Diamond - A British Academy Rich Boy Bully Romance (Atherton School Crest Club Book 1) Read online

  Diamond

  A Reverse Harem Bully Romance

  Belle Roberts

  Copyright © 2019 by Belle Roberts

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  About This Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  About This Book

  For me, surviving two months at the prestigious Atherton School while my mother recovers should have been smooth sailing.

  So should staying away from the boys of the infamous Crest Club. They’re mysterious, infatuating and not to mention incredibly handsome, and even though every fibre in my body tells me to keep away, I find myself drawn to the three leaders — three sons of royalty and ultra-wealthy families.

  Three boys who don’t think I belong.

  And then the body turns up.

  Suddenly we have no choice but to work together, and the more I’m immersed in their secret club the harder I fall until I can no longer see a way out and the scary part? I’m not sure if I want to…

  Chapter 1

  She was driving too fast. Way too fast.

  And even though I couldn’t drive, I knew it. The way the wheels screeched along the rain covered tarmac and the speed at which the scenery whizzed past outside my window made my stomach lurch.

  “Mum…” I tried to warn her from my position in the back seat, but she couldn’t hear me through the sound of her own tear ridden rant and the whir of the windscreen wipers.

  “He’s done this on purpose!” she croaked. Her red rimmed eyes caught mine in the rear-view mirror. “How can he think you’re not good enough? I’m not good enough? Huh? Huh?”

  I turned away from her and stared out the window. Those last few sentences in reference to my dad and his feelings towards us, hurt.

  I’d never known him and my mother had wanted it that way. In fact, she’d spent most of my seventeen years telling me over and over about how rubbish he was and how he’d abandoned us for a bit of country skirt. Country skirt being a plain woman back in the seaside town they’d both hailed from.

  My mum and dad were supposed to be loves young dream. High school sweethearts. First and forever loves and now, while he’d moved on with someone else, she was here in the concrete city with me. Alone.

  She sniffed in front of me and reached over, fishing around in the bag of Chinese takeaway on the passenger seat until she pulled out a napkin and blew into. The car swerved slightly until she gripped it tightly again with both hands.

  The Chinese was supposed to be a mini celebration. It was supposed to mark a new change for us, one that I’d been desperate for, for ages. We were finally going to move out of our one-bedroom council estate house with the threadbare carpet and the drug den in the house two doors down, it was supposed to be a fresh start for us.

  My mother had managed to get the council to offer us a nice place further away from the rough end of London and out to where there were more people than cars and the green spaces where vast and not surrounded by concrete towers.

  It was supposed to be heaven and every time I thought about it, it gave me a giddy sense of excitement in my stomach.

  That was, until she’d got the phone call.

  I closed my eyes and rested my head back against my seat. Oh yes, the phone call. Perfectly bad timing.

  One of her best friends from back home in Atherton Bay, had thought it absolutely necessary to frantically call her as though it was life or death information and tell her that the love of her life, the one that got away… my father had married someone else in secret and worse… they were expecting a baby together.

  I remembered the way she dropped the phone from her ear and it clattered down the side of her seat as her face crumpled.

  He’d walked out on us fifteen years ago and even after all that time, and all the trash talk she gave me about him, she loved him more than anything.

  “Mum slow down…”

  I felt the car brake slightly only for it to speed up again as rooted around for her dropped tissue.

  “He said he wasn’t the marrying type, you know?” she sniffed. “That it would take a special…” she trailed off to blow her nose with the now found tissue and she used the rear-view mirror to look at me again. “You are good enough!” she insisted at me, most probably realising how damaging her words had been. “You really are.”

  I appreciated her clarification, but it hadn’t stopped the curiosity that swelled in me. Over the years, my mother had suffered severely with depression. It had aged her so much that people often thought she was ten years older than she was.

  It had become somewhat of a staple in our house. Something that those on the outside weren’t privy to. They didn’t see that sometimes, when I left school or, before staring any homework I had to care for my mother. I had to cook, clean the kitchen and tidy the lounge just in case the ‘socials’ came around to assess the situation because my mother wasn’t able to do it.

  On those days, she wasn’t even able to get up and open the limp curtains in the lounge where she also slept, but I didn’t mind because as far as I knew she was all I had left and she was my mum. My family. Families helped each other out.

  That was why any talk of my father left me feeling slightly negative. How could he allow us to live like this and not want to help us? To help me? What could have gone so wrong in our world to split us all up. To let him walk out on me as a two-year-old to be with a woman he barely knew?

  The rain spattered harder on the car and the darkness of the late evening made the driving conditions worse.

  I reached forward and rested a reassuring hand on her shoulder, the only comfort I could give from where I was. Anything to calm her down and maybe. Just maybe, we’d be able to enjoy our Chinese once we got back home.

