Page 8 of Inside the Maelstrom: Part One
Sampson
Iwatched the girl flee. Probably a safe move.
Otto strode back over with a frown on his face, which meant I was about to get a lecture. Sometimes I thought we kept Otto around because he acted like the conscience that had been burned out of me and Drix from a young age.
“Is that who you are now, Sam?”
“What?”
He sat down, schooling his face into something carefully blank. “I just want to know if that's your new thing. Sexual assault.”
Hendrick sucked in air through his teeth, but didn’t say anything.
“Fuck off, Otto. I didn’t sexually assault anyone.”
Otto just gave me that look that saidI think you’re a fucking idiot,but didn’t say anything else. I took a long sip on my beer and forgot about the girl. Aviva. Pretty name for an average chick.
I looked around this prison masquerading as a McMansion. It was pretty nice, and honestly, Hendrick had been booted from most of the ones on the West Coast, where we all went to school. About as far as we could get from NYC and our families. Except Otto, of course. His parents loved him, and by extension, probably us.
“How long until you’re out of this fucking place?”
Hendrick shrugged. “Whenever I buy my way out, I guess. At least it keeps me out of Dad’s way, and I don’t have to do any of those goddamn campaign rallies.”
Hendrick’s dad was a cunt. There was no other word for him. Mine was an asshole too, but he was an asshole in a negligent way. He didn’t care if I lived or died, as long as I didn’t upset his lifestyle. He would never put me in one of these facilities, even if he found me smacked out on horse tranqs in our foyer. No, he didn’t care enough to even pretend.
Honestly, he’d probably be happy.
But Hendrick’s dad was a sociopath in a nice suit, ruthlessly trying to obtain the usual things: pussy or power. Always one or the other, and it was Hendrick who suffered. Otto and I were his real family, anyway. I’d walk through fire for them both—or even worse, sit through one of Otto’s lectures on morality.
Otto lifted an eyebrow. “Nothing to do with the pretty Aviva you just dragged out here?”
Hendrick shook his head, taking another sip of his beer. “Nope. Only met her today. She’s just something shiny to pass the time. I have been fucking a pretty nurse though. She’s very interested in my treatment pathways.”
Otto shook his head, letting Hendrick’s bullshit slide. “They alter your meds?” A sharp nod from Drix. “You’re taking them?”
This time, Hendrick grinned wide. “Some of them.”
Poor Otto. Burdened with the need to do the right thing. Quite frankly, I didn’t care if Hendrick went unmedicated. I would wreak havoc right there beside him, for no other reason than he was my brother and needed someone to watch his back.
That was Otto’s M.O. too, but he did it in a bit more of a conventional—and probably caring—way. He gave a shit if we lived or died, and honestly, he was the only one. Other than the tabloids, that was. Pretty sure they’d be excited if we died.
I emptied my beer and tossed it into the pool. It sank into the dark water with ease. “Then let's get the fuck out of here. We can head to Cabo or something, live it up in the sun. Your dad can pretend you’re still here. Or rot in fucking Hell, where he belongs.”
I didn’t care either way.
Hendrick sighed, leaning back on his elbows. “I’ll give it another week. At least the food is better than the last place.” Hendrick had been in and out of these facilities since he was twelve. Everyone thought he was a drug addict, and he didn’t correct them. Honestly, in the darker hours of the night, I wondered if his father was just setting a precedent so he could off him and point to his history of rehab.
Hendrick didn’t need rehab. The guy barely drank, and Otto was way too much of a nagging wife to let either of us take drugs, outside of a little weed. No, Hendrick’s parents had no fucking idea that he just hated them. Or maybe they did and this was a convenient excuse to ship him somewhere while they went skiing in Switzerland. Or sailing around Ibiza. I don’t even know where his mother was at the moment, but it wasn’t anxiously worrying about the health of her son.
I hated people.
“We should go back to college,” Otto added, though I knew he was doing his courses online, since being friends with us didn’t lend itself to a healthy class schedule. He never complained though. Otto was a saint.
Hendrick was a demon.
And me? I was the fucking devil.
I took what I wanted, because who would stop me? My father was rich, but he wasn’t influential. And my grandfather had left me all his money, because he knew that his own child would have blown it all in a decade, leaving us all destitute. I’d invested it, my accountant doing what he needed to do. A second accountant made sure the first one didn’t rip me off, and now I was one of the wealthiest men under twenty-five, without working for a cent of it. I kind of knew why people like Aviva were pissed at us. They worked hard, to the point of a mental breakdown apparently, and would never have enough.
