Discoveries and New Doubts

Sometime between the end of the last school year and the beginning of the current school year, Sean betrayed Zac by starting to interact with Dario.

It was a less serious betrayal at first since Sean had only started talking to Dario. That would have been enough to annoy Zac since Dario had been giving him a lot of trouble long before that.

Would it be right for a friend to befriend an enemy? Zac didn't see it that way, so Sean's betrayal was already evident. But that was not the worst of it. He could even overlook it if it were just that.

But in practically every situation he had been harmed at school in the last few months, Sean had somehow talked to Dario about it before it happened.

In some cases, it didn't seem like Sean was giving Dario information about his friend, but rather, he was somehow inciting Dario to act violently against Zac.

That made Zac think that maybe Sean wasn't just a backstabbing friend but a fake who didn't see him as a friend anymore and deliberately manipulated Dario to make things worse for him at school.

The reason for this bizarre behavior was the only thing Zac hadn't discovered from Sean's conversations with Dario. They had suddenly started talking during the school holidays and then Sean had started to hurt Zac.

Zac imagined that Sean and Dario had probably discussed the motivation for this in person or that Sean had deleted those messages. Either way, Zac couldn't find out just by analyzing the information stored on his smartphone.

It made him curious, but he didn't rush. He had a spy program on Sean's device, so he wanted to keep them in the dark about what he knew and let them plan new things against him.

But he discovered something about what had happened before being sent to the hospital. From what little Dario had told Sean, the rumor Zac had heard from his fake friend was true.

He and Amos, the only other classmate he called a friend at Eastside High School, were together when it happened, but it ended badly for both of them.

Dario and his friends took it a little harder than they should have with Amos and Zac and ran away after they both lost their minds.

As for what happened next, Zac had no idea. His sister had told him that she had found him on the doorstep before taking him to the hospital that day. But from Dario's conversations with Sean, he hadn't taken Zac to the Small family's apartment.

That made Zac even more suspicious!

But since he couldn't answer anything right now, he just kept what he had in mind and focused on Sean and Mia's conversations.

Maybe there could be a clue to some of his doubts in these conversations, he thought before he started.

He would spend six hours reading their messages, which were much older and dated from Mia's first months at Eastside High School to the most recent message from this morning.

Their first conversations had nothing of interest or relevance to Zac. They were just casual conversations between a girl who liked the boy and a boy who wasn't that interested in the girl.

Sean and Mia's message exchanges became more interesting as they approached when Sean started getting closer to Dario.

In these messages there were several conversations between the two of them about who Dario was getting involved with, which made it seem to Zac that his enemy had started getting involved with The Vipers no more than six or seven months ago.

But Sean hadn't told Mia anything he shouldn't have. She had initiated several of these conversations, indicating that she knew things about Dario that perhaps surpassed what Sean knew.

But there were no answers to his most important questions in those conversations. The most he found out was that their deepening relationship had begun on the day of his suspension and that they had been meeting daily ever since.

...

When he finished reading all the messages Sean had exchanged with Mia and Dario, Zac had an ugly look on his face and didn't feel like going to sleep.

It was late at night, and Amy was sleeping next to him, but Zac was too angry to lie down and sleep.

'Bastards! You tricked me and played with me for too long!' He tossed his device aside, having already looked at the spy program to check for any possible exchange of messages between Sean and either of them.

Sean had talked to both Mia and Dario after school today. From what Zac saw, Sean must have been with Mia in one of The Vipers' influenced nightclubs where underage people could easily get in with false identities.

As for Dario, this guy seemed to be planning further actions against Zac. Sean had told Dario that Zac didn't seem happy and that they had to be careful.

Unfortunately for the three of them, Zac now knew many things, including where Dario lived!

He got up from where he had spent the last hours studying the messages of his enemies, quickly grabbed a jacket, and put on his trousers.

He left the house carefully so as not to wake Amy and made his way to Dario's house.

'You want to make a move on me, huh?' He clenched his fists. 'Let's see if you can get something!

Zac went through the dark, quiet streets of Fleodip Place without rushing since Dario lived in the same neighborhood as him, just 12 blocks away from his apartment.

'He probably won't be home until at least 2 a.m.' Zac pondered what he had understood from Sean and Dario's conversation as he looked at the clock on his smartphone.

{1:12 a.m.}

'He's probably still out on the streets with his gang, disrupting other people's lives. But he'll be home sooner or later.' He thought as he put down his smartphone and turned his attention back to the street.

However, today, his luck seemed to be different from the last few days he had been suspended.

Almost every day during his suspension, he had gone out looking for trouble. But usually, he'd had trouble finding what he wanted.

Today, he just wanted to go to Dario and settle his business with the guy. But as he made his way to the Mullens' house, a group of four grim-faced men stood in his way, staring at him as if he were a fool asking to be mugged.

"Brat, it's too late at night for you to walk alone in this neighborhood, isn't it?" A man with black hair and a stubbled beard asked with a strange smile on his face.

"Give us your wallet and smartphone if you don't want any trouble!" Another man said as he pulled out a small pocket knife.

"Oh?" Zac stopped 5 meters away from these people and looked them in the eyes differently than expected.