  I didn’t want a deadbeat dad ruining what was supposed to be the start of better things for us.

  In the front, my mum turned the radio up and her face crumpled again as a timely sad ballad played out. She turned it off quickly and shook her head.

  “No. I’m not going to do this,” she said defiantly. “I’m not going to let that man dominate my thoughts for the rest of my life.” She wiped at her face. “It’s just you and me, sweetheart. Just like it’s always been.”

  She glanced back up at me again through the mirror and reached her hand back over her shoulder to find mine.

  I held it and she squeezed me reassuringly.

  “I’m so sorry, Ally,” she whispered. “I know I’m…”

  She didn’t get to finish. The car swerved with only one hand on the wheel and she gripped it again trying to regain control but the rain, coupled with the low visibility and her speed where all weighing negatively against us.

  The car spun and I heard myself scream.

  “Shit! Shit! Shit!” I heard my mother curse as the pawed at the wheel, trying to steer it back to a stop, but we spun, and our eyes me
t again in the rear-view mirror.

  Her expression was unreadable. A mixture of fear and regret mixed with a sudden realisation that something bad was about to happen and just then, the car hit another and we started to roll, over and over as though we were in a washing machine.

  The sound of metal crunching and scraping against the tarmac, bending out of shape was all I could hear. That and the strangled cries from my mother.

  Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. The feeling of sickness and searing pain in my head overwhelmed me as the car came to rest in a verge and it took me a moment to realise that we were upside down before panic set in and my fingers scrambled to find the seat belt. I pressed it and fell into a heap on what would have been the roof of the car.

  It was a wreck and the strong smell of Chinese takeaway invaded my nostrils, but that was the least of my worries along side the obvious headwound I had that was bleeding, because just at that moment, I caught sight of my mother and it made my heart stop.

  She was on her back, her body half out of the windscreen covered in blood.

  I tried to slide my way over the crushed seats to get to her, wincing at, but ignoring the pain from shards of glass in my palms as I got to her side.

  “Mum? Mum?”

  I slid myself further up by her head.

  “Mum, please?”

  She didn’t respond.

  “Mum?” I had to get her out of there, no matter how bruised and in pain I was.

  I looked around the wreckage, but her phone was nowhere in sight. She’d lost it down the side of her seat after that ridiculous phone call, but since the chair was no longer completely intact I had no idea where the hell it could have gone and my mother needed help. Fast.

  “Can anyone hear me?” I heard a voice from outside and I could see car headlights. People were coming to our aid and relief flooded through me. “Ambulance, fire and police have been called!”

  “My mum Is hurt!” I tried to shout, but the strength in my voice faltered into a weak mess. “Please! Help her! I think she’s dead!”

  I saw several pairs of shoes crunch over the wet grass and stop by us before a few faces appeared.

  “Just the two of you?” One person asked.

  “Yes! Please? My mum! She needs help!”

  I heard mumbled voices before they replied.

  “Are you hurt, my dear?”

  Me? I didn’t care about myself. I was awake and talking. I’d seen enough ambulance tv programmes to know that I wasn’t the most critical person here.

  “No,” I answered back impatiently. “But my mum. She might be dying.”

  “Paramedics are on their way!” the response came and several hands and arms reached in to pull me out.

  I cried out in pain that cascaded in waves over my chest and ribs and I looked back at the wreckage as they lifted me away. My mother’s lifeless body a stark reminder that no matter how the depression manifested itself in her, I loved her so much.

  They set me down a safe distance away before running back to her and I watched as they rallied around her body and it was only when I smelt the all too familiar pungent smell in the air that I realised their urgency,

  The car was leaking petrol.

  I pulled myself up, ignoring the senseless words someone to my side who had a cloth pressed to my head, was yelling at me and tried to crawl over the soaking wet grass with every movement the pain in my head making the world around me blur the closer I got.

  “Hurry!” one of them shouted and as the roar of sirens filled the air I collapsed and the last thing I saw was our car burst into flames before everything went black.

  Chapter 2

  Voices. It was almost as though I’d been listening to their hushed tones for what seemed liked days, but in my darkness, time failed to manifest itself into anything solid or reliable.

  “She almost died…”

  There was the voice again. Although hushed, I was sure I’d heard it over and over. Was it hours? Weeks? I wasn’t sure, but the heaviness of my eyelids never relented and I found myself waking up again wondering how much time had passed.

  Only this time was different. This time bright light splinted through the dark and I managed to open my eyes.

  It was blurred for a moment as I blinked to clear my view and squinted against the light, first getting my bearings before I realised where I was. A Hospital. And then everything came flooding back.

