Bringing the blackmail cases forward, with over 20 students testifying about what had been happening the whole year, the school had no chance of stopping this go viral. Everyone found out and parents were going to start calling. In order to wrap this up as fast as possible and stop it from escalating further, Zakhar accompanied the principal throughout the investigation with all the evidence. With the records the school had, Zakhar could make the connection they needed to find the blackmailer.

Cora Jensen.

Senior year. Class four. Her parents ran a freight forwarding company and have an exclusive deal with shipping with the school. With a little digging, Cora could manage to get information on the students' orders. She has everything at her disposal.

But then there was the motive.

Zakhar pulled out her file. "I think this is the student." He presented the student file to the principal.

He took the file looking over it. "But you don't have proof."

Zakhar sighed. "I don't, therefore I cannot claim anything. Not only that, we don't have a motive. But this caused an incident that needs to be fixed right away. We cannot waste time investigating. I do have a suggestion."

The principal raised a brow. "Let's hear it."

"Call her to the office. We'll question her today when she's still unprepared and she'll most likely slip and tell us everything."

"I have doubts everything will go that smoothly Zakhar."

"There's one more thing I want to add. Instead of you or me or any teacher doing the interrogation, you let Aleksei Andreev do the questioning. I strongly believe he can find out if she is really the blackmailer or not."

The principal pondered over it a little and then made the decision. "Call them both here. Let's deal with this before parents start calling."

***

Aleksei had a quick rundown from the principal and Zakhar about the student. Everything Lev could find on her was sent to his phone and had a chance to read it on the way there. The girl was waiting in the room for her interrogation.

Before Aleksei had gone into the room, the principal had informed him he had to be present as well. It was always nerve-racking to work with an audience, but it was something he had to deal with now.

He entered the room and sat on a chair opposite Cora.

"Who are you?" She eyed him.

"I'm going to be asking you questions," Aleksei said and leaned his elbows over the table. "The principal did tell you we were questioning students because of the whole blackmail situation."

"I thought teachers were doing the questioning." She moved nervously into her chair.

"Aleksei is part of the school's council." The principal said.

"That's a lie. I know all the student council members."

The principal cleared his throat. "Aleksei and a few other students work for the school secretly. They help us supervise unwanted behavior. It's a system approved by the parents."

Aleksei wanted to laugh. Guess adults can lie too.

"Let's start." Aleksei focused her attention back on him. "This blackmailing thing isn't done on one student. It has hurt a lot of other students therefore I would advise you to answer all questions honestly."

"Fine. Let's get this over with." She leaned back into the chair crossing both her arms and legs in a defensive pose.

Aleksei had asked her all warm-up questions to relax her. He circled around the topic and then he decided to hit her with his evidence.

"Do you know this student?" He pulled out his phone and showed her a picture of a female student.

"I might have seen her around the school."

Aleksei nodded. "What about this one?" He showed her another picture.

Cora just raised her shoulders.

"These two students based on all our information were among the first ones to get blackmailed this year. They have gotten blackmailing messages about personal things in their life after receiving packages from the delivery service. This was a reoccurring matter between all the students. "

"Doesn't mean anything to me."

"What sort of business are your parents in?" Aleksei asked.

She flinched.

Aleksei pressed on further. " Don't they have a contract with the school to take care of all shipments for the students in the school?"

"I don't think you understand how this business works."

"I do understand that the business your parents run is huge. From air freight to freight shipments. They specifically made a contract with the school as many of the students in the school have their cars shipped here from their country origins and so on, and to minimize the damage of goods every shipment, even if it's as small as a phone, is done through your parents' company.

The privacy of the items is guaranteed by the company so they will deliver them to the exact villa if they have to. That gives your parents good connections with all the people who send their children to school here."

"Great. So you understand basics and did a little digging. ." She smiled coldly. "What's your point?"

"I'm saying you had every opportunity to take a look at their system and check every order received. Taking It a little further I'm sure you can find out a lot more things about the students. Then using this you took advantage of their privacy and blackmailed them."

She leaned back into the chair glaring at him. "You have some nerve accusing me."

