Page 59 of A Vicious Rumor

It wasn't Kitty that I wanted to throw up against the lockers, it was Lily.

And I think she knew that.

The rest of the school day was blissfully boring. Half our classes met today and the other half would meet for the first time tomorrow. Our first real practice of the season for football was after class, too, and I was looking forward to letting out some of the negative energy that I had bottled up inside of me throughout the day.

It was a shame that no one had failed on a deal thus far for the year. I could have really used the opportunity to get into a fist fight, but practice would have to suffice for now.

I made my way to my Jeep to grab my gear. My phone rang in my pocket. The number was "Unlisted," but I still picked up.

"Yeah?" I answered.

"We've got another drop for you," the voice I knew too well said on the other side of the line. "Be here in twenty."

I quickly climbed into my Jeep and shut the door. "Look, I told you from the start that it was just for the summer. I'm back in school now and I got practice. I can't."

The voice on the other side let out a low laugh. "And we told you it doesn't work that way, and you said we'd all figure it out later. Well, here we are, figuring it out. You're going to be here in twenty minutes, and I don't think I need to finish that sentence."

A knot formed in my stomach and my heart beat rapidly. "Even if I wanted to be there in twenty minutes, I couldn't make it," I said.

There was no response.

"Hello?" I said into the phone. I pulled the device down and realized the caller had hung up. I tried to take deep breaths. The Academy had extremely tight security, and I was all the way over in Potomac now. Why would these guys bother themselves with a kid who had to go back to school? I couldn't be the only person to bail on them.

I tried to convince myself that it was just them trying out some intimidation tactics and that I just needed to relax. Nothing was going to happen.

Throughout practice, I tried to remind myself of that fact. It was still heavily distracting, though. I kept looking over my shoulder, wondering if someone was going to show up at the field, waiting for me to finish. I didn't know if these guys knew my schedule, but something told me that they could definitely figure it out if they wanted to.

But, the whole practice went by without any issues. My car started up without exploding, and I was able to drive all the way back to my house without interruption.

I walked in the front door and put my gear down. My dad was sitting at the kitchen table, eating some sort of dinner.

"Hey," I said to him as I walked in.

"Hey," he replied back.

I made my way over to the cabinet and grabbed a bowl to pour myself some cereal.

"How was your first day?" he asked.

I sighed, biting back the urge to be rude. I wanted information on the company, and I knew if I challenged him at all, he'd just shut down.

"Fine," I replied, instead. "How's work?"

"Actually," he said, "A lot better."

"Oh?" I asked, heading to the fridge to grab some milk. I poured it over the Cheerios and waited for him to continue.

"Yeah. We were able to close a deal with a new equity investor. Their representative seems fairly sophisticated, too. I think it's going to work out nicely."

I tried to hide my smirk with a bite of my cereal. My father was one hundred percent dealing with Paper, either directly or through someone else, and he didn't even know it. The money that he was being fed was the money that I earned this summer.

Whatever. None of that mattered. What mattered was that the company was going to stay afloat.

"So, they're just coming in as an investor?" I asked, trying to pry for more information. I could have asked Paper, but then he would have tried to give me a lesson in corporate finance, and I just didn't have it in me to listen.

"Sort of," my father said. "They've got something called Major Decision rights. Essentially, they have approval rights for a number of different types of business decisions."

Yep, that was totally Paper. I had no doubt that he negotiated some sort of solid deal for himself that essentially bound my father's hands in a number of ways. I wasn't complaining though. My father needed to have some guidance otherwise he would continue to run the company into the ground.

---