  The rain, the car speeding along the dark road with that damned Chinese on the front seat with my mother crying over the stupid phone call she’d received. My mother.

  I suddenly remembered her lifeless body hanging out of the car, blood over every visible surface and then the explosion.

  I jumped up, ignoring the sting in my arm as I accidently pulled against a drip in my arm.

  It was only then that I noticed a couple of people sat in the corner of the room. The minute they saw my movement one of them jumped up.

  “Go and get the doctor,” the man said to the woman and she sprung from her chair and left the room quickly.

  The man advanced forwards slowly.

  “My mum,” I barely croaked, my throat raw and dry. “Where…?”

  I looked around the hospital room, get well soon cards covered a table on the far edge with a big balloon hovering in the corner. There was a big piece of card over by the wall that had a lot of signatures on it.

  My eyes rested on the cup of water by my beside and the man caught sight of my desperate stare and rushed over to it, using the sponges to dab the inside of my mouth and it was only when he was centimetres from my face that I realised his features were familiar to me.

  I tired to push myself up but he eased me back with his free hand.

  “Steady, now,” he whispered. “You’ve been through a hell of a lot, but I’m so glad you’re awake.”

  The dryness in my mouth was intense, but I forced myself past it so I could speak.

  “Wha…what…?”

  He pushed another sponge into my mouth, and I sucked on the cold water.

  “It’s going to be okay, Ally…”

  The door burst open before he could finish and a doctor pranced in followed by a nurse and what looked like her student.

  He had my chart in his hands and he was flipping through the pages as a blonde woman, the one I’d seen originally, kept herself back behind everyone. She looked as though she was in her early twenties with dark eyes hidden beneath thick lashes. She was pretty in an understated way and our eyes met across the room. Was that a flicker of irritation I saw on her face?

  “Ally, do you remember anything that happened?” The doctor asked and I diverted my gaze back to him.

  He had kind eyes albeit slightly weary looking and I rested my head back against the abundance of pillows behind me.

  Did I remember? I tried to access everything in my memory banks. My mum picking me up from my piano class. The classes she’d taken on cleaning work at night to pay for.

  “Anything at all?” The doctor pressed.

  I turned away from him to look out of the open window. Blue sky and fluffy clouds reminding me of why it was good to be alive.

  “There was an accident…” The other man offered slowly, and I whipped my head round to look at his kind eyes just as all the images flooded back.

  The rain. The Chinese. My mother getting into the front seat and the phone call. Oh yes. Her non friend telling her the news she’d known would one day come but never wanted to hear and then…the crash.

  I hadn’t realised I’d been gripping the bed sheets until the doctor glanced down at it and the man I’d first seen covered his hand over mine.

  “My mum!” I said quickly, pushing myself up.

  “She’s…” the man paused and looked back at the woman by the door. She nodded and he continued. “…Fine. She’s hurt. But she’s alive and she’s…”

  “I want to see her!” I interrupted trying to lift my legs up and swing them over the edge of the bed, b
ut I struggled, and the nurse hurried to my side, easing me back into the bed.

  “I don’t think so madam,” she hissed, and the student rushed to her aide. Helping her tuck me back into bed. “You need to rest and so does your mum.”

  I turned to look at her stern face huffing quietly beside me.

  The doctor’s pager bleeped, and he looked at it and sighed to himself.

  “I have to take this,” he said holding it up. He put my papers back at the bottom of my bed. “Your observations are fine and now that you’re fully awake we can start to look at getting you home, but first we’ll be re-introducing solids and taking the tube out…”

  I touched my finger to it, feeling the coolness of it against my nose.

  “And my mum?” I rasped; my throat dry. “When will she be coming home?”

  The doctor cleared his throat.

  “That’s a little more complicated…” he answered with a quick glance at the nurse. “I’ll try and arrange for your mothers’ doctor to come over and explain things. In the meantime, we’ll leave you in the capable hands of your father here. Now try…”

  My father? My dad? The man my mum had been crying a river over.

  The rest of what the doctor said fizzled out as all I could do was look at the sheepish man beside me and as the room emptied apart from the quiet woman in the back, he gave me a weak smile.

  “That wasn’t how you were supposed to find out…” he said slowly. But hi, Ally. I came as soon as I…”

  He must have seen the expression on my face change as he furrowed his eyebrows and looked down at the clinical blue hospital blanket over me.

  I couldn’t speak or make sense of it. I’d thought of this moment for as long as I could remember. Imagined what it would be like to sit in front of him and ask him why he left. Ask him if he knew what he’d done to mum and how she still loved him. Yet, now, face to face for the first time in fifteen years, I couldn’t think of anything to say apart from thank you.