A Vicious Rumor Read online

  The kid across from me was entirely forgettable. Medium brown hair, medium height, medium build, and his dad owned a medium successful business that made enough to buy him a seat at King’s Academy. But still, he walked around acting like he owned the place. Fucking punk.

  “Shouldn’t have bargained for something you couldn’t deliver,” I taunted him.

  He spat out blood and gave me a wary look. “You three set me up.”

  I just shook my head. “That’s not how the Triad works and the whole school knows it.” He looked unsteady on his feet as he tried to circle around me. I followed his pattern, keeping him at bay just a little bit longer. “Anyone needs a favor? They go to Paper. He documents and makes a recommendation. Scissors cuts the deal. You don’t deliver? You play Rochambeau and go up against me. Beat your opponent, which has never happened before, and your debt is repaid. Don’t, and your name is blacklisted from the Social List.”

  “I don’t care about the fucking Social List,” the punk in front of me tried to yell, but his voice was giving out from exhaustion.

  I shrugged. “Okay, man,” I replied, because I really did not give a shit. The Social List crap was more Scissors’ thing. I just enjoyed giving punks like this beatdowns and it’d been so very long since I’d had the chance. It’s why I’d agreed to be a part of the Triad in the first place. A guaranteed and protected way to get my punches in.

  I looked over to where Paper was standing and briefly locked eyes with him. His tall, lithe frame easily stood out amongst the crowd, along with his jet black hair and glasses that obscured that dead look in his eyes. He gave me the signal to go ahead and end the fight.

  I moved forward and before medium-kid even knew what to do, I was landing a punch to his nose that had him falling back into the dirt, clutching his face and screaming in pain. I looked up to see Paper rolling his eyes in a bit of exasperation. The crowd rushed forward to huddle around the kid on the ground, which really fucking irritated me.

  They were supposed to crowd around me. I was the one to win the fight. And yet, here they were, taking pity on this little sack of shit. I cracked my knuckles in irritation as I turned away from the idiotic scene in front of me.

  “Hey! I think he broke his nose!” someone called out, as if I cared. This kid came to us for a favor. We did what we were supposed to do for him, and then he didn’t deliver on his end. He decided to play Rochambeau. He knew what he was getting into. He shouldn’t have defaulted on his debt.

  “Alright everybody,” Paper said, clapping his hands to get everyone’s attention. “The nurse has been alerted to expect a visitor. You two,” he said, pointing to the two people closest to the kid on the ground, “go ahead and escort Brian to the nurse.”

  They both nodded their agreement and helped Brian up off the floor. He limped away with them, which was pathetic because last I checked, it was his nose that was broken, not his fucking foot.

  Paper approached me, and I groaned. I knew I was going to get a lecture from him. Luca Anderson, aka Paper, was currently a junior and one of the smartest kids at the school. He knew it too, the dick. Acted like he was higher and mightier than everyone else. It was hard to blame him. His family was extraordinarily wealthy. They owned a restaurant group that operated super well known franchises for middle-class Americans, plus his mom was a high-end fashion designer. Not only that, but Luca was tall, had dark hair, and a darker attitude. The girls flocked to him, but he acted like he couldn’t give a damn. Which only made them all want him more.

  Him and his “better than thou” crap really pissed me off. But, he was the brains behind the entire Triad operation. Without him, this whole thing wouldn’t work.

  “Rock,” he said in his stern voice.

  “Yes, Dad,” I said with a roll of my eyes.

  “Hilarious,” he replied in a flat voice. “Next time, not so much on the blood, please. It has the tendency to create paperwork.”

  I scoffed. “Your name is fucking ‘Paper.’ What you’re telling me is that I’m giving you job security.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to understand the intricacies of such things,” he replied, and I cracked my knuckles. He looked down at my bloodied fist and sighed. “Just keep it in mind for next time, yes?” he said, walking away before I had a chance to even respond.

  “He’s right, you know.” I cracked my neck before turning to face the third member to our group. Scissors, aka Zachary King, of King’s Academy itself. Tall, blonde, blue-eyed, and altogether an irritating shithead. His father was the Headmaster of the Academy, which had been in their family for generations. Not only that, but the family maintained The Social List, or the “Green Book” as it was colloquially known by those who were in it. They said it was for the color of the cover, but I always think it was because they were so fucking crazy about money. The book was self-described as “the preeminent list of Washington’s society and arbiter of social precedence in the Metropolitan Area.” Zachary and his stupid family were the epitome of status.

  And totally gross.

  The Triad had a total love-hate relationship between the three of us. To the rest of the school, we were thicker than thieves. But, between each of us, there were definitely problems.

  “Is that so?” I replied in a bored tone to Scissors’ question.

  “I know your name is Rock, but try not to be as dumb as one. If you take things too far, that kid could report it to his parents. Or the parents could start asking questions. And that all means trouble for us. We’re trying to fly under the radar here. And besides, we want people to come to us and ask us for favors. If they’re too afraid that they’re gonna die, no one’s gonna ask us to cut a deal.”

