Tuesday morning at Ashford Elite Academy started the same way every morning had started for the past week.

With gasps.

Phei stepped out of the sleek black car—one of the fleet Melissa had quietly assigned to him, because apparently being her nephew's secret lover came with transportation benefits that didn't scream I'm banging my aunt—and the reaction was immediate.

A group of sophomore girls near the fountain literally stopped mid-conversation. One of them dropped her iced coffee. The cup hit the ground and exploded across the pavement in a splash of caramel and cream, but she didn't even notice. Just stood there, mouth hanging open, watching him walk like he'd personally invented gravity and was now demonstrating it for free.

He didn't acknowledge them.

Didn't even glance.

Just kept moving toward the main entrance, bag slung over one shoulder, posture straight, stride unhurried. Like he owned the fucking place. Like he'd always owned it and everyone was just now catching up to that reality.

"Holy shit," someone whispered. "Is that—"

"It can't be—"

"But he looks—"

"Fuck."

The whispers followed him like a tide. Heads turned. Conversations died. A junior boy walked directly into a pillar because he was too busy staring, and his friends didn't even laugh—they were staring too.

Dominance Aura working overtime. Charisma 110 turning heads into swivels.

Phei kept walking.

The main hallway was worse. Packed with students grabbing books before first period, the usual chaos of designer bags and expensive shoes and teenagers pretending they weren't all desperately insecure beneath their trust funds.

They parted for him now.

Not dramatically, not like some cheesy movie moment with swelling music and slow-motion hair flips. But subtly. Unconsciously. Bodies shifting aside, creating a path, making room for something their hindbrain recognized as different. As dangerous.

A cluster of Legacy boys—Anderson's crew, Brett notably absent like the coward he was—watched him pass with barely concealed hostility. Their hands twitched. Jaws tight. But none of them moved. None of them said a word.

Weak-willed men experience intimidation and will avoid confrontation with me. The system wasn't lying.

Phei reached his locker—same shitty location it had always been, tucked in the corner near the janitor's closet, because even locker assignments in Paradise were determined by social standing—and spun the combination without hurrying.

He could feel eyes on him. Dozens of them. The weight of attention like heat on his skin.

He didn't care.

Books in. Bag adjusted. Everything he needed for his actual purpose today already secured.

Funny how things changed.

He closed the locker, turned—and nearly walked into Maddie Whitmore.

She'd appeared out of nowhere, oil heiress grin plastered across her face, tits practically spilling out of a uniform blouse that had definitely been tailored three sizes too small on purpose.

"Phei! Hey! Good morning!"

Her voice was pitched higher than normal. Breathier. She was doing that thing girls did when they wanted you to notice them—leaning in slightly, touching her hair, making her body language as inviting as physically possible.

"Maddie." He nodded once, already moving past her.

"Wait—I was wondering if maybe you wanted to—"

"Busy."

He didn't stop walking.

Behind him, he heard her sputter something indignant, probably to whatever friend had been lurking nearby to witness her spontaneous approach. He didn't care enough to listen.

The computer lab was on the second floor, east wing. Not a popular destination—most students preferred the library or the student lounge, places where they could be seen studying rather than actually doing work on Tuesday.

The lab was usually empty this early.

Today was no exception.

Phei pushed through the door and scanned the room quickly. Rows of high-end workstations, each one worth more than a car. Ergonomic chairs that probably cost someone's monthly salary. Floor-to-ceiling windows that let in the grey morning light.

Empty.

Perfect.

He moved through the lab with practiced efficiency, footsteps silent on the carpet, heading toward the back where a nondescript door sat half-hidden behind a rack of servers.

The control room.

Officially, it was for IT maintenance. A place where the school's tech support staff could monitor network traffic, troubleshoot system issues, manage the security cameras that dotted every hallway and classroom.

Unofficially?

It was Phei's kingdom.

He paused at the door, listening. The lab behind him was still empty. The hallway outside was quiet—first period wouldn't start for another twenty minutes, and most students were still in the cafeteria or loitering near the front entrance.

