The Seduction Game novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: The Father

Nash's father finally raised his head.

He was a lean man in a charcoal suit, with Nash's green eyes and none of his warmth.

He looked at his son standing inside the room.

Then he looked at me in the doorway behind him, with my coat buttoned wrong from running.

"Close the door," he said. "I don't discuss family business in a corridor."

"She stays," said Nash.

"Who is she?"

"Aileen Brannigan. The Fellowship girl." Nash didn't look away from him. "She's mine."

I felt that word go through me, and I kept my face straight.

His father's gaze moved over my wool coat, my braid, and my boots with the school's mud on them.

"The one Camille Aldridge told me you were using," he said.

Nash flinched, and then he did not.

"Yes," he said. "That was the job. I took it, and I was wrong, and I'm done."

"Sit."

"I'll stand."

"Then stand and explain."

Nash put his phone on the desk.

He pressed play and stepped back, and nobody said anything.

The video was dark and shaky.

A burning roof, a hedge in the foreground, and a boy staggering onto the grass.

He fell to his knees, coughing, with his arm over his face.

It lasted four minutes.

The sound of the fire was very loud in the paneled room.

When it ended, his father's hand was still resting on the desk, and he had not moved it.

"Who is that?" he said.

It was not the question I had expected.

"Me," said Nash. "Last April."

"Who filmed it?"

"Teddy Prescott, on Camille's orders. He wrote a statement tonight. A witness signed it."

"A boy facing expulsion who changes his story." His father's voice was flat again. "That is worth very little."

"The video shows he told the truth," Nash said.

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