  I turned to face Scissors and gave him a bored look. “My place on this team is fear, right? Make sure people are too afraid to face me when they play Rochambeau that they do what they’re supposed to do, yes? Otherwise, all this,” I said, gesturing wildly between us. “Doesn’t work.”

  “Just don’t break people’s noses, dickwad,” Scissors said to me.

  “Can’t make any promises,” I replied to him with a growl. “What’s the damage on this one?” I asked him, referring to what it was we lost because this kid didn’t deliver. I generally didn’t concern myself with the details of the deals. That was more Paper-Scissors territory. When things were going well, I got a healthy payout of funds in the form of cash and favors each month from the dealings, and that’s really all I cared about.

  “Meh, nothing really. It was more of a deal where I had to call in a favor or two. No cash loss, cause I know that’s all your broke-ass cares about,” Scissors said, looking over my shoulder at the group of girls still hanging around after the fight.

  “I got my reasons, man. Not all of us are heirs to family fortunes like yourself,” I grunted at him.

  “Yeah, how is that going, by the way? Dad still a big fuck up with the company?”

  I ground my teeth in irritation. I knew that Scissors was just being his normal asshole self, but still. My Dad’s business was a sensitive subject for me, and I didn’t need Scissors rubbing it in my face. Especially since his family was so fucking rich, he could never work a job, buy a yacht a day, and he’d still have money left to spend on his death bed.

  “Piss off,” I said to him instead of engaging. Scissors and I got into fights on an almost daily basis. Without Paper here to break us up, I might end up breaking a second person’s nose today.

  Both of them more than deserved it, in my humble opinion.

  “Sounds like a plan,” Scissors replied, brushing by me. “I’d much rather talk to the groupies than you, anyways,” he said, referring to the girls standing in a circle gossiping about the fight.

  “Whatever,” I said, rolling my eyes.

  “You’ll be at the meeting tomorrow, yeah?” Zachary asked me over his shoulder.

  I sighed. Scissors always wanted to have meetings, and I always found them completely pointless. But, it’d been made very clear to
me from early on that if I wanted to keep my spot on the Triad, I needed to attend the meetings. It didn’t matter so much these days. Today was the last day of school before our summer vacation and next year I’d be a senior. My place in the Academy was pretty well established by now, and I was mostly checked out of this place anyway.

  “Yeah, probably,” I replied.

  “Not probably,” Scissors called back at me. “You’ll be there. And party at my place tonight.”

  I gritted my teeth and didn’t respond. I made my way out to the parking lot and climbed into my Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. I would have slammed the door, but I’d taken them off for the summer.

  Fucking Paper.

  Fucking Scissors.

  Fucking all-of-them.

  They all pissed me off. I was so ready to be done with this place. I hated the fact that I had a whole ‘nother year left to have the dick around with these assholes. I’d been done with them since elementary school. None of them had ever redeemed themselves in my eyes.

  None of them ever could.

  I waited for the rest of the riffraff to clear out of the parking lot before I put my car in drive and zoomed off. No one ever approached me at school these days, which was fine. I didn’t really want to talk to anyone, at least not to anyone at this school. I’d much rather have them be afraid of me. It kept the gossip to a minimum.

  My life was too busy for all the petty nonsense that went on at the Academy, anyways. I was only in the Triad because it made me money, which in turn, supported my goal. My father’s business had been tanking since I was young. He never got over what had happened and the business had never recovered from the bad press about its CEO. No one really wants to do business with you if they can’t trust you. And, when the whole world finds out that you knocked up a stripper and lied to your wife about your adopted son, yeah, that sort of shakes people’s trust in you.

  But, as much as my father seemed to have given up, I didn’t want to see the business fail. It was all our family had to our name. If it went under, we’d be just like everyone else. Working for someone else. Our future controlled by someone else.

  I never wanted anyone to have that type of power over me.

  2

  TYSON

  “I understand that you’re upset, Bill. But, please know that we are doing everything we can. It’s not a simple issue to fix. If you could just give us a little bit more time.” I could hear my father’s desperation clear through the office door the moment I approached it. It had been like this for a while now. Almost every time I came home, my father was on the phone, seemingly begging with a client not to walk away from the business.

  It was irritating, and I felt helpless.

  I understood that I was only seventeen, but still. I had a pretty good grasp on what it was that my father did for a living. He ran a real estate development company that had been passed to him from my Grandfather. I was confident that I could help turn things around if given the chance. To me it was obvious, the business needed an influx of cash.

  “Just one more week,” my father begged on the phone, and I cringed. “One more week and we’ll have the plans over to you.”

  I heard him let out a deep sigh. “Yes, I understand. Well, I am sorry,” he said, adding pathetic to desperate.

  I heard his office phone click as he placed it back in the receiver. The door was cracked open, and he saw me try and slip up the stairs, unseen.

  “Hold it right there, Tyson,” he said, his voice suddenly changing into an authoritative tone. I rolled my eyes. If only he could have this level of confidence with his clients.

  “What is it?” I asked him in a bored tone.

  “Guess who called just a few minutes ago?” he asked, opening the door to his office all the way.

  I turned to look at him, my hand gripping the large wooden post of the stairs hard. I hated playing guessing games. He seemed to love them. “Another client leaving the business?” I said with venom.

