Angry God by L.J. Shen

He came to her room every night.

Not that I was keeping tabs or anything.

I was just in the neighborhood when it happened.

And by in “the neighborhood,” I mean in her hallway, lurking.

And by “in her hallway, lurking,” I mean clearly I needed professional help, an intervention, and a fucking life. I found myself standing behind a Louise Bourgeois statue for hours daily, waiting like some kind of a rabid Belieber.

Sure, I had my reasons. She was the first thing that had resembled a crush for me, no matter how cringe-worthy I found the word (or the girl). It made sense that I would feel somewhat possessive of her, now that she’d opened her legs to Rafferty Pope, who, according to whispers at Carlisle Prep, was working on one hell of a painting.

The pathetic part was that I wanted to visit her.

Lenora didn’t want to see me. But I was notoriously uninterested in what people wanted. I’d have come to her earlier, but I held back because I wasn’t supposed to be at Carlisle Castle.

Shortly after I paid a visit to my little friend Harry Fairhurst, I left a letter on Edgar Astalis’ desk informing him that I’d be gone for the rest of the week to find inspiration. This, of course, was bullshit with a capital B. I didn’t need inspiration. My piece was almost done, months ahead of schedule, and by far the closest thing to perfection I’d ever created.

What I needed was to buy time until the money Jaime released from my trust fund had wrapped around the possessions I wanted to purchase like an octopus. I had a very clear idea of how I wanted to play this out, and it was important that Fairhurst thought I was untraceable during that time period.

Plus, I needed to lay low in case the boys in blue paid a visit to Carlisle Castle after what I did to Fairhurst’s lover. No one had filed a complaint in the days that followed, but life had a way of surprising me, especially with a curveball from Fairhurst.

Harry hadn’t reported any missing items from his house. He must have been waiting for our long-overdue conversation, or pulling his own tricks out of his sleeve.

Now that I’d done what I had to do, I’d thought I’d torture him a little by letting him stew until Monday. But as it happened, I didn’t feel like keeping away from Lenora for that long, so Friday—today—would have to do.

I pushed open the door to Fairhurst’s office without knocking first thing in the morning, striding straight to the chair in front of his desk and taking a seat. I had a cup of steaming coffee in my hand—the other one I left by Len’s room every morning, not that she deserved anything from my ass.

Making myself comfortable, I took out a joint and tucked it into the side of my mouth. Technically, it was illegal in the UK, but I still didn’t give much of a crap. I could take a shit on Harry’s desk and he wouldn’t bat an eyelash. Fairhurst knew I had him by the balls.

He was on the phone. When he noticed me, he apologized to the person on the other end, hung up, and tossed his phone across his desk. Making a point, I crossed my legs and rested my feet on said desk, leaning back and enjoying the view of a pale-ass Fairhurst waiting for the verdict.

I glared at him with a shit-eating smirk.

Finally, he knotted his fingers together, sloping forward and trying to look like the responsible, rational adult he wasn’t.

“How?”His face twisted in disgust.

If nothing else, I appreciated his desire for knowledge. I’d just taken away his leverage, destroyed his false evidence, pissed all over his house—not just metaphorically—and stolen his valuables. And he asked me how. Curiosity was vanity, though. We wanted to know things so we could control them. Destroy them.

“Next question.”

“What makes you think Mr. Maples won’t press charges? I’d be happy to confirm it was you behind that prank in my walk-in closet.”

“And I’d be happy to confirm why I did it. Which, coincidently, is how I know you’ll keep your lover’s mouth shut.”

He snapped his own mouth shut, his jaw clenching. I tipped the ash from the joint onto his floor, looking around. It was a fine-looking office, with one of his paintings hanging in front of his desk.

“No files. No laptop. No camera. No leverage.” I counted with my fingers. “Sucks to be you these days, Harry. A part of you probably wishes you’d executed your plot and fucked my mother over before I could ruin you. You know I never told her about your shitty scheme? Her heart doesn’t deserve to be broken. She actually likes you.”

Goddammit, Mom.

He looked away, probably recalculating his next step. My feet were in his fucking face, and behind them, I knew he could see the golden victory in my expression.

“I guess you came here to lay out your demands. You know I’ll cooperate. I did get you into this program, didn’t I?”

He’d accepted me because I blackmailed him.

I shrugged. “Anything you have to give, I have no interest in.”

“Is that so?” He quirked one eyebrow, standing up. “You’d be surprised. Money, sex, and power speak. I offer plenty of all three.”

“There are no bargains between gods and mortals. You will kneel, and as we’re both well aware, you’re also going to fucking enjoy it.”

