Chapter 37
Lina's POV
The next afternoon.
I didn't attend the last class and requested leave from the teacher in advance.
After the Blair incident, the teachers' attitudes toward me had all changed. When I proactively requested leave, they didn't even ask for a reason and gave me the green light all the way.
I stood in front of a bakery across from the medical office building on Madison Avenue, holding a cup of hot chocolate in my hand—this wasn't for drinking, it was a prop.
A girl in school uniform holding hot chocolate standing on the street would look like she was waiting for family and wouldn't arouse any suspicion.
At four-twelve, a dark gray BMW drove toward the building's underground parking garage.
I recognized that blonde head in the passenger seat—Blair. The driver was a middle-aged woman, probably her mother.
After their car entered the parking garage, I crossed the street, entered the building through the back door, and walked up the fire escape toward the twelfth floor.
The fire escape was very quiet, with only the hum of ventilation ducts and the mechanical sounds of distant elevators running.
I pulled my scarf up higher and confirmed the folding knife was in my pocket—I wouldn't use the knife today, carrying it was just habit.
A knife is an assassin's talisman. Even without drawing it, its weight pressing in my pocket made me feel safe.
At that moment, the sound of high heels stepping on marble flooring came from outside the fire escape door—two sets of footsteps, one heavy, one light.
The heavier one had shorter strides and a slightly faster pace—Blair's mother. The lighter one had longer strides and a slower pace, with higher heels—Blair.
I pushed open the fire escape door and silently entered the waiting area of the elevator lobby from behind.
The elevator hadn't arrived yet. The digital panel showed the elevator stopped on the first floor, slowly ascending.
Blair was looking down at her phone. Her mother stood beside her carrying a white medical bag, probably containing follow-up examination reports.
Both of them had their backs to me, completely unaware of my presence.
"Blair."
Her name slid out from above my scarf. Though my voice was small, in this enclosed elevator lobby it seemed particularly loud.
Blair and her mother turned around at the same time.
Her mother's reaction was one of instinctive confusion—a strange girl standing at the fire escape door calling out her daughter's name. Was she her daughter's classmate?
Blair's reaction was completely different. She immediately recognized my voice. On that face that hadn't completely healed from its bruises, disbelief appeared first, then anger, followed immediately by fear.
"You—how are you here—"
"Mom, you should—" Blair turned to her mother, her lips trembling. "You should go to the restroom first, I—"
"No need to go to the restroom." I interrupted her, taking two steps forward, always maintaining a neither close nor distant distance. "Mrs. Winston, please rest assured, I won't do anything. I'm just here to have a talk with your daughter. After we're done talking, you can continue waiting for the elevator, continue going home, continue living your lives."
"You, who are you? Why are you looking for Blair?" Mrs. Winston clearly noticed something was wrong between Blair and me, and instinctively pulled Blair behind her.
This instinctive action earned this mother some slight respect from me.
"I'm someone your daughter bullied at school," I said. "To be precise, continuously bullied, someone she wouldn't stop bothering even after being expelled."
Mrs. Winston's expression changed.
She turned to glance at Blair, that look mixing "you've caused trouble again" impatience with "will this person hurt us" fear.
She didn't understand the full story. Maybe Marcus hadn't told her the whole truth, maybe Blair had cried and made a scene at home, painting herself as the victim.
But regardless, at this moment she felt fear facing a girl in a school uniform.
"You—what do you want to talk about?" Blair's voice rose half a pitch.
Mrs. Winston was still blocking Blair, but I could see from her eyes that she was beginning to hesitate.
Logically she should unconditionally believe her own daughter, but she wasn't unaware of her daughter's character, and she also knew about her daughter's recent expulsion...
"Mrs. Winston," I smiled slightly, interrupting her internal struggle. "I only need five minutes to talk with your daughter alone. I guarantee nothing will happen to her. I just want her to tell me some things face to face, that's all."
Mrs. Winston hesitated for a moment, then walked toward the elevator. Before leaving, she glared at Blair. "Hurry up and resolve this!"
Blair instinctively moved to follow Mrs. Winston, but I stepped forward to block her path. She tried to retreat, but the wall behind her stopped her.
I glanced at the ascending elevator—the digital panel jumped to 6. There wasn't much time left. I had to finish speaking before the elevator reached the twelfth floor.
"Blair," I said, "I'm only asking once. Who made you come back to school? Besides your father, who's helping you behind the scenes?"
Blair didn't speak. Her lips were trembling, and that fearless smugness in her eyes had completely disappeared, replaced by fear—the fear of facing someone she couldn't deal with using money and power.
"Not talking?" I took a step forward.
Blair suddenly shrank back, her back hitting the wall with a dull thud.
"Did your father contact Verona himself, or did Verona approach him first? How many more informants does Alessandro have at school? Besides bullying me and causing trouble, do you have any other tasks this time?"
"I don't know what you're talking about—" Blair started crying.
But I noticed that when she cried out the first sound, her fingers unconsciously touched her right school uniform pocket.
