by Sheila Grace
Three: Birth control.
Four: Never get involved.
Five: Never mix business with pleasure.
Six: Clean bill of health, in writing.
Of course, people did lie about their STD history, in which case it was very useful to have a competent hacker to rifle their health records. If they weren’t getting tested monthly, they were suspect. If they wouldn’t produce a clean STD report, which I was more than willing to provide, then they were a no-go.
Papa McDevitt, health insurance company CEO and dickface extraordinaire, would publically frown upon such flagrant HIPAA violations—but the health insurance industry was all about ass fucking the general populace in the most painful ways possible to increase its bottom line, not to mention CEO bonuses.
If I was an unrepentant prick, then Papa McDevitt was Satan in all his hoofed and horned glory.
I texted Matt Irving. He wasn’t my business partner. He wasn’t my friend. He was more the younger brother I’d never had. He was also my bitch, for all intents and purposes, receiving calls and texts at all hours to hack whoever I needed him to hack. Not that Irving was poorly compensated for being on-call whenever I needed him to be.
Tonight, I sent him the general details: full name, the university she most likely attended, general age bracket. All I wanted were any red flags. Then I got in the car and started driving back toward the house. Bennett had nearly shat himself upon hearing of my purchase. I had, years ago, accused him of settling into rural domesticity. That was before I had discovered this little college town had its merits, including fuckable little redheads who apparently stripped at clubs off the interstate to support their education.
The good thing about my “job,” which hadn’t been so much a job as an investment since going public, was that I never really had to be anywhere in particular at any specific time. Then there was my inheritance. Great-granddad had made a fucking mint in timber, or at least that was the story. Rumors, which were probably closer to the truth, had it that the real money had been made by great-great-granddad, who had been a bit of a bastard himself, so no one talked about that part of the family history—hence, I was James McDevitt IV, not James McDevitt V.
Long story short: I was what people often referred to as a “lucky bastard” with a trust fund that Papa McDevitt couldn’t fuck with.
Add onto that the fact that the Internet and tech start-up I was a partner in had gone from longshot to a multi-billion-dollar IPO, causing a truly ridiculous amount of money to rain from the sky. On paper, I was worth twenty billion more than Papa McDevitt—and he was a rich motherfucker. Operative word being motherfucker.
Working for worthless stock options suddenly hadn’t seemed like such “a colossally idiotic idea,” as my father had called it when I had taken tech geek Chris Hanover and turned his ideas into a multi-billion-dollar venture. My father was old school, and the only thing in life that mattered was cold, hard cash. Before Hanover Tech, Papa McDevitt had hoped I would become a lobbyist—to further his own aspirations.
And like I had told him back then—fuck that shit.
As I exited the interstate and drove through town, I could admit my appreciation for the almost complete stillness of a large, rural agricultural school in the middle of the summer. Sure, a couple of kids were still stumbling around the streets after the bars had closed—but that was about it.
I pulled into the garage, got out, and walked over to plug in. I had bought a Tesla and a house in the ’burbs all in one summer. Maybe Bennett was rubbing off on me. Next up, I’d be in lurv with some little college co-ed, thus heralding the Apocalypse.
I walked inside and looked around the modest little one-story. There was something to be said for coming home alone to a bottle of Macallan M I had lifted off the old man. Bastard had gotten it at auction for an unholy sum. It hadn’t been hard to guess the combination to the safe at his house in the Bahamas. 02-06-19-11. Ronald Reagan’s birthday.
I poured two fingers and sat on the sofa, raising my glass in salute to Papa McDevitt.
Bennett had never understood why I had always fucked with the old man as much as I had over the years. I still remembered my buddy’s sanctimonious shit in sophomore year when I had rented a Bentley on the old man’s tab and left it in the Tenderloin District of SF. Bennett’s family had its own demons—dead oldest son would fuck up anybody’s shit—but his family bullshit couldn’t touch mine.
