Page 249 of Depraved Boys

The headmistress beckoned me over and gestured at the phone.

I picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Miss Evergreen,” said a smooth, cultured voice. “I trust that Geraldine spoke with you today.”

My stomach dropped, and my heart tried to gallop out of my chest. Mr. Byrd! “What do you want?”

“Is that any way to speak to a school governor?”

Now he sounded like his partner in perversion, Miss Claymore. I slowed my breathing in an attempt to calm myself and waited for him to speak.

“Retract your statement,” he said. “More people are being hurt than you realize.”

My stomach hardened with indignation. If social services took away his daughter and his wife had walked out on him in disgust, this was his doing, not mine. Not to mention what he did to Bianca. Nausea swirled in the back of my throat as I considered how far he would be prepared to go to silence me.

Miss Claymore only wanted me dead because I stood in the way of her and a boy who she knew never loved her. Mr. Byrd stood to lose his family, his firm, and his freedom. Right now, he was probably the most pressing threat, considering how much was at stake.

An impatient huff sounded from the direction of Mrs. Benazir, which got me clenching my jaw with annoyance. “You want me to lie to the police about what I saw? Don’t crimes like that carry heavy sentences?”

His angry breaths reverberated through the receiver, making a thousand imaginary centipedes crawl over my flesh. This entire conversation was futile, and it was time to hang up.

“I have something of yours,” he said.

“That’s doubtful,” I spat.

His low chuckle made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “I went to great lengths to fetch it, or rather fetch—”

With a silent ‘fuck you,’ I hung up. He could play games with someone else. My only irreplaceable possession was Mom and Dad’s house. Now that Ashley had signed her share over to me for a hundred and fifty thousand pounds, no one could take it away.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

I spent the rest of the day with Cormac, getting the software to cycle through foreign language dictionaries to identify the mistranslated words in the diary. We reached a passage that said:

Is it strange to love and hate the same person? That’s how I feel about el Sol. When he answers a calculus problem, I can only admire him, but when he sits with el Moreno, el Rubio, and las Perras, I hate him so much. It’s like he’s living a double life, torn between loving me and standing by those who mock me.

Cormac ran a hand through his hair and blew out a breath. “But she dumped Kashaayah weeks before that.”

I scrolled back up the diary entries and pointed out a passage I had skimmed earlier. “That’s because Bianca told her Prakash was planning to parade her through the hallways dressed as a pig.”

He frowned. “I skimmed over that.”

Because Cormac was too busy looking for incriminating evidence against the kings. Biting my lip, I glanced away. Right now, we were both on opposite sides. I wanted the diary to prove Prakash’s innocence, while Cormac wanted to prove his guilt.

We scrolled back down to another entry:

He’s fallen for it. We’re meeting in his room tonight for one last time. It’s going to be even more delicious because of what I’ve planned. By the time I’ve finished with him, he will regret ever having toyed with my heart. He will never forget the name Gibbons. And neither will el Moreno or el Rubio. Both of them are as bad as him, and both of them will regret their association with el Sol.

Triumph surged through my chest. It expressed a similar sentiment to the passage Ashley had translated and proved Prakash’s innocence.

Cormac placed the computer on my lap and stood. He turned with his back to me and rubbed a hand over his mouth.

I glanced up. “Are you alright?”

He shook his head. “This makes for hard reading. Last year, when she came crying to me about what they’d done to her, I believed every word.”

A lump formed in my throat. I wouldn’t ever want to read through Ashley’s private thoughts, and I couldn’t imagine how painful it was for Cormac to dredge up Corrine’s. “That’s what big brothers do, isn’t it?”

Cormac nodded and sat at my side while I scrolled down to an entry describing Prakash’s ‘sweet and masterful lovemaking.’ Clenching my teeth, I read through an accurate description of what he was like in bed. Cormac’s nostrils flared, and he clenched his fists as he read. Normally, I would have skipped over such a personal account, but I really needed Cormac to understand that Prakash had not hurt Corrine beyond starting a relationship under false pretenses.