He reached into his pocket and produced a card.

Not his student ID. Something else. Something he'd made himself, months ago, back when he was still learning how far desperation could push a person.

The card was blank white plastic with a chip embedded in one corner. To anyone else, it would look like nothing—a piece of trash, maybe, or a broken gift card. But Phei had spent three weeks reverse-engineering the school's access system, another two building the bypass, and six months refining it until even the security logs wouldn't register an entry.

He pressed the card to the reader.

He pressed the card to the reader.

Beep.

The light flashed green—obedient little slave.

The door clicked open like it was relieved to finally let him in.

The control room was small—maybe ten feet by twelve if that—and packed with equipment that hummed like a hive of very expensive, very judgmental bees who'd sold their souls for stock options.

Three walls of monitors displaying feeds from cameras across the campus—Big Brother's wet dream on a trust-fund budget.

Server racks purring quietly in the corner like satisfied cats who'd just eaten the canary and framed the dog for it.

Phei closed the door behind him and let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

Home sweet home.

Well. One of them. The one where he got to play a god without the pesky commandments.

He'd discovered this room during his sophomore year, back when the Maxton family's "contribution" to Ashford's technology wing had included a private tour for Harold and his actual children. Phei had been dragged along as an afterthought—someone needed to carry the coats, and charity cases were basically unpaid interns with abandonment issues.

He'd noticed things the others hadn't.

Like how the control room's access system was the same model used in three other Paradise buildings—lazy security for lazy rich people.

Like how the IT staff only checked this room once a week—probably hungover from whatever faculty mixer involved single-malt and midlife crises.

Like how the camera feeds were stored locally before being uploaded to a cloud server every seventy-two hours—because nothing says "secure" like giving teenagers three days to delete evidence of their war crimes.

Information is power. That was the first lesson Paradise had taught him—usually while kicking me in nuts and teeth.

The second lesson is that no one watches the watchers.

Idiots. All of them.

Over the following months, Phei had expanded his reach. Slowly. Carefully. Like a virus that knew rushing would get it noticed and nuked. A tiny camera here, hidden in a motion detector that already looked suspicious. A microphone there, tucked behind a trophy case full of awards for "excellence" in nepotism.

Nothing fancy—his equipment budget had been whatever spare change he could scrape together from part-times and scavenging without the Maxtons noticing he'd taken their paperclips.

But effective.

He'd mapped the entire academy.

Every hallway. Every classroom. Every office except the principal's and vice principal's—those had better security than he could bypass with his shitty gear, and the risk-reward wasn't worth it. Yet.

The girls' bathrooms were off-limits too. He wasn't that kind of creep. Had standards, even in his lowest moments—standards like don't become the monsters you hate, just out-monster them ethically.

But everywhere else?

He saw everything.

Every whispered conversation. Every secret meeting. Every alliance formed and broken. Every piece of blackmail material that the so-called elite of Ashford Academy thought was private.

You just had to know where to hide your camera or microphone. Where the place was more suitable for camera or recorder.

This was how he'd known.

Not through strength—he'd had none. Not through social connections—he'd been invisible. But through knowledge. Through knowing that Brett was cheating on his girlfriend with her own best friend. Through knowing that Anderson's father was under federal investigation. Through knowing every dirty secret that these golden children thought was buried six feet under their egos.

He'd never used it. Not directly. The risk was too high, the reward too uncertain—back when he was still playing defense.

Now?

Now knowing was just the appetizer.

Phei settled into the chair—my throne in exile—and began his work.

The monitors flickered as he logged into his private partition—a hidden section of the server that existed in no official documentation, accessible only through a series of commands he'd created like prayers to a very unforgiving god who'd finally started answering.

Data scrolled across the screens. Timestamps. Audio files. Video clips. Everything the academy's cameras had recorded since his last visit.

Last Tuesday.

He'd missed his usual session because of... well. Because he'd been busy not dying. And then busy fucking his aunt. And then busy becoming whatever the hell he was now—a walking revenge fantasy with a side of existential crisis.

A lot happened in a week.

Time to catch up.

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