True Heiress vs. Fake Queen Bee — Episode 39
Hailey attended Western High through a laptop the following morning. Her teachers appeared in small rectangles while Adam stood outside the castle library and security teams reviewed every vehicle approaching the estate. She had remained at the school to prove fear could not choose her life. Now a leaked schedule had removed her without requiring Candice to step onto campus.
Frank called the arrangement temporary, but Hailey recognized the caution in his voice. Until the source of the leak was identified, every routine could become a map for someone else. She tried to focus on chemistry while imagining CeCe in the seat beside her and Luke glancing toward an empty desk. Isolation had returned wearing the respectable name of protection.
At school, CeCe and Luke worked with Dr. Mercer during free periods. The document watermark identified the office account of Richard Vale, vice chair of the school board and head of its finance committee. Vale had argued most aggressively that the Kaplan funding freeze threatened Western High, though he had voted with the board to expel Candice.
Vale arrived for questioning with counsel and a folder of cybersecurity reports. He denied communicating with Candice and claimed his credentials had been compromised during the same breach that created the false administrative account. According to him, the watermark proved only which file had been stolen, not who delivered it.
The explanation sounded plausible until Mercer examined his login history. Vale’s packet had been opened from his office computer minutes before the anonymous account sent its first message to Candice. No unfamiliar location or failed password appeared in the record. Vale responded that malware could operate invisibly and accused Mercer of drawing conclusions beyond her technical expertise.
He then proposed an urgent resolution to the crisis. The board should end the independent investigation, restore the previous disciplinary records, and ask the Kaplan Foundation to resume unrestricted donations in exchange for stronger cybersecurity. He presented retreat as stability. Adams heard an attempt to bury the evidence beneath a new budget agreement.
Mercer did not accuse him publicly. A direct allegation without proof would allow Vale to portray himself as another victim of billionaire pressure. She asked CeCe and Luke to review only material already posted online, searching for details that might reveal where Candice received the leaked documents. Their status as witnesses did not authorize them to investigate privately, but careful observation remained harmless.
Luke replayed Candice’s livestream frame by frame. Most of the background showed reporters, passing cars, and the stone wall outside Western High. In a brief reflection across the glass door behind her, however, a black sedan remained parked beyond the media line. A blue permit hung from its mirror.
CeCe found photographs from open board meetings and compared the permit numbers visible through windshields. The reflected digits were blurred, but the final three matched the pass assigned to the finance committee chair. The sedan’s distinctive silver scratch above the rear wheel also appeared in a photograph of Vale arriving at the previous month’s meeting.
The car did not prove Vale had spoken to Candice. It proved he had been outside Western High while claiming through counsel that he was attending a conference in another county. Combined with the document access time, the lie gave Mercer grounds to seek parking-camera footage and the vehicle’s entry records.
Hailey joined their secure call from the castle. Pride in her friends mixed with discomfort that they were carrying another danger created around her name. CeCe reminded her that the leak exposed staff procedures and student records, not merely Kaplan secrets. The investigation belonged to everyone Vale’s choices had placed at risk.
Candice, meanwhile, sat alone in a library across town and demanded that the anonymous sender identify itself. She had followed every instruction and lost access to the audience that once defended her automatically. If the person truly wanted accountability, there was no reason to hide behind disappearing messages.
The reply ignored her question and supplied a new script. Candice was instructed to claim that Frank had bribed Principal Adams with private medical treatment and that the final hearing had been arranged before evidence was presented. Legal fees for her appeal would be paid as soon as she recorded the allegation.
Candice knew the claim was false. Adams’s rehabilitation predated the hearing, and even the interim administrator had never suggested Frank controlled his medical care. Earlier lies had grown from rumors or carefully edited facts. This one required inventing a transaction that had never existed.
She typed that she needed proof. The sender answered by reminding her that proof had never mattered when an audience already wanted to believe corruption. The sentence sounded less like encouragement than an assessment of her habits. Candice began to understand that the stranger admired only her usefulness.
When she refused again, an audio file appeared. It contained a sentence Candice had spoken during a confidential police interview at the castle: “If Gail goes down first, nobody will believe anything she says about me.” Only officers, attorneys, and authorized investigators should have possessed that recording.
Fear moved through her more sharply than anger. The anonymous person had access not only to board packets, but also to sealed investigative material. If Candice became inconvenient, the account could release statements far more damaging than the fragments it had given her. She had mistaken access for protection because that was the mistake everyone made around power.
Candice called Dedra and nearly asked for help. When her mother answered, however, shame hardened back into pride. Candice said only that she would not be home that night and ended the call before Dedra could question the tremor in her voice.
She sent the anonymous account a message agreeing to discuss the bribery accusation, but demanded an in-person meeting before recording anything. For several minutes, no response arrived. Candice began gathering the files into a hidden folder, uncertain whether she intended to bargain with them or surrender them.
At last, a location appeared on her screen, followed by a warning not to bring police, Dedra, or a Kaplan representative. Beneath it was another line taken from her sealed interview—one she had spoken only after the official recorder was supposedly turned off. Whoever controlled the account had been listening from inside the investigation itself.
