“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.”