  My father looked taken aback for a moment. In the clear light of the afternoon I could see how old and tired he looked. He’d always been thin, but now he looked gaunt and his hair was starting to thin. If you put the two of us next to one another, not a single person would have ever guessed that we were related.

  “The principal,” he said, finally regaining his bearing.

  “Oh? What’d he want? Didn’t you tell him it’s officially summer break?” I smirked, turning and climbing a few of the stairs.

  “He told me that you broke someone’s nose today,” my father called out.

  I stopped and turned back around. “And?”

  I was a little irritated by the whole thing, but I was trying not to show it. Scissors’ main job was to use his connections with his father to make sure that we were able to operate without getting in trouble. Maybe I would go to tomorrow’s meeting so I could ream him out for this fuck up. He probably got distracted talking to girls after the fight instead of going back to the school and making sure his father was pacified.

  “And this has got to stop,” my father said, trying his best to be an authority figure in the household. Too bad for him that ended the day my ex-mother walked out of the house, and I found out that he’d lied to me about being the bastard child of a stripper. It’s not that I hated him. I just didn’t respect him.

  “Sure, pops,” I said dismissively, continuing up the stairs. “I’ll get right on that.”

  “This conversation isn’t done, young man,” my father called out after me. I didn’t bother responding. But, then he said something that stopped me in my tracks. “You’ll be spending the summer at your mother’s.”

  I turned around and bounded down the stairs. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, old man.”

  “I’m not,” he said, crossing his arms and looking as pathetic as ever.

  “I haven’t spent a summer with that woman since in a while. I’m not interested.” I’d been made to spend a summer with my biological mother about two years ago. My father had to travel a lot for business at the time and that was the arrangement that had been struck. I’d been assured that mommy dearest was no longer in the profession that got her knocked up with me in the first place. That she was respectable now. That I’d have a great time.

  Well, apparently old habits die hard, because mommy dearest disappeared most nights, presumably to her not so nine-to-five job, and I was left alone. If I didn’t hate people so much, I would have been pissed.

  “I don’t care if you’re interested or not,” my father said.

  I turned on him, my anger growing. “So, let me get this straight,” I said. “You intend to get me to, what? Stop fighting? By sending me to spend a summer with my stripper mother in Anacostia? An area infested with drugs and crime. That’s your logic? Parent of the year award, pops.”

  “It’s not up for discussion,” he replied, trying to stare me down. “You need a change of pace. A different friend group. Hopefully that will help you reset so you can finish out next year without getting expelled.”

  I shook my head. There was no chance of me ever being expelled. Well, not as long as Scissors did his fucking job, which apparently was proving difficult for him lately. I didn’t really pick fights outside of Rochambeau. No one was dumb enough to try and challenge me for no reason. And, I didn’t really associate with anyone enough to pick fights myself.

  Rochambeau was my outlet.

  “You do realize that I have a car, right? And a license? Just how do you propose to force me to stay at some place I don’t want to be?”

  My father sighed. “I really didn’t want it to come to this, but, if you don’t agree, I’ll cut everything off. I won’t pay for the insurance and I’ll terminate the lease on the vehicle.”

  “You’re a fucking coward,” I muttered under my breath.

  “What was that young man?” my father asked, raising his voice.

  I stood up straight and raised my own to match his. “I said, you’re a fucking coward. I’m g
lad I’m going to get a break from you for a summer. I wouldn’t want to stay here and watch you continue to run our company into the ground.”

  “Our company?” he scoffed. “The hell do you mean, ‘our company?’”

  I shook my head at him. "This is where you choose to develop a spine? I'm so done with this place anyways," I said, storming upstairs to my room.

  My father yelled something from downstairs, but I slammed my door, not caring. He'd never ever chased me into my room, and I knew he wasn't going to start doing that today. He was shipping me off to my mother's because he was tired of me. He never wanted a child. I'd overheard him say it to someone on the phone once. Probably a therapist or some shit.

  Told them I was a mistake.

  A surprise.

  An accident.

  A life that destroyed his.

  And then he wondered why I got into fights as a kid.

  No one seemed to get me.

  I crashed onto my bed and stared at the ceiling for a while, just letting the thoughts swirl in my head. I lifted my hand up and stared at the tigers eye bead held onto my wrist with a braided leather strap I'd created myself. Well, maybe one person in this entire fucked up world got me. But who the hell even knew where she was now. I rolled over onto my stomach and sighed.

  The last time I'd been forced to stay with my mother I'd tried to track Lily down. The only piece of information I had about her was that she lived somewhere near Anacostia when I was thirteen years old. I'd gone to the library and asked for help, but the librarian told me even she wasn't that good.

  Irritating.

  All of it.

  All of them.

  My phone buzzed and I turned over to grab it

  “Scissors: Change of plans. Meeting now. Then party.”

  I tossed the phone back on the nightstand. I thought about an entire summer away from fucking Scissors and everyone else at the school. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad. The kids that attended King's Academy were all fake, judgmental assholes. They'd never been through anything difficult. Their lives were cushy and it showed.