Love and Sin (2022)

Chapter 23

Bringing the blackmail cases forward, with over 20 students testifying about what had been happening the whole year, the school had no chance of stopping this go viral. Everyone found out and parents were going to start calling. In order to wrap this up as fast as possible and stop it from escalating further, Zakhar accompanied the principal throughout the investigation with all the evidence. With the records the school had, Zakhar could make the connection they needed to find the blackmailer.

Cora Jensen.

Senior year. Class four. Her parents ran a freight forwarding company and have an exclusive deal with shipping with the school. With a little digging, Cora could manage to get information on the students' orders. She has everything at her disposal.

But then there was the motive.

Zakhar pulled out her file. "I think this is the student." He presented the student file to the principal.

He took the file looking over it. "But you don't have proof."

Zakhar sighed. "I don't, therefore I cannot claim anything. Not only that, we don't have a motive. But this caused an incident that needs to be fixed right away. We cannot waste time investigating. I do have a suggestion."

The principal raised a brow. "Let's hear it."

"Call her to the office. We'll question her today when she's still unprepared and she'll most likely slip and tell us everything."

"I have doubts everything will go that smoothly Zakhar."

"There's one more thing I want to add. Instead of you or me or any teacher doing the interrogation, you let Aleksei Andreev do the questioning. I strongly believe he can find out if she is really the blackmailer or not."

The principal pondered over it a little and then made the decision. "Call them both here. Let's deal with this before parents start calling."

***

Aleksei had a quick rundown from the principal and Zakhar about the student. Everything Lev could find on her was sent to his phone and had a chance to read it on the way there. The girl was waiting in the room for her interrogation.

Before Aleksei had gone into the room, the principal had informed him he had to be present as well. It was always nerve-racking to work with an audience, but it was something he had to deal with now.

He entered the room and sat on a chair opposite Cora.

"Who are you?" She eyed him.

"I'm going to be asking you questions," Aleksei said and leaned his elbows over the table. "The principal did tell you we were questioning students because of the whole blackmail situation."

"I thought teachers were doing the questioning." She moved nervously into her chair.

"Aleksei is part of the school's council." The principal said.

"That's a lie. I know all the student council members."

The principal cleared his throat. "Aleksei and a few other students work for the school secretly. They help us supervise unwanted behavior. It's a system approved by the parents."

Aleksei wanted to laugh. Guess adults can lie too.

"Let's start." Aleksei focused her attention back on him. "This blackmailing thing isn't done on one student. It has hurt a lot of other students therefore I would advise you to answer all questions honestly."

"Fine. Let's get this over with." She leaned back into the chair crossing both her arms and legs in a defensive pose.

Aleksei had asked her all warm-up questions to relax her. He circled around the topic and then he decided to hit her with his evidence.