||Vicious||

Chapter 10

I CHANGED INTO SOMETHING NICER and treated my parents to a restaurant at the marina for dinner. We ordered a bottle of wine, which I could easily afford with my new paycheck, and appetizers as well as entrees. They filled me in on their lives, which, surprisingly, they claimed were a lot quieter and nicer now. Baron Senior was being cared for mainly by his nurses—he was much sicker than I'd realized. And Josephine Spencer was rarely at the mansion and often away traveling.

The restaurant was on a boat called La Belle and was a little fancy for my liking. They picked the place. I would have never chosen it. Everyone in town knew Vicious and his friends had set fire to La Belle during our senior year, but no one knew why.

The food was good and the tablecloths were the kind of white you see in Tidecommercials. I couldn't complain. I had food and wine in my belly and a smile on my face.

Dinner was just a distraction, though. The reason I was here was him.

And he was dangerous.

"You working with Baron Junior now?" Mama smiled in a meaningful way I didn't like. Her body was fleshy after years of being overworked and filled with home-cooked, fat-laden Southern food she would've never served to her employers, but beneath it all, she was beautiful. "Tell us about it."

"There's really nothing to tell. He needed a PA, and I needed a job. Since we went to high school together, he thought of me," I explained carefully. Calling him an "old friend" would be lying to their faces.

I left out the fact that Vicious had said he needed me to do something shady for him.

That he admitted he had less than respectable plans for me.

That he'd already threatened to fire me twice.

And I definitely left out the part where he told me he'd fuck me against the glass desk of his office for everyone to see.

"He's a fine-looking boy." My mother clucked her tongue in approval, taking another generous gulp from her wine. "Surprised he hasn't settled down with anyone. But I guess that's how it is when you're so young and wealthy. You have the pick of the crop."

I shuddered inwardly. Mama admired the rich. It's something Rosie and I were never on board with. Maybe because we had the misfortunate of attending All Saints High and tasting the disdain and snobbery of wealthy students. The bitterness stayed in our mouths long after we'd left Todos Santos.

"I never liked the boy," Daddy said out of nowhere.

My head snapped to him. My father was the Spencers' Jack-of-all trades. He cleaned the pool, handled the landscaping, and was the maintenance guy when something broke down or needed replacing. He worked mostly outside and had gray hair, a sun-wrinkled face, and the stringy, muscled body of a laborer. This was the first time he'd ever spoke about Vicious that way.

"How come?" I probed, pretending to be nonchalant while I poured myself another glass of wine. I was going to be tipsy by the time I got back home, but I didn't care.

"He's bad news. The things he did when he lived here...I'll never forget them." Daddy's lips were pinched in the kind of disapproval that made my heart sink.

I knew my father. He rarely spoke ill of someone. If he didn't like Vicious, that meant he was rude to him too. I wanted to poke at the subject, but knew my chances of getting answers were slim to none. Daddy wasn't a gossip.

I paid the check, even though my parents tried to argue about it, and Daddy drove us back to the house.

My room remained the same as when I'd left it ten year ago. Interpol and Donnie Darko posters. The cherry blossom mural, the colors slightly faded—that was what I loved about oil colors, they grew old with you. Some pictures of me with Rosie scattered around. The room reflected my teenage years pretty accurately. Only it didn't have a huge picture of Vicious squeezing my heart until I mentally bled out.