["PLAY THE KING" IS ACT TWO OF THE "PLAY" SERIES. PLEASE READ "PLAY THE QUEEN" FIRST.]
It's been four months since Priam Torres, the once unpopular president of the Elysian University Student Council, assumed office. Thanks to his chief-of-staff Cas...
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CASTIEL
THERE WERE only two things I wanted most in the world right now: victory and vengeance. They would come hand in hand. There would be no victory without my quest for vengeance, and no satisfaction in vengeance without the sweet taste of victory.
After playing this game of moves and countermoves with Alaric the Prick for more than a year, I had finally triumphed over him. This would not have been possible without the cooperation of everyone in the USC and the student body. Tears rolled down my cheeks as I realized it. He did not just lose. He lost in a big way.
"This morning, I reached out to USC President Priam Torres to concede and congratulate him on his electoral victory," Alaric Esteban said in a press briefing. I was watching him through the television screen in the USC office. "I thank my campaign team for their time and effort. I thank the AEGIS party for trusting me despite the issues that surfaced along the campaign trail."
For someone as conceited as him, it must not have been easy to admit defeat. The words must have almost stuck in his throat. I might hate his guts with a passion, but I had to hand it to him for taking the loss gracefully.
Yet, a part of me was disappointed. I thought he would retaliate with the full force of his privilege and connections. I was ready. The majority of the student body was with me. Priam's father was willing to defend me. I was not invincible, but we could put up a good legal fight. For weeks, I waited... and waited... and waited. But there was no counterattack from his camp.
He could have gone after me legally because of the NDA violation, but he did not. He could have countered the exposé, but he did not. It was as if he had accepted his defeat and given up instantly. A voice in my head was suspicious of the silence and inaction. That doesn't seem like the prick that I know.
So here we are.
"I would also like to announce that I'm stepping down from my position as chairperson of the CBA-CSC and the AEGIS party," he continued. "I thank my fellow tigers and my officers in the CSC for giving me the opportunity to lead them. I thank my colleagues in the Legislative-Executive Committee..."
"Finally," Tabitha sighed. I was so engrossed with the prick that I failed to notice her walking up to me. "If he'd resigned last year, he wouldn't have been so napahiya in front of so many people."
"We managed to politically neutralize him and his party." I glanced sideways at her, my arms crossed. "His controversies dragged down not only him, but everyone with the AEGIS label on the ballot. Thanks to the right timing of the bombshell, we made sure that it was too late for AEGIS to change their nominee, forcing them to stick with him until the bitter end."
And that's exactly why I waited for weeks before doing the live interview and revelation with Gotcha. Having the right ammunition in my pocket did not guarantee our victory. A confluence of factors had to be taken into consideration first, one of which was timing. Imagine if I had exposed Alaric the Prick during my last press briefing as acting president. Its impact would have been countered by the Oplan First Lady fiasco.
