003

Chapter 3

Sienna

It took me exactly two full days to put the final pieces of my revenge plan together. When I finally stepped back and looked at it, I had to admit the whole thing was solid. To put it into motion I stayed behind after the last bell and waited until the halls emptied out. Earlier that afternoon Lucas had texted, asking if we could meet and wondering why I had been so hard to pin down lately. I had not been alone with him once since the day I caught him with Isla, and I could tell the distance was starting to register with him. I doubted Isla could keep him distracted forever.

I replied that I had already left campus and planned to spend the entire evening buried in textbooks. The second the message sent, I slipped out of the library. The building stayed open until ten, but it was only a little past seven. By this hour even the athletes had finished practice and gone home. The main gates locked at eight, and shortly after that the security guards usually finished their final rounds and left for the night.

The plan itself was simple but dangerous. All I had to do was leave a sealed envelope on the athletic coordinator’s desk. Inside were a typed note, a USB drive, and several printed photographs. The note claimed that Lucas Kane had been using recreational drugs and performance-enhancing steroids. The photographs were genuine. They had been taken at a party two months earlier—a party Lucas had dragged me to only a few nights after the coaches stripped him of the captaincy.

That night had started out harmless enough. I had agreed to go because I believed he needed a distraction. He had been crushed by the loss of his title, and I wanted him to blow off some steam. Then the atmosphere shifted. More people kept arriving, older faces I did not recognize, people who clearly did not belong at a high-school gathering. Before the night ended I watched Lucas take drugs with my own eyes. I still remembered standing frozen while some of his teammates casually joked about how he had been ordering steroids to get his edge back on the ice.

I had been drinking that night too—not enough to black out, but enough that the edges of everything felt soft and distant. My phone had been passed around for hours, and when I woke up the next morning I found a string of photos and a short video I wished I had never seen. Lucas and I had a brutal fight afterward. I demanded to know why he was doing that to himself, why he was risking everything he claimed to care about. He insisted he had not known what he was doing. He said he had been drunk, overwhelmed by the disappointment of losing the captaincy, desperate for any escape from the frustration eating him alive. He called it a one-time mistake, a moment of weakness, and swore it would never happen again. He had looked so sincere, so determined. Lucas loved hockey more than anything else in his life. At the time I believed every word.

Then came the steroid rumor. When I confronted him about it he shut the conversation down immediately. He swore it was a lie started by people who wanted to tear him apart. Without proof there was nothing left to argue, and eventually the whole subject faded into the background. Or at least I thought it had.

Luckily I had never deleted the pictures or the video from that night. I went through them carefully and selected the clearest shots—the ones where Lucas’s face was unmistakable. The USB held a short clip of one of the conversations that had taken place at the party. Solid, undeniable evidence. With material like that, Lucas would not simply be questioned. He could be investigated, suspended from the team, or handed whatever punishment the administration decided he deserved.

That was the revenge I had built for him. Clean. Brutal. Final.

I could not risk sending anything digitally. Electronic trails were too easy to follow, and I knew Lucas well enough to know he would hunt down whoever destroyed his future. So I pulled on a dark hoodie, yanked the hood low over my head, and headed toward the school building. The envelope sat safely in my pocket. I had chosen loose trousers and an oversized hoodie on purpose—nothing that would give away my shape or my identity. The more confusion the better. I knew the coordinator would probably keep the source anonymous, but I still did not want a single person guessing who had left the evidence.

Simple. Clean. Untraceable. At least that was the idea. The only thing that mattered was making sure the plan actually worked.

The hallways were almost completely dark, lit only by a few scattered ceiling lights. I had never stayed this late on campus before. The place felt like a different world—empty, silent, almost unsettling. For a moment I barely recognized the corridors I walked every day.

Whenever I passed an area covered by security cameras I pulled a black surgical mask from my pocket and covered the lower half of my face. Then I kept moving. My footsteps echoed as I entered the administrative wing. After a few turns I spotted the athletic coordinator’s desk sitting quiet and empty. My pulse jumped. This was the moment.

I pulled the envelope from my pocket and set it carefully in the center of the desk. Then I turned and walked away as quickly as I could without running. My heart hammered so hard I was certain it would break through my ribs. Adrenaline flooded every vein. I had done it. I had actually done it.

I had almost reached the main hallway when something inside me locked up. I slowed. Then I stopped completely. A heavy, uneasy feeling settled in the pit of my stomach. Was this too far? Now that the envelope was sitting on that desk, the reality of what I had just set in motion hit me differently. Ruining his hockey career. Possibly destroying his entire future. All because he had cheated on me?

Yes, what Lucas had done was disgusting and unforgivable. But was this the kind of punishment I truly wanted? Maybe public humiliation would have been enough. Maybe simply exposing him and Isla together would have been enough. I had wanted revenge, not total destruction. And now that the envelope was out of my hands, it suddenly felt like I had crossed a line I could not take back.

“Shit,” I whispered under my breath. Damn my stupid conscience.

I would come up with something better later—something that hurt without permanently wrecking his life. This plan was not it.

Decision made, I turned around and headed straight back toward the administrative section. But the second I reached the coordinator’s desk my eyes went wide.

The envelope was gone.

Completely gone.

I stared at the empty surface, my stomach dropping straight through the floor.

“What the hell?”

I had placed it there less than a minute ago. Who could have taken it that fast? And more import

antly—

Who else was still inside the building?