"Then go on." Aleksei leaned his head over his hands. "Give me your best excuse. Explain to me how I'm wrong."

Her heart had started beating nervously. Her eyes watered as she stared at him with disdain."I can just get up and leave."

"You can. But I don't think you want to." Aleksei placed his hands down and finally faced her with a serious look. "You finally have everyone's attention on you. Why would you walk away right?"

She stayed quiet in her chair. The tears she held in her eyes were burning in the corners, wanting to spill out of her eyes, but she had held them in proudly.

Aleksei lowered his voice. "You were right before. I did some digging before this. You don't have many friends. Not one student could for sure say anything about you. Not even your roommates. You were completely shut out by others. And with all that time on your hands, you found yourself a cruel hobby. Did the people you blackmailed hurt you and this was revenge?"

He observed her reaction and then sighed. "I guess not. But you hated them for something. I don't think you're just a sociopath wanting to hurt people. You had a reason why and this wasn't about the money."

"They deserved it." She said through gritted teeth.

He nodded his head. "Tell me. Why did they deserve it?"

She was back to being silent again. She wiped her cheek from a tear that escaped her eye.

Aleksei paused but didn't remove his eyes from her. "It doesn't matter why now, does it. But it felt good to you. You did it once and succeeded in it. I bet feeling powerful that you could cause fear in someone and get them to do your bidding was good. It made you feel in control, something that is constantly lacking in your life. And then you had to do it again to get more of that feeling. Over and over to a new person. Every time with a new excuse of why they deserved it."

"They did deserve it." She slammed her hand on the table. "And I never hurt someone who didn't deserve it."

"What about Nikita? How did he deserve it?"

"He would laugh and flirt with all the girls when in reality he had no interest in them. He led them on, then rejected them when in reality they never had a chance."

"Did he do it to you?"

She was thrown off by the question.

Aleksei got up and repeated the question. "Did he do it to you?"

"No but.."

He slammed his hand on the table. "Then what makes you think you have the right to judge? Who do you think you are? God? Nothing you say can excuse your actions. So who is going to judge you? Hm?"

The principal stepped forward. "Aleksei.."

Aleksei raised his hand stopping him, his eyes glued on Cora. "Let me change that. If you don't have responsibility for your own actions and a shred of self-awareness then what makes you better than them? And I will ask you again Cora. Who will judge you?"

Her tears finally slid down her face.

"I will take it from here." The principal walked Aleksei out the door and closed the door behind him.

***

Back at the villa, Aleksei went back and told everyone what had happened and why she had done it.

"I thought the blackmailer was going to be some mastermind or someone evil without any remorse for their actions, but I never expected it to be a girl who was just taking out her powerlessness over others," Nikita said.

Tai shook her head. "People who feel like victims for too long eventually become the villain."

Zakhar tapped Aleksei's back. "Good job. I know it wasn't easy."

Lev nodded in agreement.

"Thanks." Aleksei grinned.

"Now that it's over, you can go back to dating." Zakhar nudged him and glanced at Tai. "I think you owe her a botanic date."

"How does the day after tomorrow sound?" Aleksei smiled at Tai. "I think after all this drama, we need to have some fun."

"I would like that." Tai smiled. "Should we celebrate all together now?"

Zakhar was already making his way out the door. "I'm going to Arya's place. Don't wait up."

Nikita cleared his throat. "I can't either. We're going on a date."

Tai snapped her head in surprise. She glanced at Nikita and then Lev. "First date?"

"Officially.." Nikita smiled awkwardly.

Tai gasped. There was more to this story. How much did these two have developments while she was dealing with her problems?

"I will tell you later I promise," Nikita whispered.

"Ehee you're not getting away with it." Aleksei put a hand around Tai. "Right? We're crashing their date."

Tai grinned. "Double date sounds fun. We need to get those details out of them."

Lev took a step back and grabbed Nikita. "We're making a run for it."

"After them!" Aleksei yelled and grabbed Tai's hand, running after them.

Continue forward..One more chapter is uploaded today 💖✌🏻