The whisky soured on my tongue as I thought about my old man and his “proclivities.” An image of the girl from the club tonight caused me to crack my knuckles. My father was on wife number five, but his tastes outside of marriage ran on the young side, and consent was certainly questionable, given the sheer quantity of sedatives he had access to, his innate depravity, and the fact that he was as old as Monty Burns.
His wives, past and present—how had they coped with Pop? My mother? Suicide—though, it hadn’t been ruled such publically. After her? My guess was alcohol and healthy doses of pills, followed by powdered substances and apathy.
Maybe that was why I had given Bennett such shit about his conquest with his little freshman years back. The difference between him and my father, though, was that he had been twenty-eight to her eighteen and had thought he was in love with her. He still was in love with her more than three years later, if I believed the “official” announcement of their engagement. I knew full well that he had proposed more than three years ago, perhaps something Alex Reed hadn’t wanted to broadcast to her nearest and dearest at the tender age of eighteen.
Despite his scandal, Bennett was not the devil incarnate, unlike my father. Papa McDevitt was, I knew firsthand, incapable of love, familial or otherwise. He existed to fuck people over. Hence, health insurance CEO.
For anyone idealistic or ignorant enough to believe that new health insurance laws could protect the masses from the cannibalistic likes of him, dear old dad had armies of lawyers, politicians, and lobbyists in his pocket, all suing the government at every turn to protect his profit margins and the vomit-inducing bonuses his sociopathy has reaped. Screw the sick and bankrupt the middle class! That was my father’s motto.
My phone buzzed, and I looked down, studying Irving’s prelim report. I was starting to believe in fate, kismet, providence. Cassia Flynn’s father, Patrick Flynn, had been remanded to federal lock-up for embezzlement, attempted bribery, and a laundry list of other white-collar crimes. Prior to her college education, young Cassia had been raised by her mother, who had remarried while the girl was in high school.
Ms. Flynn was soon-to-be twenty-four. She also happened to be more than a year short on credits toward an undergraduate degree after being forced to drop classes at the university at the end of her junior year. Apparently, mommy and step-daddy had pulled all funding at the last possible moment while their stock portfolio happened to be doing quite well. Ah, and Mr. Agnew was still claiming her as a dependent on his tax returns—nice. And now this girl was working at a strip club off I-80.
Well, well. Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Agnew on your parental decision-making.
I made a mental note to have Irving dig deeper into the Agnews’ finances—because it was time for a little comeuppance of the McDevitt variety. Ryan Bennett had always believed any fuckery I brought down on other people was merely a symptom of my disregard for the human race. Not so. To be exact, I lived to fuck over only the people who truly deserved it—and those who thought they had purchased their way above the fray of everyday life. No one was immune.
I didn’t see myself as superior in any way. I was a sinner like all the rest. If I hadn’t been, I would have handed the little cocktail waitress from earlier in the evening a check for her studies as my good deed for the day and then left her the fuck alone.
I looked over my calendar and decided to clear any travel.
Cassia Flynn was my project for the next week. My dick needed a good challenge. Besides, I was getting tired of wannabe porn stars and big, fake tits. Fuck it—
no I wasn’t. But variety was the spice of life, wasn’t it?
In the morning, I got up and jogged over to the student rec facility, which sold overpriced memberships to “members of the community” to subsidize student use. Bennett liked to think of me as a lazy bastard with no purpose, motivation, or drive. Again—he was a self-righteous prick who saw himself as superior because he had taken off a few years to get his doctorate in mathematics. Mathematics. Yet another example of him taking life far too seriously.
For some reason he still believed that our being roommates freshman year of undergrad had provided him with some special access into my deranged mind. Bennett was a good guy, but no one knew me that well. In fact, it was to my distinct advantage if everyone—including my nearest and dearest, if there were any to speak of—believed me to be the ne’er-do-well dilettante with no conviction or purpose.
