Page 80 of Manhattan Secret

I don’t hear a word of it because the moment I open the email on my phone, in big bold letters all I see is:

WE KNOW YOU FUCK STUDENTS! IF YOU DON’T LEAVE LACHLAN ALONE WE’LL TELL EVERYONE WHAT A PERVERTED WHORE BITCH YOU ARE!!!! YOU’VE BEEN WARNED!!

Wow. My entire body is electrocuted.

My heart rams up into my throat and I swear I’m about to be sick.

I scan the email address, and it’s generic.

I can’t breathe and I pop to my feet.

“Well, baby?”

“Not now, Lachlan.” I snap. “I can’t always entertain you.” My eyes feel like they are about to explode from my head.

I can’t even claim the email is ambiguous or sent to the wrong person.

It’s pretty clear it’s a threat.

Time becomes irrelevant while I lock myself in the bathroom and try to make sense of this.

Who would know about me and Lachie? We’ve been so careful.

Who knows and wants to ruin me, more to the point?

It can’t be a parent or even his parents, they wouldn’t send a childish note like that. They’d go right to the principal and have me fired.

It screams of a teenager. A teen girl, more to the point.

I’m being blackmailed by a teenager, while my teen lover in the next room is oblivious.

Tell him, my brain and heart urge, almost tugging me out of the bathroom where I’m spineless, regrouping my overwhelmed emotions.

Lachlan will know the suspects.

But I can’t.

I don’t want to ruin any chance of him going to college, he’s worked too hard. His record is one of the highest test scores Richmond has had in a very long time, all that will be blown to smithereens if they know I’m having an affair with him. All my grades will come under scrutiny, saying I played favorites with my lover.

I feel sick to my stomach.

What do they know?

What has this unknown person(s) seen to alert them to Lachie and me?

I lean over the sink until the feeling of rushing nausea passes.

I knew something like this would happen, didn’t I?

We’ve taken too many risks.

And it won’t matter if he’s no longer at Richmond or he’s nineteen now.

The fact of the matter is, someone has proof of us together.

Someone wants to destroy our relationship.

That kind of bad reputation will stick to my career.

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