It was my turn to stand up. He assessed my face, refraining from making a move. I remained calm, stony, and tranquil. He rounded his desk and stood in front of me, then began lowering himself to the ground, an act of goodwill.

Before his knees touched the floor, I spun on my heel and gave him my back, walking over to the painting hanging on his wall—the one I couldn’t get—and put my joint off right in the eyes of the pretty Italian girl with the perfect tan in 1950s summer in Ischia.

He stared at me from his place on the floor, silent.

“How’s business, Harry?” I asked conversationally, staring at the girl.

She had deep brown hair, a sad face, and now two cigarette burns for eyes. Harry Fairhurst’s technique of painting eyes was what had made him famous. They looked so real, you sometimes looked down to avoid eye contact. I knew that better than anyone, because I was well-versed in escaping the eyes he’d painted that stared at me in my own house.

He also loved to paint sad faces. I always thought there was something sadistic about his art. I was surprised Mom couldn’t see it.

“Fine,” he clipped impatiently, standing and hurrying toward me before I tarnished the rest of his precious baby. His art. His painting. I made a V sign with my fingers, digging them into the girl’s eyes. The canvas was rich and thick, the paint over it dry and resistant, but I managed to pierce the holes deeper, slashing her face with two strokes of my fingers. The painting was officially ruined now.

“Clumsy me.” I turned around, flashing him a smile. “You were saying? Just fine? Sounds a bit lackluster.”

“Actually…” He cleared his throat, lacing his fingers behind his back, trying to salvage some kind of pride as he stood in front of me. “It’s been a very good year. My paintings have just been purchased by a private curator—nearly all of them, across the world. My guess is they’re going to open an exhibition, perhaps even a museum.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” I said smoothly.

He frowned, but said nothing.

“See, I’m the investor, and I already found a fitting purpose for your paintings,” I said, taking my phone out of my back pocket and sliding my thumb across the screen. “It took a bit of effort. I even had to break into my trust fund, but I got my hands on them. All one hundred ninety-three paintings. Wanna guess what I’m going to do with them?” I looked up, my voice cheerful, my stance confident.

His Adam’s apple dipped with a swallow, and his face drained of color.

“Don’t be shy now, Fairhurst. That’s not who you are.” I shoved my phone in his face, showing him exactly what I’d been up to in the days following my breaking and entering his house. All the paintings had been shipped express to Knight’s address, which had cost me dozens of thousands of dollars. After that, my best friend was all too happy to make a bonfire on a local beach and feed the flames with rich canvas and elaborate paint. They’d all melted spectacularly into the sand, the ocean washing away whatever was left in them.

Fairhurst grabbed my phone and scoffed, watching the video of teenagers running through the fire, laughing and pouring gasoline onto the flames. After a few seconds, he tossed it back to me.

“You’re dead! You are fucking dead. I’m going to kill you!”

I tucked my phone back into my pocket, yawning as he paced the room, back and forth. His entire career, up in flames.

He stopped abruptly in the middle of the room. “You ruined all of them, but not the one you want gone more than anything else—the one hanging in front of your childhood room.” His voice was laced with venom.

I laughed, ignoring the dull pain in my chest. “Working on it.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“I wouldn’t?” I rubbed at my chin. “Or shouldn’t? Those are two very different things. I could kill you right now and you wouldn’t even stop me. Because if I spill the shit I know about you out in the open, you’ll be as good as dead, anyway. Jailed, stripped of your money and prestige, living in solitary confinement so your fellow prison mates don’t kill you.”

“I’ll deny everything you say. Every single word. I will start from scratch. I can—I can paint new paintings!” he screamed in my face. “I’ll work twice as hard.”

I frowned. “That’ll be a bit difficult.”

“Why’s that?” He took the bait again.

I grabbed his left hand, his darling, moneymaking hand—funny how we were all left-handed in this business—insured for two million bucks, and found his pressure point, squeezing hard. He shrieked in pain, tears running down his cheeks. I raised his hand to my chest, shoving my hand forward until I heard the crack of his thumb breaking. Satisfaction shot through me. Revenge.

Our eyes met, and his were so shocked and horrified, I wondered what he’d feel like when I had my knife at his throat. Expressionless, I made a ninety degree angle with his wrist, moving it to the other side of my chest. With my forearm on his elbow, I applied pressure until I heard his arm snap. He screamed to the fucking roof before I shoved him against the wall and let him drop to the ground. Whimpering, he stared at his twisted thumb and the bone poking out at his elbow. I darted to his desk, grabbed my untouched cup of coffee, and poured it onto the floor beside his sagging body.

“Oops,” I said dryly. “Better be more careful. You could slip and break your other arm, too. Worse still, you could have a fatal accident. Now that’d be a shame.”

