Page 34 of Wicked Salvation
I don’t allow myself to think like that anymore.
I’ve put my feelings for Eden into a box, somewhere far inside my—because I don’t have a heart anymore. Just rage. If she wants to choose the path of least resistance, if she wants to play by the school’s rules and follow the suffocating laws that come with building your entire life around unforgiving social hierarchy, I will certainly let her.
My baseball bat and I visited her this morning to give her a taste of what she’s got herself into. But my wrath is hardly quenched. That fucking ring on her finger was just kindling to the fire that’s melded with the infection taking over my body.
I thought I’d buried this part of myself.
But Eden broke down my walls.
She’s the first girl I’ve had sex with in over a year.
And she betrayed me.
I start with the faculty.
They’re responsible for covering up most of the shit that goes on here. Visuals of Vivienne’s funeral pop into my mind, and that’s when I realize that I’m doing this for her too. Somebody killed her, but the school didn’t care enough to investigate.
So I’ll destroy their illusion.
Because there’s one thing I’ve known ever since I was child—it came with belonging to one of the most revered noble houses in history—you don’t need to spill blood to kill faith.All it takes is a well-placed whisper, a thread that when pulled unravels it all, or a simple truth that’s so dark it can’t be explained away.
I begin with Archbishop Bloxham.
There was always something off about him. I could sense it. But it didn’t matter much to me, unlike most of the people here I never saw him as different. Yet when I told my older brothers of my plan, they dropped everything to help me.
They all attended Augustine.
They all hated it here.
When I started the group video call and explained my objective, they both had vital pieces to contribute. Draven, my oldest brother and CEO of some tech startup that I don’t care to know of, was able to find court documents that the school had tried to bury. Thorne, in his final year of study to become a psychiatrist, hadmanyon how to use psychological manipulation tactics to get what I want.
I would’ve been scared if they weren’t my best friends.
I might be the last Augustine-Beaumont from my family to attend this wretched school.
So when Draven sent me a nameless file early this morning—I wasn’t entirely surprised by what I found inside it. Archbishop Bloxham always lingered after choir practice. His hands were always a little too soft on the shoulders of the students he prayed with. I always found him a little too eager to comfort us.
He would always preach sermons about purity.
The ones that act the most holy are usually compensating for something.
And Draven sent me exactly what Arthur Bloxham wanted to hide from the world.
I printed four sets of the file—one for him, one for the headmistress, one for the Dean. Inside them lay typed confessions that had disappeared from the local authorities, photos, transcripts of calls made by boys whose parents the school paid to stay silent and an entire timeline of his crimes. All of the files all had the same demand.
Remove him or this will be leaked to the press.
They were delivered anonymously.
But the fourth file? I’ll be sending it directly to the nation’s largest newspaper—because I know how Augustine likes to do things. They’ll ask him to leave, sending him to retire with a cushy pension plan, funded bymy money.
So when police swarm the campus and haul him away, I watch from the shadows. My first mark has fallen. The scared faces of the nuns, the grim looks on the Dean and headmistress; they’re the perfect entertainment as I spark up my joint.
They have no idea the chaos that’s about to descend on them.
I take a deep puff, leaning against a wall in the front courtyard.
Everyone gives me strange looks, but that’s all they can do. I could piss on the statue of Virgin Mary in front of all the nuns and they wouldn’t be able to do anything but turn their heads and hastily make the sign of the cross.
