Dean motioned toward the screens.

The motionless vid-box had started to play.

I stared at it, my brow furrowed, as student after student—their faces blurred—recounted stories of their own instances of threats or borderline blackmail by Tanner.

There were so damn many.

Dean—how long had he been gathering this?

I looked to him, and it clicked.

This was his true portion of the challenge. He’d said it was a desktop swap, but no. This was so much more dangerous. More so than my blog. A hack he might not have pulled if not for Tanner’s actions against me.

The audience fell stark silent as the video continued to roll. Tanner bolted from his seat, stomping to Griffin at the computer, who held his hands up in innocence. He couldn’t kill the feed. No one but Dean could unless…

Tanner yanked every plug out of the floor sockets, and the screens and audio went dead. He stomped up to the podium, and I barely had a chance to move before he was hovering over me, the purple vein in his forehead throbbing. He held his hand over the mic like the room wasn’t silent enough for them to catch every word.

“Fix this. Fix this now,” he whisper-snapped. “You tell them you faked that audio. That video.”

“I didn’t,” I said with all honesty. “You did this. You.”

He raked his hands through his hair, a growl at me as he turned to face the audience. “This girl is responsible for Ask Me Anything.” He pointed at me. “She’s the one behind it all.”

His words fell on deaf ears. Everyone was glued to their cell phones—no doubt watching the rest of the video.

“The truth is out there,” I said, watching as the board hovered over one person’s phone. Watching. Learning.

“Your truth will be out there,” he said. “You won’t graduate. You won’t get into another school. And after I call the admissions director at MIT and show them who you are, what you’ve done, they’ll never let you in.”

I gaped up at him, ready to spit fire.

“DC,” Dean’s voice filled the space behind me, and I spared him a glance, using his words to calm the acid eating my nerves.

Focusing back on Tanner, I narrowed my gaze.

“Prove it,” I said before spinning on my heels, leaving him there to clean up the mess he’d taken years to create.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Two

Dean

I followed Amber off stage, taking care not to bump into the board members who walked toward Tanner. She stopped once she was out of the room and in the quiet of the hallway.

“Dean,” she said, spinning to face me. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t,” I said. “Just listen. Please.” I was fully prepared to beg.

She popped her lips closed.