People saw what they wanted to see. With me, they saw a drunken, selfish man-child. Judgment and critical thinking skills tended to be dulled by envy, and the image I projected was easy to accept for most people.
Keeping my dealings with people at a skin-deep level could be seen as a symptom of sociopathy. Or survival. Or maybe I just didn’t give a shit about all the assholes I’d had to deal with all my life. From an early age, I had realized it was far more fun to fuck with my father than it was to be the cardboard cutout he had wanted for a son. My father, James McDevitt III, was all about appearances, because there was no substance beneath his façade—or at least no substance that was suitable for public consumption.
I owed my father in one respect. His void of humanity had shaped who I was. I was a reflection of him. But the past was the fucking past. No changing it, if I wanted to or not.
I owed Bennett, too, for sucker punching me at his place a few years back. It had been a useful lesson. A reminder. Being a dick required being prepared for people to take shots at you. Sure, Bennett getting riled up over his little freshman had been entertaining. Getting socked in the jaw? Not so much.
After an hour hitting the bags, then the free weights, I headed back to the house and showered. The only real problem with taking up residence in a college town in the middle of fucking nowhere was the food. I refused to eat shit food, which required the ability to cook.
I was on the phone, returning texts or calls, for most of the day, but in the back of my mind was that little redheaded cocktail waitress. Fortunately, I was almost certain she would be working tonight. It was mathematics. If her parents had cut her off, she would be working as many hours as she could. I had become accustomed to particular types of women. The ones like Bennett’s ex—entitled cunts who used sex as a means of social climbing. That and strippers who saw the benefits of fucking someone who had cash and no desire for drama.
After having Irving expedite the delivery of a few items to the house, I drove out and had dinner at a decent steakhouse on the interstate before arriving at the club earlier than I normally would. I sat at the same table. In contrast to the night before, the club was busier and its male clientele drunker and louder. The same server from the previous night, dressed again as an angel, arrived at my booth.
“Good evening, Jenna.” Her eyes widened when she realized I had remembered her name. “Tell Jerry I’ll have the same as last night. Is Cass working tonight?”
Her features fell flat. With a sigh, I took out a crisp bill, held it between my fingers, and smiled.
“Don’t worry. I’ve got you.”
She reached out and snatched the bill.
“She comes in at ten.”
“Would you have her bring my next drink?”
“Whatever.”
At five to ten, I saw a small figure in a hoodie walk by the bouncer at the front door and disappear behind the door marked Staff Only. A few minutes later, with her red hair in two long braids, Cassia Flynn came teetering out into the club in her short plaid skirt, fishnets, Mary Janes, and white button-up shirt with several buttons missing from the top.
The main act had just started. It was the same girl from the night before. Orange tan, huge tits, boyfriend with the asshole truck. Jenna returned with my whisky, and I sat back, trying to tune out the music. Stripper rock got old fast. There was only so much Mötley Crüe, Nickelback, Def Leppard, and Warrant a grown man without a mullet and a pick-up truck could take.
But I hadn’t come here for the music.
Like the night before, I watched the redhead teeter around the club. She had definitely never been a server before, and I could tell she hated it. Most of the women I picked up didn’t mind it. To them, the money was good, and that was the only consideration. If your options were between this and being a fast-food wage slave, I could see this being the better option.
I sipped my whisky as Cass stopped at a table with a group of college-age boys. To think, I used to be one of those dicks—drooling at the stage, thinking I had a shot at the stripper just because I was being the loudest jackass in the club and holding up the largest denomination of bills. The girl took their orders, and I watched her entire frame relax as she escaped their table.
At the next table, the guy wasn’t watching the stage. This paunchy middle-aged asswipe had his eyes glued to Cass like she was a ribeye. I knew his type, too. The fucking loser jackass whose wife and kids were at home sleeping while he headed out to a strip club looking for what he thought was going to be the easiest mark—the wait staff.
