After all, without Blair, the Wales family would lose their connection to the Chapmans. Things wouldn't go as smoothly for them as they had all these years.
Just as Blair was debating whether to call back, Martin called again. Her finger accidentally slipped, and the call went through.
"Blair, why the hell didn't you come home last night? And what's this about refusing the transition surgery? You even dared to hit the doctor? You're getting bold now, huh? Growing a backbone?" Martin's angry voice boomed through the speaker the second the line connected.
Blair propped her Spanish textbook upright, resting the phone between her ear and shoulder. Her face stayed cold as she listened in silence.
Martin roared, "I raised you all these years, and this is how you repay me? Do you even care about our family? About me? I gave you life, and you can't even do this one small thing?
"Raising you was a waste—I'd have been better off raising a dog. At least a dog would wag its tail at me. Let me make this clear: if you refuse to transition and marry Amelia, then get the hell out of our family."
She'd heard it all before. In her previous life, Martin and Heidi had used that same guilt-tripping garbage to manipulate her.
And like they wanted, she'd spent eighteen years pretending to be a man, even throwing away her pride just to play the loyal simp to Amelia—anything to help the Wales family wave the Chapman name around in business deals.
Her sacrifice had made their lives easy and comfortable. And it wasn't until her final breath that she finally understood—they hadn't raised her out of love. She was nothing but a pawn, a means for the Wales family to climb the social ladder. Whatever debt she owed them for raising her had been repaid the moment she'd died in her previous life.
Blair lowered her voice. "Are you done?"
Martin froze. Are you done? he repeated in his head, stunned. That wasn't the reaction he expected. Blair used to fall right back in line after one scolding. She used to cave the second he raised his voice. But now she had an attitude.
Milena had said Blair seemed like a different person now, and Martin hadn't quite believed it—until this moment. I've been pulling her strings for eighteen years. She really thinks she can break free from me just like that? Not a chance, he thought.
Martin's tone dropped, cold and forceful. "You're coming home. Now. I booked the surgery for two o'clock this afternoon."
Blair was already eighteen and about to graduate high school. If she was going to marry the Chapman heiress, they needed to lock it in as soon as possible.
"I don't have time for this," Blair replied coolly. "I'm in class. I'm hanging up."
Without waiting for a response, she ended the call and immediately switched her phone to airplane mode to avoid being harassed.
The moment she set her phone down, she caught her Spanish teacher, Lacey Morgan, heading her way. Blair's brows twitched as she thought, Crap. She slid her phone into the drawer with one hand while slowly lowering her textbook with the other.
From the front row, Zach immediately tattled, yelling, "Ms. Morgan, Blair was on her phone in the middle of class. Totally disrespectful!"
Zach had gotten humiliated by Blair yesterday. He didn't have the guts to start something again, but this was the perfect opportunity to make her look bad—and he wasn't about to pass it up.
Blair's gaze swept coldly across the back of Zach's smug, haired head. Clearly, this idiot didn't learn his lesson yesterday, she thought.
Lacey stopped at Blair's desk, her expression stern. "What were you just doing?"
She was a young teacher, but despite her age, Lacey was known for being both responsible and strict.
"I was looking up a word on my phone, Ms. Morgan," Blair said.
"Looking up a word?" Zach jumped in, practically vibrating with excitement. "I heard you talking on the phone! My deskmate heard it too!"
He jabbed his elbow into the guy sitting next to him, trying to rope someone in. "Didn't you hear it?"
Before Zach's deskmate could say a word, Blair calmly placed her phone on the desk. The screen was still open to the Spanish dictionary, right on the word despertarse.
Zach's eyes widened. "No way. Check the call history." He could've sworn he heard her on the phone.
He snatched up Blair's phone and pulled up the call log, but the last entry was from yesterday afternoon.
"This doesn't make sense," Zach muttered.
No calls? Did she delete it? That fast? No way. She couldn't have wiped the call log and pulled up a dictionary app in just a few seconds. That's not humanly possible.
Blair's lips curled into a cold smirk. "What? Is it that hard to believe? I didn't take a call. But you heard one? Zach, are you sure you weren't on some porn site and started hallucinating?"
Zach choked on his words. The class burst out laughing the moment she said it.
His face instantly turned red. "Blair, don't you dare accuse me like that. I wasn't—"
"Oh, really?" Blair rested one hand against her cheek, still looking completely relaxed, while the other reached into Zach's jacket pocket and pulled out his phone.
As luck would have it, the screen was still wide open on an indecent site—and what it showed was graphic, to say the least.
"Ms. Morgan," Blair said, placing the phone flat on her desk, "wanna have a look?"
Lacey looked like she wanted to disappear. She was young, and her face went bright pink as she immediately turned away. But she'd seen enough.
"Zach, get your ass to the Student Affairs Office. Now. You've got detention," Lacey snapped.
"Blair, I—I—" Zach stammered, his face flushed with embarrassment and rage, his fists clenched in anger.
Blair leaned into her hand, shot him a lazy glance, and cut in, "What?"
He wants to play tattletale? Too bad I'm better.
"Out!" Lacey roared.
Zach shot Blair a vicious glare but had no choice. Under the teacher's fury, he sulked his way out of the classroom.
Blair gave a lazy tug at the corner of her lips and snorted inwardly. He's got no business snitching on me when his own hands aren't clean.
"Don't you think Blair's kinda hot?" a girl whispered nearby.
"I saw his smile just now, and honestly, I think he's even better-looking than Elijah," another said.
"He looks good even when he's not smiling," someone else chimed in.
"So you're saying Blair's been hotter than Elijah this whole time?" another girl asked.
Elijah, sitting in the third row with the clearest view of the room, caught the whispers and turned to glance at Blair.
Her features were indeed fine and striking. The short hair made her look clean and sharp, setting off that already flawless skin.
Her lips, soft and full in a natural pink hue, looked like they had lipstick on even when they didn't. It was a face that carried a strange contrast of gentleness and edge, handsome in an almost gender-defying way...
Elijah thought, But it's just a pretty face. And for a guy, that's the most useless thing to have. Besides, Blair's a total slacker. If she can't even handle something as basic as studying, what kind of future could she possibly have?
He turned back to his textbook and resumed reviewing vocabulary he'd already memorized ages ago.
Later that morning, during a break between classes, Blair was on her way back from the restroom when she overheard a group of students chatting up ahead.
"No way. Thirty grand! For solving a math problem? Elijah's seriously loaded."
"Well, he's trying to find the person who solved that math problem yesterday. Gotta respect the lengths he's going to."
"Guess he's really desperate to meet someone on his level."
"Still, I don't get why that person's hiding. If they've got the skills to solve that math problem, why not own it?"
Blair had been planning to nap at her desk, but the second she heard that, her drowsiness vanished. Sorry, did you just say Elijah's offering thirty thousand dollars for solving a math problem?
"Yup. Must be nice having cash to burn like that, right?" the student on her right said.
Blair let out a soft chuckle. "Sounds like someone's rich and dumb."
She'd been wondering how to make money now that she'd blown things up with the Wales family. And here Elijah was, offering a paycheck on a silver platter.
Thirty grand for one question? I could keep solving them until Elijah goes broke. Then again, the Moore family's too loaded to actually go bankrupt.
"Not that I need to milk it that hard. Just enough for living expenses. After the SATs, I'll find another way to make money."