Page 123 of Filthy Elites

“What about it makes it not fair?” Viks asks. “I don’t own the club and I make a hefty salary running it now. I’m not going to be hurting for cash. If anything, I’d say I came out pretty well off after this endeavor. It’s certainly not where I expected to be five years ago.” His lips twist. It’s a half smile, half grimace and one hundred percent self-deprecating.

“Where were you five years ago?” I ask hesitantly.

“Do you really want to know that, Haley?” he asks, his fingers flexing on the steering wheel.

I do, I realize. I want to know as much about this man as possible. Find out all of his little quirks. Know his past enough to be able to predict why he is the way he is in the present. What made a man like Mitchell Vikson?

“Yes,” I answer.

Silence stretches between us. His jaw clenches and unclenches. He’s hesitating, though why, I can’t say.

“Prison,” he finally admits.

I blink. That was not the answer I’d expected. “Prison?” I repeat as if to make sure I hadn’t heard him wrong. He nods.

My eyes fall down to where the corded muscles of his arms are covered in ink. “Is that where you … erm … got all these done?” I ask.

Viks barks out a laugh. “A few of them,” he says, still chuckling as he glances my way once and then back again. “But most of them were before and after—finding ink and good artists on the inside isn’t as easy as people seem to think.”

“Okay … why were you there?”

His laughter trickles away, drying up. “Don’t ask me that, Haley,” he says. “All you need to know is that it was deserved. I did my time. It’s over.” He cracks his neck to one side. “In fact, I came out with a degree.”

“You?” I gape at him.

That reaction brings the smile back to his face. “Yes,” he says. “Even big meatheads like myself can get through college if we’re stuck in a cell for twenty-four hours a day with nothing better to do than read and study.”

“What did you…” I don’t know how to ask. Am I allowed to? I wonder. What would a man like Viks even bother learning about?

He seems to get what I’m going for and gives me an answer anyway. “Psychology,” he says, surprising me yet again. “I was inside for three years,” he says. “Got out fairly fucking early for good behavior and … a sponsor or something like it. But I managed to do what I needed to in order to earn a license in therapy.”

“Wait. Wait. Wait.” I hold my hands up. “The more you talk, the more you shock me.”

“Yeah, learning a big guy like me—who looks like he cracks heads for a living—is versed in how not to let anger take control does often surprise others.” He seems amused by that fact.

"Well, yeah,” I say, gesturing to him. “Look at you.”

“I’m well aware of how I look, Haley,” he says. “And I’m well aware of what others think when they look at me. Have you ever considered, though, that there are plenty of people who look like me who need someone that understands them?”

I frown, confused. “What do you mean?”

“Prisoners and drug dealers and addicts—people who grew up like I did, they all hear the same thing. Control yourself. Manage your anger. Let go of your addictions. It’s all easier said than done.”

I blink, contemplating his words for a moment.

“Have you ever considered that people who are stereotyped all the time are also the ones who stereotype others?” Viks asks. “The big muscled tattooed skin head might not feel comfortable sitting in front of a five-foot nothing woman in a pants suit telling him that he needs to control himself without ever really understanding what makes him the way that he is. People like that look at me, though, and they know.”

“Know what?” I prompt when he doesn’t immediately continue.

Viks looks at me and for a moment, just a heartbeat; those dark gray eyes of his pierce into my soul. “They know that I get it. I get what it's like,” he replies. “To be the one everyone blames for how shitty society can be when in reality, we are the kids the system failed.”

My mouth snaps shut. I have nothing to say. There’s nothing Icansay. He’s right. So often, the people in positions to help have to look a certain way for those in the upper echelon to trust them, but doing so makes those who are in the gutter nervous. How can the prey trust something that looks like a predator? And though Viks might look like the predator to some, once … long ago, he was just a child—like anyone else. There’s more beneath his surface than danger.

Even villains start out as innocents. Evil isn’t born, it’s made.

Viks continues the silence all the way to the apartment building and it’s only after we arrive and he shuts off the SUV, and after he walks around to my side and opens my door as I unbuckle my seatbelt, that he speaks. His hand clasps the doorframe, refusing to let me out until he has his say.

“Whatever happens, Haley,” he tells me, eyes centered on me with such focus that it’s almost unnerving, “I want you to trust me.”

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