His eyes were blurry with tears, his body shaking and arching with pain. When your entire existence is hanging by a thread, by the revenge you seek, you sometimes ask yourself if it’s worth it, if you’ll ever get the satisfaction you’re after.

The answer is yes.

I was hard as marble and ready to remind Lenora she was not in the business of depriving me. I turned around, leaving Harry high, dry, and ruined for the next year or so, artistically speaking.

“Tell anyone what happened, and rot in jail for the rest of your life,” I reminded him as I slammed the door behind me. The wail he let out soaked the walls of the castle, and all I could think was, Once upon a time, I cried just as hard, and I didn’t even shed a fucking tear.

I spent the rest of the day working, ignoring the sound of the ambulance upstairs as Harry was rushed to the hospital. When the clock hit seven p.m., I went back to my room, took a shower, and headed straight to Good Girl, skipping dinner. I felt on edge. Each day we hadn’t spoken had left a gap. If all it took to pacify her ass was telling her happy birthday, I guessed I was willing to bite the bullet.

I mean, I knew her birthday had been shitty, so this was plain courtesy at this point.

The thought that Lenora might have plans with Pope occurred to me, but did not deter me. Pope was an ongoing issue, but I could handle him.

I was at Len’s door when my phone started ringing for the thousandth time today.

Dad.

What was his problem? I’d spoken to my mom three times since breaking into Harry’s house, expecting her to mention that Dad wanted to talk to me, but she never did. One time she’d tried to give him the phone, and he’d said he’d call me later.

The fact that he’d kept something from his wife (Dad never kept anything from Mom) made me uneasy, and that meant the conversation we were going to have wasn’t one I was eager to participate in.

I hadn’t been planning to ghost him tonight, but fuck, I wasn’t going to turn around and take the call. I needed to devour Good Girl to make my Bad Life a little less miserable.

I knocked, knowing full damn well I wasn’t in any position to barge in anymore. She wasn’t the same girl from six years ago. Although, privately, I had to admit, both versions of her turned me on.

Sweet and innocent.

Feisty and psychotic.

A combination that made me want to dick her more than I wanted to keep said dick away from anything remotely intimate.

“Come in,” her sweet voice called.

I’d started pushing the door open when it occurred to me that the invitation was likely for Pope, who had been visiting her on the reg, and not for me.

What if she’s naked?

She fucking better not be. I’d slap her ass silly after I fucked her.

But I was experiencing something strange and uncultured called restraint. I didn’t want her to throw my ass out of her room like leftover Chinese takeout again.

“It’s Vaughn,” I said as wryly as possible, waiting for her to shoo me away.

A few seconds passed before she answered.

“Well? What are you waiting for?” she responded blandly.

What was I fucking waiting for? Goddamn.

I pushed the door open, hoping to find her working or reading or converting to a religion where she could only have sex with people named Vaughn Spencer. Instead, she was perched against her drafting table, wearing something I’d never seen on her before: a silky black nightgown tied together with a powder-pink ribbon at the tits, a slit revealing her milky side-ass.

Standing like that, she looked like Aphrodite, rising from the sea, fully formed and made to godly perfection. Confident. Gorgeous. Pleasurable and lustful.

And knowing that wasn’t the case—that she had an insecure, irrational side to her—made her even more desirable and raw.

“Shit,” the word was breathed in awe.

I frowned, waiting for her to complete the sentence, then realized I was the pathetic motherfucker who’d uttered it.

She crossed her legs at the ankle, looking at me funny.

“You may pick up your jaw at any time, Spencer.”

I blinked, resisting the urge to say something offensive and disgusting. It was an instinct, but that wasn’t the way to her pussy, which was my final destination tonight. So what if she called me out for wanting to screw her?

A thought occurred to me—an alarming one, at that. Namely, having full-blown sex with her. And maybe even enjoying it. She was the kind of girl who would never throw it in my face if something went horribly wrong—like if I put my junk in an unauthorized trunk accidentally. Not to mention, she was a virgin, too.

Maybe.

Hopefully.

Fuck.

“Vaughn?” She tilted her head, waiting for signs of life from planet My Goddamn Brain.

I clapped my chin up with one hand, pretending to put my jaw back in place. “Happy?”

“Very.” She pushed off the table, walking toward me.

I stood there, waiting for the catch. She’d told me not to come here again, and I knew better than to think she’d changed her mind. Lenora was a lot of things. Flaky wasn’t one of them.

“Close the door after you,” she whispered into my face when we were toe-to-toe. “Then get in my bed.”

And the stupid, horny, teenage asshole that I was, I did.