Zed, p.2
Zed, page 2
Despite my worthy intentions, in the end, I’d buckled under the pressure to make money and have a “nice” life by following in my father’s footsteps into corporate law. I always told myself I’d do it for a few years then get out and follow my dreams. The reality was, once I was sucked into the lifestyle creature comforts that corporate law allowed me, it was hard to walk away from that to be a penniless DA.
As time rolled on I was also less and less sure of what exactly my dreams were—and if I still wanted the same things as the bright-eyed recent graduate I had been. Now years down the track, my job was to represent “good guys” with more money than God. With hindsight, I now knew that even identifying the “bad guy” wasn’t as easy as it had seemed back then, especially when millions, sometimes billions of dollars were thrown into the mix.
I also learned pretty damned quickly that in their eyes, almost no criminal was guilty. However, the difference between my clients and the average “innocent” Joe Shmoe was that the people I worked for had the money to buy their way out of trouble, whereas jails were full of less-fortunate Joes—guilty or otherwise.
On the cab ride across town, I had plenty of time to reconsider my life choices.
Who was I trying to kid? My life had long since stopped being about choices and was more about a series of failures to say no. A long string of zigging because that was what everyone else was doing, and that was expected of me, when in reality all I wanted to do was zag. Years of not rocking the boat, respecting and maintaining the status quo, living up to expectations that were so far from my own it was ridiculous.
A lifetime of pretending to be someone I wasn’t.
I lived every day with the weight of familial obligations resting so heavily on my shoulders that they threatened to give me a hunchback. My siblings and I were made aware from a very early age that there were two ways to do things—our dad’s way or completely alone. He was a loving and doting father, the best anyone could ask for really, but on that one aspect of life, he didn’t waver. We—all six of us—needed to strive to be at the top of our fields, or else.
Actually, make that two things. There was also a very narrow selection of fields that met his approval; he was very simple and traditional in his tastes in that sense. There was law, medicine, finance, science, architecture, or engineering. That was pretty much it. Everything else, he considered playing around or fun. How he imagined that farmers got up at 4:00 a.m. every day to produce the food we ate or designers trained for years to create the clothes we wore purely for shits and giggles, I would never understand.
Still, he’d just about had a heart attack when, after graduating and spending five years rising to the top of one of the city’s biggest and best finance companies, my brother, Nate, had announced he was quitting in order to start an advertising agency with his four best friends from Yale.
To say advertising was not on the list was like saying smoking crack wasn’t recommended by doctors. Advertising was, in Dad’s opinion, a waste of my brother’s brain cells, and all the money spent on his education. No family referendum or any amount of begging, pleading, cajoling, or good old-fashioned whining was going to change that. In fact, five years on, and running the most successful agency in the city and therefore one of the top in the world, Nate was only just out of the doghouse and shedding his bad apple status.
While Dad’s inflexibility and tunnel vision on the subject of our education and careers pissed me off to the point of blind rage, somewhere in the back of my mind, I understood where he was coming from. He hadn’t had the opportunities we “kids” had. He was definitely the poster child for what could be achieved by people from “humble beginnings” if they worked their fingers to the bone. Dad grew up literally with nothing, in a house that was little more than a two-bedroom walk-up inhabited by himself, his six siblings and his parents on the outskirts of Detroit.
Through sheer grit and determination—and being one of the smartest people I’d ever met—he managed to work his way through college and then law school, graduating top of his class. And work he did. Apart from the huge workload associated with full-time study—especially law school—he’d worked three, four, sometimes five jobs to pay his way.
While his contemporaries were getting drunk at frat parties, he was doing janitorial work around campus. While his classmates’ biggest worry was whether they were going to get laid that night, he was flipping burgers, then going straight from there to working the door at various local nightspots. Some would say against the odds—but those who knew my dad well would say the opposite—he had later gone on to be one of the city’s preeminent corporate lawyers.
