"Good." She closed the distance by half a step. "Let me be very plain, Derek. This is not negotiation. This is instruction. You either hand over your friends on a silver platter, or you watch the entire pack of you become front-page breakfast. And believe me—" Another measured inch forward. "—I would enjoy it. Sources are never in short supply."

"…What exactly do you want?"

"Everything. Every skeleton. Every locked drawer. Every body in the basement. Fuck the devil twice if that's what it takes—I don't care about method. I want evidence. I want proof. I want enough ordnance to reduce Brett and Anderson's entire existences to smoking craters."

Derek's jaw worked like rusted gears. The audible grind of pride being force-fed down a throat already full of bile.

"…Fine. I'll email tomorrow."

"Today."

"What?"

"Not tonight. Today. Or I start dialling."

"FINE."

He stormed toward the car, wrenching the door so hard the hinges screamed, then peeled out of the lot in a shriek of rubber and panic.

Renee watched the taillights vanish. Still smiling.

The video cut to black.

Silence again. Deeper this time. The silence of structural collapse heard from inside the building.

Mark's jaw hung so slack a family of birds could've nested in it.

Jonathan looked like someone had just rewritten physics and told him he'd been falling upward his entire life.

And then—

"Brett and Anderson have a romance?"

"They're shagging?!"

"They're gay?!"

"Bi, possibly—let's not leap to—"

"WHO GIVES A RAT'S ARSE ABOUT THE LABEL, MARK—BRETT CASTELLANO AND ANDERSON ARE BUMMING EACH OTHER!"

"That's what you took from that?!" David hissed, but his grin was wide, feral, gorging itself on their collective brain-melt. "Focus, you pair of absolute weapons-grade idiots!"

"But—but—" Jonathan's hands flailed like malfunctioning semaphores. "They're always with girls! Brett was glued to Victoria Maxton last year! Anderson ran through half the international model circuit!"

"Smoke screen. Classic."

"But—"

"Boys." David's voice cut like a whipcrack. "It is not confirmed. The clip says what it says, but until we have ironclad receipts, you keep that particular detail padlocked behind your teeth. You do not speculate about main-line Legacies without forensic-grade evidence. Understood?"

Frantic nods. Three heads bobbing like they'd been caught in the same nervous tic.

They understood.

They understood that part very well.

"But—" Mark was still latched onto the thread like a dog with a bone. "But what about the rest of it? The 'every crime, every sin' part? What the hell does that even mean?"

"And what did Derek actually do to that girl?"

"Why does Renee want to obliterate them so badly?"

"What the fuck was in those evidence bags?"

David started easing backward from the door, one finger pressed to his lips, motioning them to follow like conspirators in a bad spy film.

"Apparently—"

Inside the classroom.

Pressed flat against the wall as though the sheer gravitational force of what they'd just overheard had slammed them there, Brett Castellano and Anderson Price had gone statue-still.

Mid-kiss.

Lips still locked.

Eyes now wide open—wide wide, the pupils blown to black pools of pure, animal panic, the kind of wide that occurs when your carefully constructed universe implodes in the space of thirty seconds and leaves nothing but vacuum and horror behind.

They had heard everything.

Every syllable.

Every threat.

Every betrayal.

Floating through the door. Just enough. Clear as cathedral bells in the empty room they'd slipped into because they thought it was secure, because they'd triple-checked the hallway, because they'd been so fucking careful for so long—

Derek.

Derek.

Their brother-in-arms. Their confidant. The one who'd covered for them, lied for them, stood shoulder-to-shoulder while they buried this secret deeper than a grave.

Was about to sell them.

Was about to feed their entire lives—the romance, the other things, everything—to the single most lethal journalist Paradise had ever spawned.

All to keep his own miserable hide intact.

Brett's hands trembled violently. He didn't register it. Couldn't. His whole body had gone cold and distant except for the furnace of rage roaring up through his sternum, a scream trapped behind clenched teeth with nowhere to go.

"That—" His voice emerged shredded, barely recognisable as human. "That fucking—"

Anderson's face had run the full spectrum: bone-white shock, scarlet fury, and then something darker, nameless, the colour of promised bloodletting that leaves permanent marks on floors and souls alike.

"TRAITOROUS FUCKING BASTARD!"

The door exploded inward.

They didn't remember deciding to move. Muscles simply obeyed the imperative of violence.

Three hallways away.

Around a blind corner.

Tucked into a shadowed alcove like he'd grown roots there, Phei permitted himself a smile.

Small.

Private.

A smile that, if witnessed, would have triggered an instinctive, atavistic urge to flee in any sentient creature with a functioning survival instinct.

His Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra was already in his palm. He opened messages. Found David's contact. Attached the photo.

Him. Sierra. Maddie. Hands linked, kissing. Stepping into Le Ciel Noir with linked arms was old, so David had asked for a kiss footage which Phei had laughed and refused before Maddie had texted that David will get it.

And here they were.

The flawless, unposed candid David had been drooling over for days—the single, irrefutable piece of ordnance that would enshrine him as the undisputed god-emperor of Ashford gossip for the rest of eternity.

Phei: As promised.

David: 🙏🙏🙏

David: KING

David: Youre a fucking KING

David: I could kiss you rn

David: I wont but I COULD

Phei: Remember our deal. You never saw me. You don't know where the video came from.

David: What video??? I don't know anything about any video??? I simply manifested this scoop through my incredible journalistic instincts and... devastating personal charm???

Phei: Good boy.

David: 🐕

And Derek?

Someone—someone—who might, who definitely would, be willing to broker a deal.

Phei glanced at his watch.

Give it a few seconds.

Perhaps one minute.

Then Derek would come crawling here—either with force or with knees raw, pride in tatters—to the only devil left who could possibly pull him out of the fire he'd helped light.

And Phei?

Phei would be right here.

Waiting.

Smiling.

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