Page 88 of Pucking Good Girl

“Fine,” he bites out. “That’s fair.” He leans down to open his laptop bag, extracting a folder and handing me three sheets of A4 paper stapled together.

It’s an exact copy of the pop quiz that started all these problems. My name is written in the top right corner of the first sheet.

All the questions are marked the same way I did when I took the quiz. The only thing that’s missing is the last question, the mini essay.

“Here,” Victor hands me a piece of paper. “Copy this into the essay sheet. I chose another topic, and this will get you an A. I wish Cantucci had jumped on board with fully digital exams; it would take a second to make changes. But the woman is a relic. Just like the old shit she digs up all over the world. Every grade has to be entered manually, and the exams are all still in hard copy format. It’s my job to scan them manually one by one and input them into the system.”

I make quick work of copying the short essay, feeling Victor’s eyes on me the entire time.

Thankfully, he doesn’t leave his chair, content to keep leering at me.

“Here,” I slide the sheet back over to him, careful not to brush my fingers against his. “Can I have my original quiz?”

“Ha,” Victor chuckles. “Nice try, Talia. But no can do. I’ll keep that as an insurance policy. So that you keep your end of the bargain. You can have it back at the end of the year. It’ll be my graduation present. In the meantime, we’ll have a lot of fun together. Now come here, sit on my lap.”

I force myself not to physically recoil and tip him off that something is wrong. “Wait. I’ve heard that you could help me with something else. I was thinking about taking the History of Economics next semester. But my schedule is a nightmare, and I know I won’t have a lot of time to study. Is there any way that you could help me with my grade in that class too?”

Victor stiffens at my request. His eyes leave my thighs for the first time since I sat down opposite him. “Where did you hear that?”

I am taking the biggest risk since I entered this office. If my memories of Gen bragging that she didn’t have to study for Econ aren’t accurate, the most important part of my plan might fail, and it’ll be totally up to Vaughn’s friend to find what the Dean’s investigation failed to uncover.

“Gen told me. She said you helped her pass that class? Without studying? Can you help me too?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He bites out.

But I think he’s lying. His posture is rigid, and his eyes are shifting from side to side as if he were trying to make sure that we’re truly alone in here.

“Oh, come on, Victor,” I whine like I heard Gen do a million times to get what she wanted. “Gen told me that you fixed her grade. I thought you wanted to be good friends this year. Don’t friends help each other?”

“It’s not that easy.” Victor says. “I wrote a little Trojan horse in that software, so to speak, and I know it’s still there. But there has been an investigation, as you probably know. Professor Hartley and the Dean have had an expert snooping around. They could have put something in there to detect any further attempts. Touching those grades right now is too risky.”

Bingo. So my hunch was right. Gen was behind those inflated grades, and she got Victor’s help to pass those two classes without studying.

I don’t care about Victor actually helping me. Truth be told, it doesn’t even matter if he agrees to help me or not. All I need is to make him say it again, as clear as day. Just to be on the safe side.

I lean forward in my chair, and Victor tracks the movement; his gaze is fixed on the way the fabric of my dress gapes, showing just a little more cleavage than before.

Becks

Talia leans forward and Victor squirms in his chair, his eyes glued to her chest. Fucking creep.

My hands are balled up into fists so tight that my knuckles are white. And I’ll be damned if I’m not dying to slam my fists into that creep’s face.

“Motherfucker,” I whisper, seething at just the thought that the creep is breathing Talia’s same air.

“Shh!” Professor Cantucci whispers, her glare persuasive enough to make me bite my tongue.

She’s right. I’ll have my chance to give her T.A. a piece of my mind, but not yet.

We’ve been hiding in a tiny closet inside the professor’s office. It’s located on the wall opposite the main door, at the perfect angle to offer us an unobstructed view of the desk and the chair where Talia is sitting.

Or I should say as unobstructed as possible, watching through the slats of the blinds that cover the glass panel in the upper half of the door.

What we’re able to see is definitely enough to make my blood boil.

Talia’s idea to pretend to agree to Victor’s request but ask for help with the other class where we suspect he tampered with the grades is proving to be working.

When she pitched the idea to record Victor asking for sex in exchange for not reporting her for cheating and to see what else she could get him to admit, we were all against it.