I got it, I really did, and there was nobody on Earth I admired more than my father, but his own personal drive, ambition and success at just about everything he touched made him very unforgiving when it came to his expectations for his offspring. Nothing but the path he had preordained for each of us before we were even born was acceptable, and nothing but the best was good enough.
Even Nate, who had been adopted into our family when he was nine years old, had soon gotten wise to the fact that it was Dad’s way or the highway. He’d quickly fallen in line, just like the rest of us, until he set up BR&ND. Despite Dad’s ire, I’d been behind Nate every step of the way then, and still was today. He was good at what he did, and more to the point, he was happy. I, on the other hand, could not claim the same thing as far as my happiness was concerned.
I loved my father to absolute bits, but so often over the years, I’d wished he’d back off and quit mistaking his own aims and dreams for ours. I felt I’d been living a version of his life for years, the one that involved private schooling and an Ivy League education, but it came without having to stress over tuition fees, or work every hour that God sent. All amazing opportunities, of course—I wasn’t enough of an entitled brat not to see that. None of us were, but as we beavered away at our pre-selected careers, I think we all had moments where we questioned why we were doing what we were and asked ourselves “what if?”
What if we’d pursued the passions we secretly harbored at night—a dancer, a DA, an Insta-famous travel blogger, an actress? What if our lives had been a blank sheet for us to determine every movement, mark, and fork in the road? Would we have done things the same way or differently?
I was pretty sure I knew the answer to that, for me at least.
As corporate law firms went, Franks, Lieberman, Wren-Joseph wasn’t a terrible place to work. The three principals were fairly relaxed employers and mostly conducted their business with an acceptable level of decency and humanity. Well, perhaps “mostly” was overstating the case, but definitely more than others. They were certainly less cutthroat than a lot of top-tier firms, but they still managed to pull results, which was the draw card for me when applying there as a soon-to-be Harvard Law graduate.
I guess knowing there was a moral backbone—no matter how slim and flexible—that ran through the company made me feel less like I’d sold my soul to the Devil than I would have had I gone for one of the more traditional dog-eat-dog firms. But still, in my heart of hearts, I’d admitted that choosing that career path had been more about appeasing my father than pleasing myself, and I knew my siblings had similar stories.
Though to be fair to Dad, Corrie really did love being a veterinarian, and Nate had given walking the expected path the finger five years prior and lived to tell the tale. Maybe there was hope for the rest of us yet. I liked to think there was, or else I faced a pretty depressing future and would probably end up a crazy old cat lady—alone and surviving on kibble until I died and my cats feasted on my corpse.
On that cheery thought, the cab pulled up to the curb outside the address I had been given. The surly phone guy with the unreasonably smooth and sexy voice for someone who was quite clearly a card-carrying asshole hadn’t given me any details of the nature of the building, just fired off the address and expected me to memorize it. Of course I had, because as a lawyer, memorizing detailed information was second nature to me, even when delivered as quickly as the details of where to collect Xavier had been.
Peering out the window, it would seem that I was headed to a shop called SK:eTCH. My first thought was that Xavier was alone and possibly not fully compos mentis with someone who had such a scant grasp of spelling and grammar. For some reason, that was the first point at which I was genuinely concerned for his well-being. Stupid really, but all the more reason why it was completely inappropriate for me to be lumbered with his care. I felt good about having managed to keep my rescue kitty, Notorious C.A.T., alive for four whole years, let alone manage a rich, entitled, and rude-as-fuck teenager. Frankly, the whole endeavor was a disaster waiting to happen.
When I took a closer look at the building and saw that SK:eTCH was a tattoo joint, I had to stifle laughter. The situation was going from the sublime to the ridiculous. An underage, under-the-influence kid who should have been at school and under house arrest, on the loose in Brooklyn with a grumpy tattoo guy? What could possibly go wrong?
As I paid the cab driver and approached the door of the place, I had a feeling I was about to find out.
