The Hunter

by Shen, L. J.

  I caught them in the air.

  “Now get dressed. I’m going to have to refurnish the entire fucking house after your STD-fest yesterday. I need to bleach the walls.”

  “I need to bleach my eyes,” Knight added.

  “I need to Men in Black my brain,” Vaughn shot back.

  Knight picked up an imaginary remote and clicked it in Vaughn’s direction.

  “And Home Alone your life to avoid any more public orgies,” Knight offered.

  Har-har-ing dryly, I stuffed my legs into my jeans. I still hadn’t fully comprehended what was happening. I expected, as with everything else, that Syllie would get me out of it. If not him, then my aunt and uncle, Jean and Michael Brady. (Yes, they were the Brady bunch, and yes, I found that endlessly amusing, seeing as my parents had sent me to them in hopes that they’d be able to cram into me some of the manners and upper-class demeanor the private schools they’d enrolled me in couldn’t.)

  Point was, someone always got me out of trouble, and that someone was, unfailingly, not me. Getting out of trouble myself seemed like tedious business, and don’t get me started on the potential paperwork.

  However, lesson learned. From now on, I would pay attention to where I conducted my mass orgies. One could only be so reckless. It was time to be more careful. And while I was on the subject, perhaps I should limit myself to three girls at a time.

  I stood up, buckling my Louboutin spiked-leather belt, and turned to Knight.

  “Okay. I think I’m ready for that coffee now.”

  Knight smacked the back of my head. Again.

  “You’re not getting it, are you?” His brow wrinkled. “Tell me who to call. Do you know your lawyer’s name?”

  “Damn, son. Why so serious? You need a shot of dirty Sprite.”

  Also known as codeine. Also known as Knight’s version of water, before he got clean. I knew I was a jerkface for mentioning his substance-abuse problem, but he let it slide. Plus, he had his shit together now. He and Vaughn got to go study what they wanted, choose what they wanted to do with their lives. My ass was going back to Boston to study at Harvard, majoring in business, economics, and all the stuff that made a man want to hurl himself off a skyscraper. Don’t ask me how I got into Harvard. Da probably donated enough money to feed the entire state of Massachusetts for a decade to make that happen. I wouldn’t trust me to write a grocery list, let alone an essay.

  I also wasn’t looking forward to the forced internship at Royal Pipelines during the summers.

  “Your dad? Your mom? Your brother? Sister? Who should I call? The Bradys, maybe?” Knight waved his hand back and forth in front of my face.

  I opened my mouth, and there was a knock on the door. Vaughn went to answer. A second later, three policemen came in. I swear one of them flexed his biceps. They were hella high on the power trip. The burliest one, whose face reminded me of a constipated baboon with cropped coppery hair, recited my Miranda rights as he grabbed my hands and handcuffed me.

  “Hunter Ernest Vincent Fitzpatrick, you are under arrest for sexual harassment, statutory rape, and obstruction of justice. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer…” The police officer stopped, letting out a grotesque snort. The other three burst into hysterical laughter.

  Yeah, yeah, I’m loaded. Hilarious.

  “If…if…” he tried again, throwing his head back and laughing with such mirth, you’d think he was the one swimming in it. “If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at the government’s expense,” he finally finished, wiping a happy tear from the corner of his eye.

  I stared at him with a clenched jaw, feeling a stir of anger coursing through my veins for the first time since I woke up. I didn’t rape or harass these girls. Or any girls. It was a setup.

  The officer reached for his pocket and took out a fifty-dollar bill, slapping it into the open palm of the cop next to him.

  “Dang, I really couldn’t say it with a straight face, Mo.”

  They’d bet on my arrest. Sweet. The handcuffs felt cold and tight around my wrists, and bit into my flesh unnecessarily. I was obviously in no danger of escaping or pouncing over the female cop standing there, in all her balding patches, post-acne scars, and three missing teeth glory.

  Knight and Vaughn appeared next to me.

  “Hey, assholes, do you mind not justifying every police brutality stigma alive?” Vaughn asked. “As for you—” He jerked his chin toward me. “—I’m calling my dad. He’s in Virginia with my mom, but he’ll fly in, if need be.”

  Knight asked again, “Who should I call, man? Talk to me.”

  The answer was Jean and Michael, of course. At this point, they felt more like my parents than the ones who’d sent me away from Boston as soon as I was out of diapers. The officers began pushing me toward the door.

  Vaughn came after us, hissing to me, “Don’t tell them anything, you hear me?”

  I nodded. “Tell Knight not to call my da.”

  “What?”

  They shoved my back in the police car’s direction.

  “Just not Da,” I managed to howl before my head was ducked into the back seat. “Anyone but Da!”

  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.”

  “I need a stronger drink.” I shook my head.

  “What you need is a good spanking.”

  I put the beer bottle to my lips again, sighing. “Fuck, you’re right. A kinky lay is just what the doctor ordered. But this time I’ll make sure it’s in a secluded bedroom.”

  Baron threw me a condescending frown and walked to the door. I knew I should thank him for everything he’d done for me, but I wasn’t in the mood for niceties. Also, the check Da would sign was going to buy him another yacht.

  “Oh, and Hunter?” Baron asked when he reached the door.

  I looked up from behind the desk.

  “Yeah?”

  “Good luck with your next meeting. You’ll need it.”

