The Deepfake Video Was Their Weapon

§PROLOGUE

The video was the first thing my father showed me.

Not a photo from her stolen childhood, not a memory he’d clutched for thirteen years.

A video.

It was grainy, shot on a phone in a filthy, tiled room that echoed with jeering laughter.

The girl on the screen, my sister, wore a dog collar.

A metal chain was clipped to it, held by a girl whose face was a blur of cruel glee.

“On your knees,” the girl holding the chain commanded.

“Bark for us, Faye. Bark like the little bitch you are.”

My sister, Felicity, knelt.

She was seventeen, a ghost I’d never met, and she was being broken on a bathroom floor.

Her body was a fragile collection of angles, thin and brittle under a private school uniform that hung off her frame.

Her face, the one my father always said was the mirror of my own, was swollen, bruised, a canvas of someone else’s hate.

I watched, my own face impassive.

My father, Nathaniel Lockwood, a man who could shatter boardrooms with a single word, was shattering beside me.

A choked sob escaped him, a sound of such profound agony it seemed to tear the air in his billion-dollar penthouse.

“They… they did this to her,” he whispered, his hand gripping my arm so tight I could feel the tremor in his bones.

“Corinne. They did this to my little girl.”

He didn’t know.

He didn’t know that in that moment, watching the ghost who wore my face, I wasn’t feeling grief.

I was feeling a purpose, cold and sharp and absolute, crystallizing in my veins.

They had hurt what was mine.

A debt had been incurred.

And I, Corinne Lockwood, always collected.

§01

Two months later, I stood before the iron gates of Alderidge Institute.

The place looked less like a school and more like a fortress for the children of the damned.

Gothic spires clawed at a perpetually grey New England sky, and ancient ivy choked the stone walls like a possessive lover.

This was where they broke my sister.

This was where I would break them all.

“Nervous?” my father asked from the driver’s seat of his Bentley.

His face was still etched with a grief that had aged him a decade in sixty days, but today, his eyes held a flicker of hope.

Hope in me.

I gave him the smile I had perfected.

Sweet, a little shy, completely harmless.

“A little,” I lied.

“But everyone’s been so kind so far.”

He squeezed my hand.

“You’re a Lockwood, Cori. You’ll own this place.”

Oh, I would.

Just not in the way he imagined.

The Headmaster’s office smelled of old leather and entitlement.

Dean Albright was a man whose spine had been replaced by a copy of the school’s endowment fund report.

He offered me platitudes about ‘a fresh start’ and ‘our supportive community,’ his eyes occasionally flicking to the name ‘Lockwood’ on my file.

My transfer had been… expedited.

A generous, unprompted donation to the new arts center had greased the wheels.

“We’ve placed you in all honors classes,” he said, steepling his fingers.

“And your advisor, Mrs. Gable, will show you to your dorm.”

He slid a class schedule across the polished mahogany desk.

I glanced at it, my heart a cold, steady drum.

Calculus BC. AP Literature. Advanced Art History.

Every single class, a perfect match to the schedule they’d found in Felicity’s empty room.

My schedule.

Her schedule.

It was time to become a ghost.

§02

The first person I saw who mattered was her.

Jocelyn Crestwell.

She was standing by the main staircase, holding court like a queen in her kingdom.

She was exactly as the private investigator’s file described: impossibly beautiful, with blonde hair that fell in a calculated cascade and eyes the color of a winter sky.

The girl from the video.

The one holding the chain.

She was laughing, a bright, musical sound that made the acid in my stomach churn.

Her circle of friends, a pack of expensively dressed hyenas, laughed with her.

One of them, a pug-faced girl named Bridget Sutton, was Jocelyn’s shadow, her attack dog.

Our eyes met across the crowded hall.

Jocelyn’s gaze flickered over me, assessed me, and dismissed me in the span of a heartbeat.

Insignificant.

New girl.

Prey.

Perfect.

My homeroom advisor led me to my first class, AP Literature.

The classroom was full, a low hum of chatter filling the air.

And then I saw the seat.

One empty desk, in the back, by the window.

Felicity’s seat.

I could feel her absence in that space, a cold spot in the room.

The teacher, a harried-looking man named Mr. Davies, gestured vaguely towards it.

“You can take the open seat in the back, Miss Lockwood.”

As I walked down the aisle, a hush fell over the room.

Whispers followed me like a trail of snakes.

“That’s her seat.”

“She’s sitting in Dead Girl’s seat.”

I ignored them.

I slid into the chair, the wood still cold.

I placed my hands on the desk, right where hers would have been.

Download the Novellia app, Search 【 120529 】reads the whole book.

MotoNovel

App Store

Google Play

Novellia

App Store

Google Play