3
Zed
I emerged from the shower feeling a little more like myself and less like the gutter outside a nightclub at 5:00 a.m. I’d made it extra hot and extra-long, primarily to exorcise the vomit demons, but also to numb my mind. If I was concentrating on the pain of the scalding-hot water raining down on me, I wasn’t thinking about the feelings that were stirred up by seeing that kid in all his St. Joseph’s-blazered glory. I really did not need to be thinking about that shit. Not now. Not ever.
I glanced down at my watch. Forty minutes had elapsed since I had threatened Pukezilla’s snooty lawyer on the phone—ten minutes past the time I’d told her I was going to call the authorities. I had been bluffing, of course. I’d had no intention of calling anyone other than her. I simply wanted the boy out of my sight, out of my shop, and out of my hair—figuratively as well as literally—in the shortest possible timeframe. I’d figured telling her that I was going to escalate the issue would sharpen her mind toward collecting him sooner rather than later.
I tied a towel around my waist and, leaving my chest bare, headed from the staff only area out back of the shop, down the hall toward the reception area. I often used the shower after working out with the free-weights I had set up in a disused area at the back of the shop. Some of the other artists also showered before seeing their clients, having run or cycled to work and not wanting to inflict their sweaty selves on other people at close quarters for hours on end. I’d never envisaged the need to hose myself down after being covered in some kid’s puke, but I’d never been more grateful that the facility was there.
As I got closer, I saw Kota standing near the seat where I’d propped the boy earlier. I looked just beyond her to the chair and saw a navy wool-covered heap still slumped in it.
“What the hell is he still doing here?” I pointed angrily in the kid’s direction, glaring at Kota. It was stupid, and even as I was doing it, I knew it was the very definition of shooting the messenger. She had no more control over the situation than I did.
She threw me a look with so much fire it could’ve melted polar ice caps, then hissed my way. “Shhhh. He’s sleeping.”
As if I gave a flying fuck what he was doing, unless it involved walking out the door.
“I don’t care. He shouldn’t be here in the first place. The fact that he’s chosen right now to catch up on his beauty sleep is not my issue. Where’s his phone? I’m going to call that lawyer and tell her she can pick him up from lockup instead.”
As though on cue, the door to the shop swung open and in walked a woman I had never seen before. Straightaway I knew she was LILF; she stood out in the shop like a dick in a nunnery. She was also looking around as though she thought she might catch some kind of airborne infection just by being there.
I seriously couldn’t remember the last time I saw someone so out of place anywhere, with her prim-and-proper blouse and skirt combination, the skirt sitting just on her knees. She wore heels, but not fuck-me shoes—I guessed they would be described as a “respectable height” by someone who knew or cared more about both fashion and respectability than me.
The blouse had a big bow tied at the neck, leaving basically everything to the imagination, and she had her hair pulled back in a severe, prim bun. Seriously, could she be any more of a cliché? She just needed a pair of reading glasses perched on the end of her nose to complete the “uptight but sexy librarian” look.
Actually, that wasn’t quite it. It was less sexy librarian and more female Clark Kent. It was as though she was attempting to disguise herself by hiding in plain sight, but all it would take to get a completely different view of her would be for her to let her hair down and remove the pencil from her ass. As it was, she looked so tightly wound, I was half expecting her to burst a blood vessel at any moment.
“LILF, I presume?” I kept my tone light, despite my earlier irritation. She was on my ground now, and I wanted to make it clear who was holding all the cards.
She cast her gaze up and down my body, arching an eyebrow. Clearly my business attire didn’t meet her stringent standards. In all honesty, bare-chested with a low-slung towel around my waist didn’t meet my own dress standards; I had only come fully into the reception area when I realized the puking mantis was still there. Otherwise I would have stayed in the hall.
