Chapter 1
Reed
Fifteen years ago
As the sorority girl in the purple wig kneels before me, her mouth working enthusiastically on me, I lean back in my armchair and try to clear my mind. I don’t want to think about my father’s lifeless body dangling in his prison cell while this girl is sucking me off. Actually, I don’t want to think about that under any circumstances, obviously. But after getting that horrible call this morning, I can’t stop imagining the grisly scene. I thought getting this pretty girl onto her knees would distract me from the images ravaging my mind.
Apparently not.
I should probably pull her off me. Pay her the usual fifty bucks and explain I’m just not feeling it tonight. But my dick is rock hard in her mouth, despite the chaos swirling inside my mind... So, fuck it. I sit back, close my eyes, and will her talented mouth to coax my racing mind into a temporary state of amnesia.
This girl isn’t a professional, despite appearances, even though she’s presently sucking my cock for cash. She’s a student here at UCLA, the same as me—a fresh-faced sorority girl I met at a costume party at my fraternity house a month ago. The theme of the party was “Hookers and Pimps,” and she was dressed like Pretty Woman. So, naturally, there was no shortage of raunchy jokes throughout the night... all of which ultimately led to her following me to my room upstairs and giving me head like a pro.
When the girl finished her task that night, I patted her head, congratulated her on a job well done, and handed her a fifty. I was joking, of course. Being an ass. Acting like a john. But damned if this pretty woman didn’t surprise me by taking my fifty with gusto, stuffing it into her push-up bra, and purring, “Call me whenever you’ve got another fifty to spend.” And I’ve been paying her for sex ever since. Fifty bucks for a blowjob and a hundred to fuck her. Plus, twenty bucks to eat her out—that last item being completely backwards and stupid, I know. This girl should be paying me to lick her into a frenzy, especially considering how well I do it. How hard I make her come, each and every time. But it’s okay. I figure I’ve spent far more than twenty bucks on far stupider things in my nineteen years than making a pretty girl come like a freight train.
I gotta say, this whole Pretty Woman experience has taught me something interesting about myself. Something I didn’t know before. Namely, that I get off paying for sex. It doesn’t matter which of us is having the orgasm, or what particular sex act we’re doing. I’ve realized I like paying for it because it makes things uncomplicated. We both know what we’re getting, and what we’re not. Specifically, we know feelings aren’t involved. I’m not her Prince Charming, and she knows it, which, in turn, immunizes me from hearing any of the usual deal-breakers women say to me around the one-month mark. The stuff that sends me running for the hills. Let down your guard, Reed. I want you to let me in, Reed. Am I your girlfriend or not, Reed? And, of course, the biggest deal-breaker of them all: I think I’m falling in love with you, Reed.
I touch my fake whore’s purple hair as she continues her enthusiastic work, trying in vain to clear my tortured mind. But it’s no use. Even with her working on me, I can’t stop imagining my father’s lifeless body dangling in his prison cell.
Why’d he do it?
I understand what specifically triggered him to wrap that cord around his neck this morning: the feds tracking down the last of his secret offshore accounts. I’m just having a hard time comprehending how that particular event finally pushed my father over the edge, after everything that’s happened over the past ten years.
I mean, shit, my father didn’t kill himself during my parents’ bitter divorce and custody battle. Or, right after that, when Mom suffered a catastrophic mental breakdown and had to be institutionalized. Dad didn’t off himself six years ago, after the jury sent him to prison for financial fraud. Or when Dad’s photo was splashed across the news as the poster boy for “corporate greed.” If my father was going to hang himself, why not do it during any of that? Or, at least, during those first few years of his incarceration, when he was forced to sit back and watch his thirteen-year-old getting passed around from one distant relative to another before finally landing in a home for teenage rejects at age fourteen. Honestly, if Dad was going to end it all, I would have preferred he’d have done it then, when his son got shipped off to that horrible hell of a group home. At least, that way, I would have felt like Dad actually gave a shit about me, more than his stolen fortune.
But, no. Apparently, being an incarcerated felon with an ex-wife in the loony bin and a fourteen-year-old basket-case of a son in foster care was perfectly survivable to Terrence Rivers. Just as long as he still had his secret pot of gold. But, God forbid, the man was stripped of his last illicit penny, and, suddenly, his life just wasn’t worth living anymore. Asshole.
Well, news flash, Dad: you’re not the only one who went flat broke today. Thanks to the purportedly “untraceable” trust fund you set aside for me, the one that was supposed to transfer to me on my twenty-first birthday, I’m now as poor as the poorest guy in my fraternity house. But am I going to kill myself over today’s reversal of fortune? No. Because unlike you, Dad, I know that no matter what life throws at me—which, by the way, has been a fucking lot in my nineteen years—I’ll always come out on top in the end. Despite what I’ve been through these past ten years, despite what I’ve had to steel myself against, to fight against, to overcome, I’ve never lost sight of my future destiny—the one I’ve seen in my dreams—and I won’t let anyone keep me from achieving it. Not even you.
Thanks to you, people hear my last name and think things like “liar” and “thief” and “fraud.” But one day, after I’ve built my empire from nothing but my blood, sweat, and tears and relentlessness, people will hear the name Rivers and think words like “mogul” and “winner” and “self-made man.” And if not any of those things, then, at least, they’ll think “Hey, there’s that asshole who’s living the life of my dreams.” Because if I can’t earn the world’s respect, thanks to your name, then I’ll settle for earning their envy.
At that last thought, I grip my fake whore’s fake hair, shove myself even farther down her supple throat, and release with a loud groan. A moment later, as I pull out of her, I’m trembling—but not from physical exertion. No, in this moment, I’m quaking from the resolve flooding my veins.
“I don’t need him,” I grit out through clenched teeth. And, by God, for the first time in my life, I’m positive it’s the truth. In fact, I don’t need anyone. At my comment, the sorority girl looks up at me quizzically. But before she says a word, I pull a fifty from my wallet and toss it onto the brown carpet at her knees. “Well done, Pretty Woman. Now run along. I’ve got something important to do.”
She looks surprised. “Now? It’s midnight.”
“And I’m running late.”
She makes a face that lets me know she’s offended—and for a split-second, I think she’s going to tell me to fuck off, as she should. But, nope. The spineless sorority girl who so desperately wants to be liked rises and slides into my lap. “What’s wrong with you tonight? You’ve been acting weird all night.”