“Shit.” He grabbed at his thick black hair as he paced the room. “If a bottom feeder—no offense—knows about it, then it’s basically a done deal. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
“No offense taken. We’re fucking—I mean, we fuck occasionally—not planning our wedding or anything. I know this is not ideal, but if all else fails, at least you have the trust to fall back on, right?”
“You know full fucking well that I don’t want to use the trust for that. I won’t. I’d rather take on more work, or something.”
“What? You can’t. You realize that sleep is a requisite for human survival, right? And when I say sleep, I mean more than a couple of hours a night. Not to mention the fact that even you need to spend some time doing the study you’re here for in the first place. Between Cygnus, work, and classes, you take on any more, and you’ll fucking kill yourself.” Fox abruptly stopped pacing and stared at me as though I’d grown a second head. “Poor choice of words...” Really fucking poor. I was kicking myself inside, but I carried on, “but you know what I mean.”
He worked God knew how many hours a week, writing papers for people who were too stupid or lazy to do their own, but who had the requisite cash to pay for them. Since there was a ceiling to what could be charged for a paper—he was already commanding the highest rate, plus a slight premium, as his papers were second-to-none—the way to increase income was to write more papers.
Lucky for him, he was quicker than most, and could churn out several papers in a day—many of which weren’t even his area of expertise, like history and liberal arts—often while he was in his classes on completely different subjects. But even with his immense brainpower and skill, there was still a limit to what could be done without him keeling over with nervous exhaustion.
After staring at me for so long, I was beginning to suspect he’d been turned to stone, he resumed pacing. “I’m so close with the mailbox money, but it won’t happen quick enough to fix this, so the only option left is to find out who this person is, and get rid of them.” The mailbox money referred to a few projects he was working on—business ideas he was developing, that one day soon would pay out big, according to Fox. With his skills, expertise, and sheer bloody-mindedness, I didn’t doubt that fact. He was an actual wunderkind.
“You’re going to kill your rival for a college Fellowship fund? Jesus, Fox, that’s a little excessive.”
“When did I say I was going to murder anybody, you fucktard?”
“You didn’t, but—”
“There is no ‘but.’ I didn’t. Period. I said get rid of them. Meaning, send them scuttling the fuck back under whatever rock they’ve recently emerged from.”
“How do you know they’re new?” This time he looked at me as though he was weighing up whether to bother wasting his energy killing me.
“I’m pretty sure you’re being an asshole intentionally, which is annoying, both because it’s my schtick, and because I’m way better at it than you—” He was right on both counts. Even some of the guys in Cygnus with us weren’t quite sure how to take Fox’s dumb/smart routine sometimes, and they knew him better than most people did. “And because you’re wasting my fucking time. Who of the existing students could it be? You know that IQ is fixed at birth, right?
So, unless someone we already know has had a brain transplant, there’s no fucking way that anyone has improved enough to warrant taking half my money. That only leaves someone new. All we have to do is find them, and ‘encourage’ them to leave. Neither of which should take us more than minimal effort and not much more time.”
“Really? And just how do you envisage being able to encourage them to leave?”
“Everyone has a weak spot. All we have to do is find this person’s and work it.”
The stony glint in his eye was kind of terrifying. This was the real Fox—the evil genius almost nobody got to see. Actually, pretty much only I got to see. To the rest of the world he was this affable dudebro who people knew was smart on paper, but had trouble picturing him that way in person, as it mostly didn’t fit with the way he carried himself.
“Really? ’Cos what I’m hearing sounds like a whole bag of time and effort, not to mention trouble. All of which could reasonably be avoided.” I looked at him pointedly.
“Don’t say it.” He stared defiantly back as he replied.
“But you know it makes sense.” He knew it, and I knew it, but I also knew he wouldn’t do what I was suggesting he should.
“Stop. Talking.” His tone was as sharp as the shady look he was throwing me as he spoke.
I continued to stare him down—he didn’t scare me. “Dude, just fucking ask them.”
Chapter 2
Fox
I swore to God, sometimes I hated him as much as I loved him.
“You just had to fucking go there, didn’t you, asshole? I’m not asking your parents for a goddamned dime, let alone thousands of dollars. Hard. No.”
“Man, you need to check your fucking pride.”
“Why? Because paupers like me can’t afford to be proud?”
“What? No. Why do you have to be such a jerk about this shit? Because pride comes before a fall, and I’m no fortune teller, but I sense an almighty fucking fall on its way. Not only that, but they love you like a son, and would give you the clothes off their backs without thinking twice.”
“Jesus. Now I have an image in my mind of your mom and dad naked. Thanks for that, buddy.” Everything Kane was saying was correct. Amelia and James O’Neill were generous to a fault, and had shown me nothing but love over the years since I’d first met the family. They truly did treat me as one of their own, but that wasn’t the point. “But parental porn aside, I’m not going to abuse their generosity by asking them to cover this. I’m just not.”
“First of all, it’s not an abuse of anything, and secondly, you wouldn’t need to ask them if you didn’t want to. I could do that instead.”
“It’s the same fucking thing, regardless of who’s doing the asking, and my answer is still no.”
“You wouldn’t be taking anything from them if it was a loan. Just give it back to them when the mailbox money comes in. That’s what they always say, anyway. ‘You can pay us back when you’re the next dot.com sensation.’”
“You mean like all the other ‘loans’ they’ve given me over the years? You know as well as I do that they have no intention of ever asking for any of that money back, and when I try to give it back, they’re going to refuse until they’re blue in the face, even if I end up richer than God, so don’t give me that shit.”
“Okay, busted.” He held his hands up in mock surrender. “What can I say? They have big hearts, and even bigger bank accounts. You know they could give you that money, and ten times more, and not even notice it was gone, right?”
“Yeah, I know. And you know that’s not the point. It’s the principle of the matter.”
“But what is point of the principle in this particular instance? Not using the trust money, even though this is exactly what it was set up for, and refusing Amelia and James’s money, even though they would love for you to have it, doesn’t make you principled; it makes you a stubborn ass who’s willing to cut of his nose to spite his face.”