Page 119 of Depraved Boys

“I have a meeting next week with Mrs. Benazir and Bianca’s father.”

Cormac didn’t reply, so I raised my head to see his reaction. His face slackened, and all the color drained from his cheeks. My stomach muscles tightened. I had already dreaded meeting Mr. Byrd, but Cormac’s reaction made me think he knew something dangerous about the man.

“What’s wrong?” I whispered.

Cormac backed into the wall and clasped his chin. “You know he’s the managing partner of—”

“Byrd and Byrd, the international law firm?” Saying the words made my stomach roil.

“Did Mrs. Benazir tell you what he wanted?”

Slumping further in my seat, I sank into the wave of hopelessness drowning my spirits. It wasn’t difficult to imagine a male version of Bianca pounding me into intellectual mincemeat.

With no willing witnesses or proof that I hadn’t forced alcohol down my own throat at the initiation, I expected that an intelligent lawyer might get the Crown Prosecution Service to drop the case.

“No.” The word came out an elongated groan.

“What do you think it’s about?” Cormac crossed the room and crouched at my side. He balanced one hand on the edge of the desk and the other on the back of my desk chair.

I gazed down into his concerned eyes. “Bianca approached me the other day, furious that she had to give the police genetic samples. When she couldn’t convince me to drop the case, she offered to tell me who had tried to kill me.”

His brows drew together. “If anyone tried to kill you, it was her.” His gaze flickered to Ashley’s empty bed. “Or…”

A shudder ran down my spine. “Not even Ashley could be that wicked.”

Cormac broke eye contact. Probably because he didn’t have the heart to tell me he thought I was being optimistically naive. “What did Bianca say exactly?”

I shook my head. “I don’t want to repeat it.”

“What?” He pulled himself to his feet and placed a hand on my shoulder. “If it was something dangerous, you need to tell—”

“I-it wasn’t,” I blurted. “And I told her it was out of the question.”

Cormac stared down into my eyes, silently urging me to continue.

I ran a hand over my brow. “She wanted me to play the pull-a-pig game with you as the victim.”

His face twisted into a rictus of rage, and his nostrils flared.

My heart galloped a panicked beat, and I scrambled to my feet. “I refused to do—”

“No.” He raised a hand. “I’m not blaming you. Just… shocked that she’d go so far.”

“I don’t know why. Bianca is capable of anything.”

He gave his head one of those shakes a dog would make when they’d just come out of the water. All the anger disappeared, and his face softened back into its usual pleasant expression. “You’re right. I came to ask if you were thirsty.”

“I’ll make you a cuppa.”

He grinned. “I wasn’t trying to trick you into making the tea.”

“Come on.” I looped my arm through his. “Let’s go upstairs.”

The scholars’ common room was only a quarter-full, with a few first years crowded around a third-year girl with pink glasses playing chess in the corner against a boy in our year. The girl was some kind of prodigy. I longed to watch the game, but I hadn’t spent much time with Cormac since the auburn-haired twins had made those snide comments about us needing to kiss each other.

Cormac reached the counter at the end of the room and hovered his hands over the two boxes of tea. “Earl Grey or English breakfast?”

“I’ll make it.” I reached for the box of English breakfast, which he preferred, and placed a teabag in two clean mugs.