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I pressed my lips together at that, rocking back on my heels, tipping back the whiskey, and draining it. I slammed it down on the edge of his desk, leaning slightly forward. "I don't want your fucking money or the strings that come attached to it. Take it and shove it up your ass. I don't need you or it. I will make my own way in the world."
With that, and literally nothing but the clothing on my back and the wallet that had just enough cash to buy me a hotel room for a week, I left.
I never looked back.
I never called on holidays or birthdays.
I never asked for a dime.
I didn't show up for important events, not even my father's funeral when a heart attack took him down on a golf course, something I only knew about because it made the news.
I was living holed up in my cheap hotel room in Navesink Bank the next week, working as a bouncer in a club on the outskirts of town because the owners appreciated the fact that I was fearless and filled with rage.
I was there for years.
It was there I met Ross Ward the first time.
He was walking past the mouth of the alley where I was wailing into some shithead who shoved a random woman against a wall and forced his hand up her skirt.
"Do you always rage-out like that in a fight, or did he grab your girlfriend's ass or something?"
I stood slowly, wiping the sweat from my brow with a blood covered hand, reaching into my back pocket for a cigarette and lighter.
I shrugged. "My paycheck didn't clear yet," I said, most of the anger stemming from the fact that that meant I wouldn't be hitting up Chaz's like I planned, finding a skirt, and taking her back to the hotel to have a tour of my sheets. "Then this schmuck put his hands on a girl inside. His face seemed like a good fucking place to take out my anger."
To that, the man's lips curved slightly. "I usually like desperate, but I can definitely make use of stupidly angry."
"This a job opportunity?" I asked, kicking the idiot on the ground as he rolled up onto all fours. "You show your face around here again and you'll be eating through a tube, mother fucker." It was a threat, and not an empty one, but my voice was calm. I had purged all the rage.
"It's a chance to audition for a job. You ever hear of Hex?" At my raised brow, he reached into his pocket and produced a card with just his name and address on it. "Now you have. Tomorrow at nine."
So then I had my audition, making the ring so slick with blood that it had to be hosed off afterward.
But then I had a job.
It was the first time in years that I didn't truly have to worry about money, wasn't living paycheck-to-paycheck. Because Ross Ward paid a nice chunk of royalties to us. And me, well, I drew a crowd with my particular brand of animalistic violence.
I changed my name.
I completely got rid of the ties to my past.
Pretty soon, the money piled enough to get me an actual residence, just an apartment, but at least it was a pay-by-the-month instead of pay-by-the-night kind of place.
It was right about then that I got a letter in the mail, it being the first time I had ever surfaced on paper.
I knew the stationary the second I pulled it out of my PO Box. Because only the Scott family invested in expensive linen-like paper with stamped calligraphy on it.
And since there was only my grandfather left, I figured it was from him.To "Pagan" Richard Scott,I have been looking for you for six years, since the same week you ran off. It was a quest that found renewed passion after your father passed, you being my only living descendent. But you could have been anywhere, the private investigators informed me, and there was no trace of you.
It wasn't until this week that you finally became a blip on their radar. In Navesink Bank of all places. Only half an hour away.
I understand your need for your own freedom. I respect your determination to make it on your own. I think your father, for all his protestation to the contrary, admired it as well.
By all accounts, you have become a headstrong, stubborn man, and as such, I don't expect a warm family reunion.
But I am writing to tell you that your trust did fall into your hands at twenty-one. I have enclosed the account details for your modest sum that you are free to do with as you please.With regards,
Richard Scott, Sr.That 'modest sum' he wrote of? It was five-million dollars. And, to him, that truly was a modest amount of money. It was the equivalent to a normal grandparent giving you five-hundred bucks for your high school graduation.
