The Hunter
Knight gave me two thumbs up, nodding from the doorway.
“No problem, dude. I’ll call your dad!”
“I said not to call my father,” I yelled as the back door of the police car slammed in my face.
Knight didn’t hear me.
Fuck.
“The statutory rape charge is the one I was most concerned about, but it turned out to be bullshit. All six of you are over eighteen. The police hadn’t even had the common sense to check IDs when they filed the report, which means not only are they going to drop this charge, but we can also slap the boys in blue on the wrist—always a good form of damage control.”
Baron “Vicious” Spencer, Vaughn’s father, sat across from me in my uncle and aunt’s stuffy attic, flipping through the thick pages of my case. The attic was the shape of the roof. I had to crouch on my seat like Arnold Schwarzenegger in a Barbie dollhouse to accommodate my height.
Twenty-four hours had passed since my arrest, and I had yet to take a shower, a dump, or beat my meat to decompress. Although Baron was a lawyer by trade, he didn’t practice criminal law. But it was my understanding that sometimes he helped relatives and close friends with legal shit. It was also my understanding that he charged $5,000 an hour to justify his reputation as a world-class cunt. He needed the money like Kylie Jenner needed more lips. The first thing he told me was that he was going to overbill me.
“Just to get a taste of being fucked. One cannot live his whole life only doing the fucking,” he’d explained point-blank when he entered the house an hour ago, after Jean and Michael bailed me out of jail.
I took a sip of my bottled beer, tugging at my leather necklace cord with the wooden Dala. “And the other charges?”
“The sexual harassment will be a hard sell, seeing as the girls seemed lucid, active, and present. The obstruction of justice charge is due to the fact that Mr. Cole had confiscated Bianca’s phone. According to Miss Evans, the order came from you. Fortunately for you, at the time she entered the media room and party with the rest of students who’d had their phones confiscated, your dick was already softer than marshmallow and you were passed out on the floor, long after the orgy. There are several witnesses to attest to that time discrepancy. In other words, your incompetence saved you.” He glanced up from the pile of documents, his arctic blue eyes dropping the room temperature by ten degrees.
“Always happy to be a loser. Sláinte.” I toasted the air, taking another sip of the lager.
Baron had the same ink black hair as his son, identical glacial eyes, and the hunger to be successful, powerful, and capable. I wondered what it felt like to be a Spencer—adept, driven, motivated. Talented.
I had not so far been any of those things. I had money, yes—more than I could ever spend—and the looks to match. But other than those superficial features, I was nothing. An empty jar. My father had warned me that the day people would call me out on my frivolity was near. I believed him.
Which was why I dreaded going back to Boston and starting college—moving back with my family. Not doing so hadn’t been an option. Royal Pipelines had passed through six Fitzpatrick generations thus far.
Needless to say, I was interested in running a business a little less than I was interested in another public orgy, followed by a mini-vacation in a jail cell. But here was the reality of things: my older brother, Cillian, was set to become the CEO of Royal Pipelines the minute Da kicked the bucket, and I was going to be COO.
“When’s the trial?” I sucked my teeth.
“Never.” Baron closed my file, linking his fingers together over the desk. “A trial would be public, messy, time-consuming, and above all—very bad press. The ladies—and I use the term fucking loosely—aren’t keen on hashing out the details of the mass orgy on the stand, either. I came up with a generous settlement package for each of them. They and their families are content to strike a deal. The packages include a two-million-dollar compensation check and a full ride through college. Your father and brother are pleased that the matter is settled.”
I didn’t for one second think my father’s eagerness to take the deal had anything to do with me. It was the headlines that worried him. As for Cillian, if he had his way, I’d be on a leash, locked in the basement of my parents’ estate, Avebury Court Manor.
I sat back, playing with the good-luck horse on my neck.
“Why are we signing a deal? I didn’t do shit. You said so yourself. They have no case.”
“That notwithstanding, even taking this to trial would put a stain on you and your family and piss off Royal Pipelines’ shareholders.”
“So I need to cave because my daddy runs a big-ass shop?” I scowled.
“In a nutshell, yes.”
“No,” I countered flatly.
Baron checked his phone as he spoke, completely unconcerned by my refusal. “If we take this to a jury, there’s no way of knowing how they’d react. A white, male billionaire in the middle of a whale-sized sex scandal is not, in fact, the most empathetic creature known to mankind.”
“I didn’t rape them,” I seethed. “I didn’t even hit on them. They came to me.”
Baron stood up, gathering the documents into his leather briefcase. He seemed to be done with the conversation and his client’s rage.
“Better a crook than a fool. Taking the deal and having them sign an NDA is the clever thing to do. Whenever you feel your precious ego needs a hand job, log on to that porn site and remind yourself that whoever ends up putting a ring on those women will always know you as the guy who fucked them half-dead and still managed to make them come.”