Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 93482 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93482 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
CHAPTER 8
THOMAS
Altercation. That bitch just called what she did seven years ago an altercation.
As if her destroying my entire life was only a little spat.
I couldn’t help but think back to that day and how I got started on the path to her demise.
When I was eighteen, I did not give a rat’s ass about Mary Quinn Astrid.
She was only one of many women in my father’s sphere. He was on some sort of weird power trip where, although he didn’t particularly like them or find them attractive, my father liked to fuck the wives of the men he did business with right before meeting with them and fucking them over, too.
It was an odd power move that, at eighteen, I thought was amusing but ultimately pointless. Most of the men were so distraught over how he bent them over financially that they didn’t really notice or care that he did the same to their wives physically.
Other than that, I never thought about Mary Quinn.
That changed a few days after my birthday. I was stuck at yet another tedious polo match, watching my father and brother dominate on the field in a sport I simply had no interest in. My father didn’t really care if I played or not. He had his heir. I was just the spare and as long as I didn’t get into too much trouble, I was free to do as I pleased.
It was a perfect setup, if only I had any idea what it was I wanted to do. Still, there was a bit of a role I was expected to play, events where I needed to show my face and represent the Manwarring name.
I made the rounds at the party, said hello to the people I was expected to say hello to, even got the cell number of a beautiful young debutant before one of her friends gave me a blow job behind the barn housing the far stables.
The head was good enough, but I was still bored. Once I finished, I had sent the friend along her way, making sure not to give her any promises about what I would and wouldn’t be doing to return the favor. I made some vague comment about sneaking away after the polo match to fuck in the limo and that I’d get her number then.
All I had wanted at that point was a moment of peace to smoke a little weed, so that when I returned to the mind-numbing tedium that was socializing at these matches, I could pretend to be amused with something.
That was when someone screamed out in pain, followed by a loud smacking sound.
I followed it, thinking I was going to catch some lovers’ quarrel, or maybe a kinky BDSM scene. So imagine my surprise when I walked into one of the other stables to see none other than Mary Quinn hitting a child with a riding crop.
“How dare you touch my horse, that horse is a thoroughbred...,” she was screaming. I only caught maybe half the words because I was so incredibly high, but what I remembered clearly was the tearstained face of a poor boy who couldn’t have been older than twelve. He was dirty, covered with mud from where he laid on the ground, rolled in a ball, trying to protect himself from her continuous strikes.
She raised her hand again, and I stepped in between them, taking the strike on my arm and grabbing the riding crop from her hand. The kid scrambled up and ran out of the barn.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she seethed. “That boy needs to be taught a lesson.”
“He is just a kid, and you are beating him like he is the maid fucking your husband. Who even is he?”
“I don’t know, some groundskeeper’s son, but he should know better than to touch something that doesn’t belong to him, that is worth more than his entire life.” She tried to yank the crop from my hand. I hung on to it.
She pulled again and again, insisting I let go so she could finish what she started. That, or so she could beat me with it instead. Rolling my eyes, I tried to pull it out of her grip, thinking she would release it. Instead, her body fell into mine and since I was still so high, she knocked me off-balance, sending both of us tumbling to the ground.
She still fought me. Pulling on the crop and running her nails over my face and my body. It was like being attacked by a jungle cat.
I tried to push her off of me just so I could get up and get away from her, holding her hands at bay, never striking out because I knew better. Manwarring men were warriors, we could be violent, and we would lash out physically if called for, but never at a woman. If we wanted to destroy a woman, we would do it socially.