CHAPTER 155: THE AFTERMATH

As the paramedics dabbed at Trent’s mangled face, Peter leaned in—close enough that Trent could smell the faint copper of his sister’s blood still clinging to him. His voice was steady, but it carried that dangerous quiet only heard in war movies right before the trigger’s pulled.

"You’re coming to the police station with me," Peter murmured, each word landing like a scalpel cut, clean and deliberate. "Or I release everything I found on you. Every email. Every deleted file. Every sick little souvenir you thought you’d buried."

The words didn’t just sink in—they burrowed deep, rooting in Trent’s skull with the cold weight of inevitability. His swollen eyes went glassy with a fear that had nothing to do with broken bones.

Everyone at Lincoln High knew Peter Carter’s other reputation—not just the temper, but the uncanny IT skills. The kid could gut a firewall faster than most people could gut a fish. If Peter had stormed into that office without even asking questions, fists already cocked, it meant he had proof.

Real proof.

The boy isn’t bluffing, Trent realized through the fog of pain. He knows. He fucking knows everything.’

A thin thread of rationality fought through the pounding in Trent’s skull, tallying the odds.

If this went to court—if Peter aired those files—the fallout wouldn’t just end Trent’s career. It would detonate his entire life: his reputation, his family’s name, his father’s position as school director.

One upload to the right inbox, and he’d be remembered for all time as a monster... instead of just the charming predator who never got caught.

When the paramedics tried to slide him onto the stretcher, Trent gave a weak, blood-flecked shake of the head.

"No hospital," he rasped, every syllable slicing his throat raw. "I’m going to the station... with him."

The cops glanced at each other, baffled, but Trent’s insistence cut through the confusion. Whatever had gone down between him and the Carter kid, Trent wanted it off the books, away from cameras.

Each step toward the police car was a fresh sermon in pain—ribs screaming, teeth clicking loose, skin tugging against stitches that didn’t exist yet. Still, a bitter thought curled through his mind like smoke: The kid’s protecting his sister’s dignity. Not shouting it from the rooftops. He wants this handled quietly—like men.

And then the darker, more self-serving echo followed: If that’s the game, maybe we both get to walk away breathing. Sure, my face will look like hamburger meat for a month... but a pedophile conviction? That’s the kind of thing even Satan won’t bunk with in hell.

Christ, the kid hit like a damn wrecking ball. Every breath was a razor dragging through his ribs, every heartbeat a sledgehammer against his skull. Still, that wasn’t what made his palms sweat.

No, it was the look in Peter Carter’s eyes—the steady, unblinking kind you see right before someone pulls a trigger.

He knows. He fucking knows everything.

Trent could practically hear the noose tightening. Every "deleted" file, every private email, every carefully hidden record—if Peter had it, then the walls were already collapsing. His father’s name on the school building wouldn’t save him.

His little kingdom here would burn, and the ashes would stick to his family’s teeth for decades.

And the worst part? Peter wasn’t grandstanding. He wasn’t broadcasting it to the gawking crowd. The boy was holding it in—keeping Emma’s name out of the gossip grinder. Protecting her image.

There was almost... a sick, grudging respect in that.

He waved the paramedics off. No hospital. No news crews with their vulture lenses. Just the quiet ride to the station where they could both pretend this was nothing more than a fistfight gone nuclear.

Assault charges I can spin. Headlines about "Lincoln High Predator" end careers.

As the police car door slammed behind him, Trent leaned back, pain screaming through his bones. Somewhere deep down, past the humiliation and fear, a twisted thought coiled in his brain like a snake: Kid’s dangerous. More dangerous than me. And if I had any brains left... I’d make damn sure I never end up on the wrong side of him again.

But even as pain fogged his vision, Trent Holloway clung to one crystalline truth: the ledger between him and Peter Carter wasn’t just unfinished—it was blank compared to what was coming. This wasn’t defeat. This was prologue.

Peter slid into the police cruiser’s back seat, wrists cuffed, the metal biting cold against raw skin. His knuckles throbbed with every heartbeat, skin torn from the methodical demolition he’d just delivered.

There was no satisfaction in him—no surge of triumph—only the cold, mechanical calculation that this was the smallest fire he could set to burn away Emma’s nightmare.

The real blaze was still coming.

Outside the administrative building, chaos had spilled like a ruptured artery. Sirens bleated. Phones recorded. Faces whispered.

