe to the way he handled himself, but he didn’t have an accent. I was always curious about where he was from, but I didn’t want to ask. I gave him the silent treatment as much as I could.
Trent was a thug like the rest of the guys here. Even the women were nasty, but Trent was a bad piece of work. I was surprised that someone like him even ended up at Bayside, considering that most of the students here were in for much lesser crimes.
Bayside was built on thieves, gangsters, and various other young adult delinquents who couldn’t conform to regular society yet. The school was made to correct their behavior, but we all know what happens when a bunch of criminals get thrown into the same place together – Chaos erupts, and people go from bad to worse.
Was I a delinquent? No, and that’s why I became such a huge target for Trent and his gang. I was at Bayside because I was trying to help my father. I hadn’t realized that the reason my family was so rich was that he was part of the mafia. Half of the time, I was used as a drug mule without even knowing it.
On the occasion that I got in trouble for it, he had packed my bags full of drugs and sent me across the country to visit one of my many uncles for the weekend. As it turned out, the man I was sent to visit wasn’t my uncle. He also wasn’t the contact that my father believed him to be. It was an undercover federal agent, and I got busted with a few pounds of schedule one narcotics.
Imagine my surprise when I walked into the house, and there were guns pointed at me from all directions. What was supposed to be a nice weekend turned into a nightmare that I had yet to wake up from. My father ended up in prison with a hefty sentence of thirty years, and I was given a choice between one year at Bayside Academy and eight months in jail. I made the wrong choice.
I had grown up in wealth, which set me far apart from the other students at the school. I didn’t rub it in or boast about it, though. I kept my pretty mouth shut and pretended to be like everyone else. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to hide a proper education and an entitled upbringing. It quickly became known around the school that I was the rich girl, and that’s where the trouble began.
Chapter 1
“Fuck off, you little punk,” Trent said, shoving another student in the hallway with excessive force.
The student who he had shoved landed on his ass and slid across the smooth linoleum floor like a hockey puck on the ice. He scrambled up to his feet and fled the scene as soon as he came to a stop at another person’s feet.
Trent grinned, dusting off his hands like he had just disposed of some garbage into the trash bin. Then, he turned to me. “As I was saying, you look like you need my protection.”
He was trying to coerce me into paying for his gang’s protection, using an innocent guy who had been minding his own business just a few feet away from us as an example of what he could do to a threat. It was disgusting behavior, and I wasn’t going to play along with it.
“I don’t need your protection, Trent. If anything, I need to be protected from you,” I said, crossing my arms.
Trent stood on his toes and peeked at my cleavage, smirking as though I were showing it to him on purpose.
I uncrossed my arms and groaned. “Can you just leave me alone?” I asked.
“Sorry, but that’s how the Killers operate,” he replied coolly.
The Killers. I couldn’t think of a more inaccurate name. I doubted any of them had killed a person before. They were a bunch of small-time criminals, extorting students, and harassing women like me. I hated Trent and his whole gang.
“Come on, I know you have the money for it, rich girl,” Trent continued, taking on a tone of mockery. He assumed that because I was born into wealth that I still had it.
News flash – my father was in prison, and the money was all gone. I was dead broke.
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not rich,” I insisted, trying to maintain the façade of being like everyone else. It was technically the truth now, but nobody was going to believe it.
“You are rich, Samantha, and I want a piece of it. It’ll be worth it for my services,” he insisted.
“Even if I had mone
y, I wouldn’t give it to you,” I retorted, turning my shoulder to him.
Trent bit his lip, his mind working out a clever response. He would have looked sexy as all hell like that if he weren’t such an asshole. I could see him out of the corner of my eye, but I didn’t look at him directly.
“You know, your little friend, Emily, would have benefited from my protection. It’s a shame what happened to her,” he said, the words flowing out of his mouth like a foul poison.
That was a low blow, and he knew it. I was still devastated from Emily’s suicide, and Trent had hopped onto the rumor that she had been killed in hopes to profit from it. Using her death to get money from people was sickening and made me hate him even more.
I wanted to punch him in the gut, but I knew my hand would probably just bounce off his abs. The man was built like a demigod, and he must have wasted half his life in the gym to get that way. It was no wonder he was so stupid.
“Don’t you dare talk about Emily,” I said, trying to control my anger.
Trent shrugged. “I’m just telling it like it is. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
I shook my head. “You’re pathetic.”
“Emily was pathetic, actually,” Trent said, making matters worse. “She could have been strong with the Killers’ protection, but she didn’t want it either.”
I was done listening to his nonsense. I didn’t even know why I had given him my time in the first place after he had pushed that student down the hall. Trent was a monster and nothing more.
I turned around and charged in the opposite direction of him. He had been blocking my way to my next class, but I knew another way to get there. Thankfully, the school was just a giant loop, and I could get around anyone if I needed to. I learned that during my first week when I had to maneuver around a fight that was taking up the entire hallway.
Bayside Academy was a special kind of crazy, and I was still getting used to it. I had never had to cope with the kind of people I was meeting here. I was used to straight-A students with wealthy parents who gossiped about the neighbor’s car even though it was worth half a million dollars. At the time, I had thought that was petty, but I would go back to it in a heartbeat after seeing the types of things that happened at Bayside Academy.
