ONE
Nixon
Michael Alexander McDermot, The Third, was the biggest douchebag I'd ever met in my life.
That was saying a lot since I'd known a lot of fucking douches.
Sure, my standards were high. I had an almost nonexistent tolerance for people as a whole. All you have to do is take a walk in a grocery store on a busy Sunday to see why most people missed the memo on how not to be a complete and utter pain in the ass to all of your fellow humankind. Was it so hard not to leave your cart in the center of the whole friggen aisle?
Anyway, yeah, he was a real piece of work.
I hated him.
Almost as much as I hated the phrase "piece of work."
It wasn't that he was rich. Most of the clients who walked through the doors were rich. Let's face it, the average person didn't have need of a personal security team. Or the pockets deep enough to hire them. I didn't begrudge someone their wealth. Though an argument could be made for some rich people being condescending pricks. Which Michael McDermot absolutely was. He'd somehow managed to mention his Porsche, his Rolex, and how many square feet his McMansion was in the span of a twenty-minute conversation.
It wasn't even that he immediately treated me like I worked for him--and was therefore beneath him--from the moment he stepped foot in the office. I would be working for him. And I had gotten somewhat used to being treated with a certain level of disrespect when it came to some clients.
No.
What bothered me most was the fact that he thought it was appropriate--in mixed company--to refer to his secretary as a "useless bitch" like it was completely acceptable to do so.
Were it not for the dozen or so lectures my brother Kingston, who happened to own the security business, had given me about my sometimes nonexistent manners, I would have tossed him out onto the sidewalk. Right onto the ass of his Armani suit.
But, if I was going to keep working for King, I had to toe the line a little better than I had in the past.
So I clenched my jaw and tried not to grab the asshole by the throat as he spoke.
I got all the paperwork written up, told him I would consult with Kingston, then get back to him.
I had every intention of dumping the whole case on his desk, washing my hands of it, and hitting the gym to sweat out my frustration at the entire interaction.
"I am already working two cases, man," Kingston said, shaking his head. "And Atlas is off chasing waves somewhere. Rush can't work at night. You're going to have to do it."
Just when I thought the day couldn't get any worse.
"I can't work for that asshole, King."
"You won't even need to be near him."
Technically, that was probably true. We didn't even really know there was an actual case to work on. The guy thought he was being followed. He had no proof of it. He just had a feeling. Most of the work would involve following Mike around to see if someone else was following him around or not. My money was on him being paranoid. Though, when you were such a colossal jackass, there was a chance you had a lot of enemies who wanted to--at the very least--scare you.
We got paid whether there was some stalker or not.
And I guess I could tolerate following the guy around for a week, so long as I got to keep the face-to-face contact to a minimum.
At least it was out of the office.
I had to admit, the walls were pinching in a bit.
I'd been trying to convince myself for the past few years that it was growing pains, that I just had to adjust to the new lifestyle, but the longer it went on, the tighter it got, and the more I wondered if it simply wasn't the place for me.
If it was the place for any of us, save for Kingston who built it. We all loved our brother, and helped him develop his business, but I don't think any of us were meant to be there for the long-term. This was why Atlas was always flying off to some new land, never getting his wanderlust under control, and why Rush was pulling longer and longer hours at his phone sex business.
The problem was, I had no fucking idea what else to do with my life.
So I stayed.
I was starting to wonder, though, if I was just one bad job, one shit client, away from throwing in the towel for good.
There was a good chance that if I had to deal with Michael McDermot for any extended period of time, he could be the final straw.
Then what?
I had no idea.
I had no backup plan.