All Chapters of Sweetest Revenge: Chapter 1 - Chapter 7

By the time lunch rolls around, I already know two things about Blackridge Academy.One: the food here looks like it belongs in a five-star restaurant, not a school cafeteria.Two: everyone knows exactly where they stand—and more importantly, where everyone else does.The cafeteria is less a room and more a stage. Glossy floors, round tables, walls of glass overlooking manicured lawns that make the whole place feel like a resort. And the students? They’re the actors, walking into their parts without needing scripts.I pause just inside the doors, tray balanced in my hands, and let my eyes sweep across the room. The seating chart isn’t written down anywhere, but it might as well be engraved in stone.In the center sits the crown jewel: a long table where the most polished students laugh too loudly, toss their hair too perfectly, and check their phones with the kind of careless entitlement that comes from knowing your last name could buy someone else’s future.The Blackridge Elite.That

The library at Blackridge is too quiet. Not the hushed, scholarly quiet you’d expect, but the kind that presses on your eardrums, reminding you that you don’t belong. Even the fluorescent lights hum in disapproval.I don’t come here for books. I come here because rumors say Blackridge’s archives go back decades—records of students, files, disciplinary notes, even police reports tied to “incidents” that happened on campus. The kind of things most schools would burn. Blackridge hoards.It takes three wrong turns and one awkward encounter with a librarian who clearly doesn’t want me here before I find it: a door tucked behind rows of leather-bound yearbooks. “Archives” stenciled in peeling gold paint. My heart kicks against my ribs.I glance over my shoulder. Empty hallway. No cameras, at least none I can see.The knob is stiff, but it turns.Inside, the air smells like dust and ink. Shelves sag with old boxes, stacked haphazardly, labels curling at the edges. Some marked by year, others

The Langstons don't throw parties. They host kingdoms.At least that's what it feels like when I step through the arched stone entryway of the Whitmore estate, one of the sprawling mansions perched just outside town where the Blackridge elite gather to gorge themselves on excess. Music thunders through the walls, bass rattling the polished floors. Every chandelier drips crystal light across velvet curtains and marble staircases. The air smells like money and champagne and the faint trace of something burning.I don't belong here. Which, apparently, is exactly why Liam insisted I come."It's practically mandatory," he'd said earlier that day, bouncing on his sneakers while I frowned at my locker. "Everyone goes. Even the ghosts.""Lucky for me, I'm not a fan of crowded rooms and overpriced cologne."But he'd given me that pleading look—the one I hadn't known he was capable of—and I caved. Because disappearing on party night would have been just as suspicious as showing up.Now I weave