X blinks. “Wait, what?”
“Fake date,” she clarifies, waving her hands. “But you need to be my man.”
The way she saysmanin her sharp Hong Kong accent makes Tristan bite his knuckle to keep from laughing. X smirks.
Mindy glares. “Don’t laugh. I need social proof if I’m going to betray the senior girls. Protection.”
X leans back. “Protection I can do. But how do you know they’re clean? Leo grabbed their phones. My dad’s men checked everything. Nothing.”
Mindy nods, totally unsurprised.
“Of course nothing was on their phones,” she says, taking my cigar. “They’re not stupid.”
She inhales, blows out a ring.
“They recorded the slime incident, sure. But they claimed they were filming the king-and-queen announcement. That they didn’t know what was happening. So you can’t get them for cyberbullying.”
Tristan mutters, “Convenient.”
Mindy shrugs. “Believable.”
X nods. “It held up legally.”
“And they paid cash foreverything,” she continues. “The glue. The slime mix. The colored gelatin. All of it.”
She sits forward.
“Bianca had her housekeeper’s cousin’s in-law buy the supplies out of state. Cash only. No cards. No Prime shipping.”
I feel the anger coil low in my stomach.
“They even hired Bianca’s brother’s friend’s frat boy,” Mindy adds, “a Northeastern IT student, to cut the security feed as hazing. Prove he could do something ‘real.’”
X curses under his breath.
Mindy leans back, warming up now.
“They talked through the plan on the beach,” she says. “Phones on the blanket. They walked the shoreline. Nothing recorded. Nothing typed. Nothing traceable.”
X shakes his head. “These girls cover their tracks better than half the adults in this town.”
Mindy smirks sadly. “We all watch the same FBI shows.”
I lean forward.
“Who?” I ask. “Who was the mastermind?”
She doesn’t hesitate.
“Bianca.”
The room freezes.
“Rosalie didn’t stop it,” she adds. “She’s new. She didn’t know where to stand.”
I grind my teeth.
“They’re pissed, Leo,” Mindy says. “All of them. Senior year? You were supposed to be with one ofthem.Not Jade.”