So I quickly reached out and pulled a phone from her pocket. The screen was still lit, showing a conversation interface on an encrypted communication app, with the contact name A.V.—Alessandro Verona.
"Wait for instructions when Lina comes to find you."
Blair panicked and lunged to grab the phone. "Give me back my phone!"
I dodged backward, struggling to control my impulse to kick her against the wall, and said calmly.
"Stop pretending to cry. You're very practiced at playing the victim—your father did the same at the board meeting last time. But there's no audience this time, no school board, no Alessandro filming in the shadows. It's just you and me here."
The elevator number had already jumped to "10." Time was running out.
"Before this Friday, apply to withdraw from school yourself."
"Are you insane—"
"I'm not finished." My voice interrupting her was very calm. "After withdrawing, don't appear in front of me again. If you show up at St. Herman again, or have Alessandro's people stand up for you, I'll send all the chat records in this phone to your father's business partners, every member of the board of trustees, and the society page editor of the New York Post. You should know your father's current financial situation can't withstand a public scandal."
"Also," I leaned close to her ear, my voice so low only she could hear, "tell Alessandro that next time I'll go find him directly."
The elevator door opened.
Mrs. Winston stood at the elevator entrance, her finger pressing the door-open button, her face tense as she looked at me.
I stepped back, put the phone back in Blair's pocket, and helped brush away the hair stuck to her forehead by sweat, my movements as gentle as one friend helping another adjust their appearance.
Then I smiled at Mrs. Winston, without any pause, turned and left through the fire escape.
I walked half a block down Madison Avenue and suddenly stopped, because I remembered a detail.
When Blair frantically touched her pocket, she wasn't trying to get her phone to give herself courage—she was instinctively confirming whether the phone was still there.
That reaction indicated that phone wasn't a communication tool to her, it was a talisman.
It should have been a guarantee given to her by Alessandro or someone else: hold this phone, and you're one of us.
So I thought Blair probably wouldn't voluntarily withdraw from school. Alessandro would weigh his options and make a choice: continue using Blair as an exposed pawn, or abandon her and find another breakthrough.
If the former, he might have Blair go to school as usual on Friday, even sending additional people to protect her. If the latter, Blair would be abandoned by Verona within two days, and her father would be cut off along with her.
Whichever the outcome, the leverage I held was enough to keep them in chaos for a while.
I took out my phone and sent Luca a message: "Done."
The status changed to read within half a second of sending, and the reply popped up almost immediately: "Got it. Waiting for you at the subway entrance."
Luca's car was parked by the roadside at the exit of the Fifty-ninth Street subway station. I looked at that familiar dark sedan—through the windshield I could see the figure in the driver's seat.
I got into the passenger seat. Before I could close the door, Luca's gaze swept over my entire body from top to bottom.
"Didn't you say you were busy today? Why did you come to pick me up?"
"Mm, that meeting ended early, so I had time to come."
His hand reached over and gently brushed past my hairline at my temple, where a stray hair was stuck by sweat. Only then did I realize I had actually sweated in the elevator lobby, I just hadn't felt it at the time.
"Good, not injured." Luca withdrew his hand.
"Of course." The corners of my mouth lifted.
The car temporarily quieted down. I tucked my chin into my scarf, my peripheral vision sweeping past the rearview mirror, confirming no vehicles were following us.
Then a scene from school today suddenly jumped into my mind—what I saw from the window when I left the classroom.
Cecelia walking alone toward the school gate, not arm in arm with Maggie, not laughing and chatting with anyone.
She walked alone, her ponytail swaying gently on her back, looking rather lonely.
"How was Cecelia today?" I asked.
"No unusual movements." Luca held the steering wheel with one hand and pressed his cigarette into the ashtray. "Pay more attention to her recently."
"Got it."
I didn't ask what "pay more attention to her" specifically meant, but automatically interpreted it as observing whether she had any suspicious behavior.
The car turned into the apartment's underground garage. Luca didn't rush to get out. He sat in the driver's seat and looked at an encrypted file on his phone again, his brow slightly furrowed.
I leaned in to glance—the screen showed an internal Verona communication record that I had just had Luca's people sync from Blair's phone.
Alessandro had arranged two people—one serving as an officer in the student council, the other an administrative clerk in the registrar's office. That clerk was the one who helped Blair with her readmission procedures.
"Your guess was right," Luca had me forward the message to another group. "Verona infiltrated St. Herman long ago."
I nodded and sent the message out. Just as I was about to unbuckle my seatbelt to get out, Luca suddenly called out softly to stop me.
"Your operation today," he said, but didn't continue, only reaching out to rub the back of my head, the warmth of his palm seeping through my hair.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing." He withdrew his hand and pushed open the car door. "Let's go, upstairs. I'll reward you tonight."
I didn't ask what the reward was, but if it was tutoring, I would run out of Luca's room as fast as possible, not giving him a chance to reward me—that's what I thought.