Something he’d said hadn’t gone over well with her. For half a second, her jade-green eyes froze over before she made a single-word reply and headed back to the bar. I watched her place the orders with Jerry. She looked down. Then her head popped up and her eyes scanned the club.
As soon as she saw me, I tipped my glass and finished the remainder of my drink before looking toward the stage where fake-blonde, fake-tan, fake-tits was gyrating on the pole. The club only allowed “partial” nudity, which meant tits and G-strings. I would be the first to admit that booze and fully naked dancers not separated from the rabble by three inches of glass was a poor idea. Drunken assholes and naked strippers—not a good combination for any place that wanted to avoid a fucking melee.
More rules of mine since the good ol’ college days: never get out of control and never challenge the bouncers. I had done both in my younger and dumber days. In fact, my good pal Ryan Bennett still fully expected me to do both any time he saw me. Granted, I would wipe the floor with most of the bouncers in this place, but I had nothing to prove. I was more than happy to leave the chest thumping to the chumps with little dicks.
I watched as Cass arranged cheap drinks on a tray and headed in the direction of the college kids. It fucking amazed me when she made it to their table without spilling the drinks. She laid out their order and didn’t wait for a tip. Smart girl. If anything, they might leave a couple of crumpled bills, but most likely not.
Her next stop was the middle-aged sleaze. She stiffened as she walked in the direction of his table. When she got there and set down the drink, he crooked a finger at her, trying to induce her into to bending over. She smirked, shook her head, and turned in the direction of the bar. A minute later, she was standing in front of my table holding the cocktail napkin with her name on it in one hand and my whisky in the other.
“What the fuck is your problem?” she demanded.
She set the drink in front of me, careful not to spill something that would cost all her tips—if she were getting any gratuities at all from the evening’s clown car of dickheads. I lifted a hand to my ear.
“Sorry?”
“You heard me. I said, what the fuck is your problem? Are you used to dropping a wad of cash and having girls fall to their knees to suck your dick?”
I smiled. Excellent. This girl had a fire in her.
“On a good night, yes. I am quite accustomed to women falling to their knees to suck my dick, but don’t get me wrong. I do believe in reciprocity.”
She blinked, her cheeks flushing hot pink.
“Well,
if with that wad of cash, you thought you were paying me for future services—”
I laughed.
“Lovely, don’t get so excited. That was just your tip, but if you feel so inclined—”
I looked down at my lap, and when I looked up, her eyes had followed my gaze. A second later, her head snapped up, and she glared at me.
“I don’t!”
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
I smiled as she turned and began stalking toward the bar. This tightly wound little cocktail waitress was turning out to be more fun than I had had in quite some time. I finished my drink. When my phone buzzed, I saw a text from Madison Montgomery, NYC socialite. At one point, she had been married to some entertainment investor too busy to keep her satisfied.
She had taken half in the divorce and now spent most of her time doing Pilates or shopping on Fifth Avenue. I saw her on occasion when I was on the other coast. She was one of a handful I had fucked more than once, but only because her idea of commitment was as nonexistent as my own. There was nothing wrong with Madison from the perspective of a quick fuck, but it did require dealing with a noxious sense of entitlement that permeated her entire being. In other words: she was impossible to be around for any longer than a quick fuck.
Maybe I was truly getting old, but I was beginning to feel a yawning, cavernous emptiness around Madison and those like her. No question—I was a rich asshole. But at least I didn’t attend charity galas just to be seen, only to spit on anyone who might actually need charity themselves.
I watched Cassia Flynn for the rest of her shift. Such as strange girl. The only times she let her guard down coincided with her brief interactions with the bartender and the enormous bouncer. She managed to spill an order—cheap well drinks that would probably come out of her tips—even though she looked like she was walking on eggshells with every step she took. When she bent down to clean up the fallen drinks, her short plaid skirt rose up enough to expose the slightest hint of her creamy, round ass.