‘I’m sure you must be mistaken.’ She smiles through gritted teeth. ‘Is that really all the proof you have? That I gained some new followers? I literally called up the Herald to get them to kill the story. I stopped those photos from going viral.’

‘And you did such a good job of doing that in front of everyone.’

A twitch of muscle beside her eye. ‘What exactly are you insinuating?’

‘The Herald was never going to publish the story, were they? Why would a national paper care about photos of a random teenage boy? Sure, he’s got a fair few followers, but this is not national news, Tiffany. Even Daddy wouldn’t do that for you.’

Tiffany doesn’t say anything to that.

‘So you took the photos to a competitor, didn’t you? The trashiest gossip magazine you could find? And then made quite the fuss of publicly demanding that your dad “make it go away”. The perfect alibi, right?’

Tiffany’s smile is so tight it might snap. ‘You really do have quite the active imagination, don’t you?’

‘Oh, without a doubt,’ Kellen says. ‘Vivid, actually. But these emails –’ he reaches into his pocket to pull out his phone – ‘don’t require any imagination whatsoever.’

‘What emails?’ Tiffany’s composure buckles as she glances down at Kellen’s phone.

‘The ones you sent to Blaze first thing this morning. From [email protected], right? We got Chase to break into your account.’

Tiffany swallows hard. ‘That’s a complete invasion of my privacy,’ she bites.

‘Just like leaking someone’s private photos?’ Kellen hits back.

She hesitates for a moment and then her lips curl upwards into a smile.

‘I think you’re forgetting one very important detail,’ she says. ‘Do you really think anyone is going to believe you over me? I’ve got our beloved headmaster right under my thumb. He’d expel you just because I said so. You’re nothing, and you’d do well to remember that. You don’t even pay for your tuition. Who cares if I leaked a few stupid photos? Ethan should be grateful. It’s just like you said – his followers have doubled. I was doing him a favour.’

‘Do you really think he’ll see it that way?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she says, ‘because he’s never going to find out.’

‘Oh, but he is,’ I say. ‘Because, returning to our original point, you’re about to get on that stage and admit to everything you’ve done.’

She snorts at the suggestion. ‘And why the hell would I do that?’

‘Because if you don’t,’ Kellen says, ‘we’re going to leak these emails to everyone.’

And that’s when Tiffany snatches the phone out of his hand.

‘No, wait!’ he says as she drops it to the floor and stamps on it, the tip of her stiletto puncturing the glass screen.