Kings of Quarantine (Brutal Boys of Everlake Prep #1) - Caroline Peckham ,Susanne Valenti Page 0,153

to my plans either way, but I wanted to hear it from her lips. I wanted more ammo to stoke my hatred of these spoiled, entitled pricks who thought it was alright for them to use people and throw them away like it didn’t matter at all.

“When I went to breakfast after I’d gotten changed in my dorm, he and the other Night Keepers had found out about my dad.” Tatum studied her gloves like she couldn’t bear to look at me as she told this story and my blood heated as I forced myself to listen to it. “They got all of the students to throw fish stew all over me. And Blake also…played the audio of us having sex for everyone to hear…”

I pushed myself to my feet with a snarl of rage, pacing away from her as I threw my gloves into the corner of the room.

“He filmed you without your permission?” I growled. “And he distributed it? He can be prosecuted for that, he could go to juvie, he could-”

“He didn’t distribute it,” she said, looking up at me from her spot on the floor like she was surprised to see how angry I was. “He just cut some of the audio around and played it on loudspeaker to make it sound like I’d known about my dad and the Hades Virus. I guess he’d tricked me into saying certain things he could use for that. No one else has a copy as far as I know.”

“So he didn’t actually video you?” I asked, finding some relief in that at least.

She bit her bottom lip like she didn’t want to say the next part, but I pinned her in my stare until she was forced to speak.

“He did. He just didn’t share the video publicly.” That blush was lighting her up from the inside out and my pulse tumbled over itself as I looked at her. “But he played it for me and Kyan to watch at The Temple-”

I damn near shouted at that admission but I held my tone down a notch. Just. “If he showed someone else a sex tape that you didn’t give permission to-”

“I told him to play it,” she admitted, shaking her head as she looked down at her gloves again. “He was clearly going to anyway and I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of begging him not to. Besides, at this point it seems like one of the less awful things they’ve done to me. And Blake’s on that tape too, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want it getting out into the world any more than I do.” She shrugged and that motion alone was enough to make me see red. I ground my jaw and moved to open the door for her.

“Why don’t you go shower?” I said abruptly. “I’ve just remembered something I should be doing.” Like tracking down Blake Bowman, confiscating his phone, deleting that tape and then smashing the fucking thing for good measure. Maybe smashing his face a bit too. I bet he wouldn’t find it so easy to trick girls into screwing him if his pretty face was all messed up.

Tatum got to her feet and walked towards me with a frown. “I thought we were going to talk about-”

We both looked up as she was interrupted by Headmaster Brown’s voice coming over the tannoy. “Students and staff, this is an urgent message from your headmaster. We have had a confirmed case of Hades Virus amongst the kitchen staff-”

Tatum inhaled sharply at his words and my heart leapt. In amongst all of this lockdown bullshit and the news stories about cases spreading rapidly around the world, I hadn’t even considered it making its way up here. Not to the bubble of boredom, stuck in the middle of nowhere boarding school for the elite. But with that one simple sentence, everything suddenly changed. It was no longer this thing that was happening to other people, but a monster which had made it to our door.

“The staff member in question has been taken to a hospital for treatment and as a precaution, every staff member who came into contact with her has been sent away from the school. Their housing and work areas have been closed and will be thoroughly sanitised. But as a further precaution, we have been advised to isolate every member of this school where you are at this moment in time for forty eight hours starting now.” Tatum’s hand found