My Lovely Headmaster

Chapter 13

Leo Dickenson is playing a game, and I'm losing.

It starts small—comments dropped like breadcrumbs for Devon to follow. Monday morning, Leo stops by our table at breakfast, ruffling Devon's hair with casual familiarity.

"You know, Devon, you remind me so much of Vlad when he was young. Same serious expression when concentrating. It's uncanny."

Devon looks pleased. "Really? Mr. David was like me?"

"Exactly like you. We have photos in the family archive. I should show you sometime." Leo's eyes meet mine over Devon's head, gleaming with malicious amusement. "Family resemblances are fascinating, don't you think, Ms. Johnson?"

Tuesday, he escalates. During Devon's music practice, Leo appears with a box of old photographs.

"Look at this," he tells Devon, spreading them across the piano. "Vlad at your age. Tell me that's not your doppelganger."

Devon gasps. He's right—the boy in the photograph could be Devon in vintage clothing. Same eyes, same jaw, same way of holding his head when thinking.

"That's so weird," Devon breathes. "We look like brothers or something."

"Or something," Leo agrees, watching me where I stand frozen in the doorway. "You know, genetics are funny. Sometimes talents skip generations. Sometimes they don't skip at all."

By Wednesday, other people are noticing. Mrs. Robbins mentions it during faculty lunch. "Devon Johnson could be a Dickenson. It's quite remarkable."

Thursday, Devon's friend Thomas says it outright: "You look more like Mr. David than Mr. Leo does, and they're actually brothers."

Devon laughs it off, but I see him studying his reflection in windows, comparing his features to the men who run this school.

Thursday evening, Leo finds me grading papers in my classroom.

"We need to discuss terms," he says, closing the door behind him.

"Terms?"

"For my silence." He sits on my desk, too close, radiating the confidence of someone holding all the cards. "You see, Vlad is the responsible brother. The heir. The one who does everything right. Finding out he has a bastard son with the help? Well, that would be deliciously scandalous."

"Devon is not—"

"A bastard? He literally is, darling. Born out of wedlock to a woman who didn't even know his father's name." His smile is razor-sharp. "Imagine what the board of directors would say. What our grandfather would think of his perfect grandson now."

"What do you want?"

"Multiple things." He leans closer, and I smell his cologne—citrus and cruelty. "First, I want you to have dinner with me. Properly. No Devon, no excuses."

"No."

"No?" He laughs. "You're hardly in a position to refuse. Unless you want me to have a fascinating conversation with Devon about family trees."

"You wouldn't. He's a child."

"Which is why he deserves to know who his father is, don't you think?" He traces a finger along my desk. "Dinner, Jasmine. Tomorrow night. Wear something pretty."

He leaves before I can respond, and I sit there shaking with rage and fear. This is why I ran six years ago. This is why I hid. Because the rich don't just take what they want—they make you offer it to them.

That night, Vlad comes to my rooms after Devon is asleep. I've texted him urgently, and he arrives looking concerned.

"What's wrong?"

I tell him about Leo, about the threats, about dinner. His face darkens with each word.

"I'll handle my brother."

"How? He's right—this would destroy your reputation, your position here."

"I don't care about—"

"But I do. Devon does. This place is his home now. We can't let Leo destroy that."

Vlad paces, all barely controlled violence. "He's always been like this. Taking what's mine, ruining what he can't have."

"I wasn't yours," I remind him quietly.

He stops, looks at me with eyes so like Devon's it hurts. "Weren't you? Even then, even drunk and strangers, we chose each other. Out of everyone at that party, we found each other."

"That's not how it works."

"Isn't it?" He moves closer, and I hate how my body responds, how some cellular memory makes me want to lean into him. "Six years, Jasmine. Six years and I never forgot that night. Never stopped looking for you."

"You didn't look very hard."

"I looked everywhere. But you vanished like smoke. Like a ghost. Like something I'd dreamed." His hand cups my face. "And then you walked into my office, and I knew you before I knew you. Does that make sense?"

"No," I whisper, but I'm lying. It makes perfect sense. The cologne, the pull, the way Devon was drawn to him from the start—blood calling to blood.

"I won't let Leo hurt you," he promises. "Either of you."

But Friday comes anyway, and with it, dinner with the devil.

Leo picks the restaurant—expensive, intimate, with candlelight that makes everything look like a séance. He's charming, I'll give him that. Asks about books, quotes poetry, makes observations that would be brilliant if they weren't barbed.

"You know what fascinates me?" he says over wine I'm not drinking. "How you've managed to hide it so well. Devon has no idea, does he?"

"Leave Devon out of this."

"Impossible. He's rather the whole point." He leans back, studying me. "Vlad was destroyed that night, you know. The girl who disappeared. He hired private investigators, checked hospital records, even had me hack into university databases. Obsessed."

"I didn't know."

"Of course you didn't. You were too busy growing his child in secret." His voice hardens. "Do you have any idea what you took from him? From our family?"

"I protected my son from a world that would have destroyed him. Look what you're doing now—using him as leverage, treating him like a pawn."

"That's where you're wrong." Leo signals for the check. "I'm not using Devon. I'm using you. There's a difference."

"What do you really want?"

"I want Vlad to suffer." The casual cruelty of it steals my breath. "He's always been the perfect one. The heir. The chosen. Do you know what it's like to always be second? To be the spare?"

"So you'd hurt an innocent child?"

"I'd reveal the truth. How is that hurting him?" He stands, offers me his arm. "Come. Let's walk."

We walk through the November night, and Leo talks about growing up in Vlad's shadow, about perfection as a prison, about how finding out his perfect brother knocked up a party girl might be the best thing that ever happened to the family.

"It makes him human," Leo says. "Flawed. Real."

"He's always been real."

"To you, maybe. That night, he was real. But the next morning, he went back to being Vlad Dickenson, heir to everything, perfect son, perfect brother." He stops under a streetlight. "Did you know he hasn't been with anyone since?"

"What?"

"Six years. Not one woman. He said he was waiting." Leo laughs bitterly. "Waiting for a ghost. And now the ghost has a name and a son and works in his school."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because tomorrow, I'm telling Devon everything unless you convince me otherwise."

"How?"

He looks at me for a long moment. "Tell Vlad the truth. That you came here deliberately. That you've known who he was all along. That this was all calculated."

"But that's not—"

"I know. But he'll believe it from you. And it will destroy him properly, thoroughly, the way he needs to be destroyed to become human again."

"You're insane."

"I'm a Dickenson. It amounts to the same thing." He hails a taxi. "You have until tomorrow night. Destroy my brother yourself, or I'll use Devon to do it."

The taxi pulls away, leaving me standing in the cold November night. Back at Blackwood, lights burn in Vlad's office window. Devon's window is dark—sleeping peacefully, not knowing his uncle has just lit a fuse that will explode his entire world.

Inside, I find Vlad in the music room with Devon's recordings playing. He looks up when I enter, and the hope in his eyes breaks my heart.

"How was dinner?"

I could tell him Leo's plan. Could warn him. Could try to find another way.

Instead, I think about Devon's face when he finds out the truth. Think about how lies, even Leo's twisted version, might hurt less than the reality of what his parents did.

"We need to talk," I say, and begin the worst lie I've ever told.