Then when the door had opened and revealed Little Miss High and Mighty, I’d momentarily forgotten my post-shower state, distracted by her… everything. But once reminded of my semi-nakedness, I decided to work it. If she thought she could come into my shop and look down her nose at me, she was about to learn the hard way that I wasn’t to be messed with—clothed, naked, or any way in between.
It also hit me what LILF stood for. Lawyer I’d Like to Fuck—the corporate law version of MILF and DILF. In your dreams, kid. While I totally understood why the little punk would call her that, I was also fighting the overwhelming urge to knock his head clean from his shoulders.
“I’m Octavia Douglas, one of Xander Cross’s legal team over at Franks, Lieberman, Wren-Joseph, we spoke earlier. I’ve come to collect him.” She nodded toward the now faintly snoring heap that was Xavier Cross.
I didn’t miss the disdain in her voice and on her face as she talked. Nor did I blame her. I would definitely be pissed if I were in a similar position. She seemed to be getting more irritated with every passing second, much to my amusement.
“And by the way, you can’t just—”
“Nope.” I actually put my hand out like a traffic cop, motioning for her to shut the hell up. “You’re—” I looked at my watch again “—thirteen and a half minutes late to pick up your drunk, high, underage charge, so the way I see it, you have no bargaining chips here. Whatever you think I can’t ‘just’ do is of no consequence to me. Let me tell you how it’s going to be.”
Octavia Douglas looked at me as though I was on the corner trying to sell crack to preschoolers.
I nudged the sleeping mass’s foot with the tip of mine, jostling him awake.
“What?” he spat out tersely, with the unjustified confidence of someone who knew they always had the upper hand in any situation, even when they blatantly didn’t.
I waited a few seconds and saw the realization dawn on his face.
“Oh, it’s you.” He sounded about as happy to see me as he would be to discover he had pubic lice.
“Damn straight, it’s me. In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re still in my shop, so I’m not sure who the hell else you were expecting. Bad luck, Sir Puke-a-lot, you’re stuck with my ugly ass.”
The teen started to roll his eyes, but I shot him a withering look that made him reconsider. He stopped mid-roll.
“And as I was saying to your… handler here.” I gestured dismissively in her direction, knowing both the words and the movement would piss her off. “Here’s what’s going to happen. I’ve had some time to think while I was in the shower trying to rid my body and mind of the evidence of the events of the last hour, especially since you were late,” I said directly to Octavia.
She opened her mouth, ready to defend herself no doubt, but I plowed on, not giving her the airtime.
“And although I had initially wanted you the hell out of here, and out of my consciousness forever more, I’ve since changed my mind. Not so much about wanting to make you a dim and distant memory, but about what constitutes a fair resolution of this situation.”
I steepled my hands, pressing the tips of my index fingers to my lips. “Now the way I see it, I’m out of pocket a couple grand because of you.”
The little a-hole had the audacity to tip his head back against the wall and laugh heartily. I waited for him to be done. I had time, after all. The glare I directed his way in the meantime must have told him I meant business, as he straightened up and looked me in the eye, his tone serious when he spoke.
“A couple thou? Really? How do you suppose that?”
“I don’t feel the need to justify myself to you, but being as you asked nicely, I’ll tell you. First there are the clothes I was wearing when the incident took place. Damned if I’ll ever wear them again, so they’re now in the trash.”
“Nice try, old man, but there’s no way those cost even a grand. Shit, they probably didn’t cost a couple hundred. Where’d you get them, Walmart?”
Despite years of training to the contrary, I really wanted nothing more than to knock the little douche’s head clear off his shoulders. Instead, I spoke to him as though he were a simpleton with roughly the IQ of a lettuce leaf. I didn’t believe that to be too far from the truth.
“I’m sure your father has told you that to be successful in business, and in life, you need to learn not to take things at face value. Just because I’m covered in tatts and don’t wear a suit doesn’t mean I don’t take pride in my appearance, or spend good money on my clothes. Besides, that’s not all. Then there’s the damage out here.”