  “A disgrace!” Da spat, his saliva spluttering over the desk between us. His pasty, Irish-freckled face was purple as he towered over me in the same attic office Baron had exited minutes ago.

  The Bradys had the kind of house Gerald Fitzpatrick deemed homely and quaint, if not completely lackluster. Back in Boston, he’d knocked down an entire row of brownstones in Beacon Hill and built a mansion better suited for the extended royal family and every person they’d ever said hi to. Avebury Court Manor boasted twenty bedrooms, fifteen bathrooms, an indoor pool, a tennis court, and a heated driveway—because why not be a douchebag when you can afford to be?

  The mansion was architecturally inspired by Mont Saint-Michel, a looming castle on a French island—heavy on the arches, statues, and wide spaces. Truthfully, I’d take the old-fashioned Brady townhouse over that nouveau riche marbled monster any day of the fucking century.

  “You stupid, embarrassing fool. You…you…goddamn…” He stopped, curling his fists tight to brace himself for the ringing scream that followed. “Epic disappointment!” He hurled the desk between us. It hit my knees with a bone-chilling thump. I pressed my mouth harder, ignoring the raw pain, my face still impassive.

  It was hella tempting to curl into myself and resurface after his verbal lashing was over, but I forced myself to jerk my chin up and brave it. My sister and brother were both perfect in their own, overachieving ways, which made me my parents’ favorite source of complaint.

  “Thank God you haven’t fathered any bastards.” Da looked heavenward, making the sign of the cross, as if God was in charge of my obsessive condom usage. I got no damn credit for anything these days.

  “Night’s still young,” I clipped.

  He shot me a dirty look, pointing at me with his stubby finger.

  “Your little fling just cost me six million dollars in hush-money—more, if the others decide to jump on the bandwagon and sue. You think it’s funny? I’m done with you.” He shook his fist skyward, pacing back and forth in the small room. “I want to be done with you. Your mother, bless her heart, has a soft spot for you. Perhaps because you’re the middle child.”

  Or maybe because she dumped me in a boarding school in England when I was six and tossed me around the globe when I got kicked out, never considering raising me herself.

  “I, however, see you clearly for who you are, and I have news for you. You may be going to college in Boston, but Harvard is off the table. You will go to evening classes, as commoners do. And you are certainly not coming to live in my house.” His finger now dipped to his chest for emphasis.

  My father towered to nearly six feet and one inch, a tad shorter than me, and was arranged in round bulks of meat. Years of indulgence had made his body soft and his personality hardened. A white shock of hair fell over his forehead, but his brows were dark and thick.

  My mother, in contrast, was light and dainty, both in personality and looks.

  “Boo-fucking-hoo.” I rolled my eyes provocatively. The edges of my ears turned hot, and I hated that. “Heard Boston’s got an apartment or two to offer. I’ll be glad to stay out of your way.”

  As for Harvard, I didn’t think an idiot like me would survive it, anyway. I’d probably fail at finding the classes, let alone deciphering the lectures. It was just as well.

  “With what money, pray tell, are you planning to rent any of those apartments?” A vein popped on his forehead. I could practically see it slithering under his skin. “Not mine, I regret to inform you.”

  I stared at him wordlessly, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “You’ve never finished anything in your life, Hunter.”

  False. I finished analogies, beers, and orgasms on a daily basis. But even my dumb ass knew better than to point it out.

  “You’re packing your things and leaving here immediately,” he continued, delivering his instructions in a cold, practiced manner that told me he’d decided what to do with me before his private plane touched Californian soil.

  “Bet.” I smirked.

  “No time to bid your friends goodbye,” he snapped.

  My head darted up. Being popular was a lonely business, but I actually liked my friends here. “It’ll take me an hour.”

  “I don’t care if it’ll take you a minute. And then,” he proceeded, his voice ri
cocheting off the walls like cartoon bullets chasing after a villain’s ass, “you’re going to do a six-month stint to prove to me you are not the pile of sexually transmitted diseases and bad decisions I see you as.”

  “You’re asking me to go to rehab?” I choked on my morning beer.

  “No. I spoke with your uncle and aunt, and they don’t think your problem is drug or alcohol abuse. Your problem is commitment and finding a sense of purpose. Taking responsibility.”

  It was curious to hear about my problems from someone who’d seen me twice a year for the duration of a week or less for the past decade and a half.

  “What’s it gonna be, then?” I heard myself asking.

  I had this game I played with myself, since I was my only steady companion in life. I changed places and crews so often, I had to find something to anchor me. The game consisted of choosing a daily song that defined my mood. Today, it was clearly “Gimme Shelter” by The Rolling Stones. Because shit, I could use a hideaway right about now.

  “You’re going to be working for me, supporting yourself while attending college, and living in an apartment in the Oval Building, where my staff can monitor your whereabouts and progress.”

  My family owned the Oval Building, a high-rise that was supposed to look like an elegant lipstick tube, but in reality resembled an uncircumcised, angry cock. I’d have warned Da if he’d ever consulted me about it.

  He lowered himself to catch my gaze, his fingers spread on the chipped oak desk between us. “And you’re going to be sober as a judge and celibate as a nun.”

  And bored as fuck. Yeah, no thank you.

  “For six months? You gotta be kidding me.” I stood up, throwing my hands in the air. My head bumped against the ceiling. I didn’t even care. He might as well kill me now. What was life without pussy and a stiff drink? Just a sequence of events nobody wanted to participate in, that’s what.