Isabella Rodriguez stood rooted among a loose cluster of faculty, her hand over her mouth as if holding in a scream—or perhaps an opinion she’d been nurturing for years. Watching Peter get loaded into the car in chains carved an ugly fissure in her mind. The image didn’t fit.

"Peter’s such a good boy," she murmured to herself, tone laced with quiet disbelief. "Never violent. Never even fought back." Her gaze slid toward Trent, who was theatrically refusing medical attention. "If this happened... it had to be Trent."

The sentiment echoed in the cluster of women around her, their whispers jagged with long-suppressed suspicion.

"Trent’s always been... off," Mrs. Henderson muttered, eyes hard. "The way he stares at the girls. Like he’s taking mental notes."

"I’ve suspected for years," Ms. Carty from Guidance added dryly. "But he’s the director’s son. Untouchable. Or at least he thought so."

Among them, Nurse Valentina Luna stood unusually still, her usual clinical detachment tangled in something warmer, stranger.

She’d been looking forward to coffee with Peter—a conversation she suspected would leave her thinking about him for days. Now, watching him disappear into a police cruiser, that warmth twisted into an ache she didn’t want to name.

’Do I go to the station?’ she asked herself, knowing full well the answer. The rational voice insisted, Stay away. Let his family deal with it. But there was another voice—lower, more dangerous—that reminded her you don’t just turn away when someone who fascinates you is in the fire.

Isabella’s debate was sharper, edged with a history Valentina didn’t share. She’d crossed lines with Peter—lines she’d told herself were safe because no one had seen them. Now, with flashing lights painting her skin, the idea of "keeping her distance" was a polite fiction.

’I’ll wait until he introduces me to his family,’ she lied to herself, fingers already curling around her car keys. ’But I can’t leave him alone in that place. Not with the kind of people who think he belongs in there.’

The decision wasn’t so much made as it was inevitable. She’d go—but in the shadows. Close enough to catch him if he fell. Far enough to pretend she wasn’t there for him at all.

Near Madison’s Range Rover, the emotional epicenter of the crisis pulsed like a raw nerve, exposed to the cold air.

Emma Carter sat in the passenger seat, tears streaming down her face in an endless, ugly flood of relief tangled with guilt and the gnawing terror of what came next. The nightmare that had sunk its teeth into her life for weeks was finally over, but the price tag was already itemizing itself in her mind with brutal clarity.

"It’s my fault," Emma sobbed into Madison’s shoulder, her voice breaking apart. "It’s all my fault. If I hadn’t been so stupid, if I hadn’t gotten caught with those drugs—"

"Stop," Madison cut in, her tone firm enough to leave no room for argument, arms locking tighter around Emma as though sheer force might keep her from collapsing entirely. "This is not your fault. None of this is your fault."

On the other side of the SUV, Sarah paced like a caged animal, phone pressed to her ear with white-knuckled urgency. "Mom, you need to get to the Lincoln Heights Police Department right now. Peter’s been arrested. Yes, arrested. No, I don’t have the full story yet—Emma’s safe, but Peter—" Her voice cracked mid-sentence, a small, helpless sound she probably hadn’t meant to let escape.

"Just get here as fast as you can."

Madison caught pieces of Sarah’s words, and the picture they painted made her blood feel like ice water.

Peter had assaulted someone—badly. And not just anyone, but Trent Holloway. That smug, untouchable bastard who always seemed to slither through life without consequences... until today.

’He risked everything for his sister,’ Madison realized, her eyes following Peter as he was guided into the back of the police car. ’His future in college and risked being a criminal, his freedom, everything we’ve built together. All for Emma. Family first. Always.’

The respect hit her like a gut punch—warm, fierce, and overwhelming—but it was laced with a cold thread of fear for what this meant for them. Love didn’t stop jail bars from closing.

Around them, Lincoln High was caught in a rare state of collective hysteria, the kind that would fossilize into legend by the end of the day.

Clusters of students whispered and filmed from safe distances, phones lifted like they were documenting a celebrity scandal instead of a life imploding.

Clips of Peter tearing through Trent’s office were already metastasizing online, each retelling inflated with the kind of creative exaggerations that would have made the Brothers Grimm roll their eyes.

Jack Morrison stood with his usual pack, but the cocksure smirk was gone. His gaze was distant, replaying a memory he couldn’t quite process—the image of Peter Carter transformed from the guy you shoved in the hallway into something that looked like it belonged in a horror movie.