Chapter 33 Parent-Teacher Conference – Atticus
PARENT-TEACHER CONFERENCE
ATTICUS
It's not hard to find Professor Paul Ryan. I was still so jacked up on the plane that I did most of the necessary digging to pass the time until landing.
The rest I finished up after I had an appointment with my hand and spent not one but two hours cleaning tiny dicks from the office.
Not all of them, though. I kept one. Just a single golden dick no bigger than the tip of my little finger.
I might throw it out. I'm not even sure why I put it in my jacket pocket.
But as I walk up to the little pub on the outskirts of town, where I know Paul Ryan spends his Friday evenings, I rub it between my fingers.
Inside, it's warmer and full of middle-aged men working the nine-to-five dream who've checked out of life.
Every one of them wears a wedding band, and yet they're all here at the end of their week instead of at home with their wives.
A few students mill about the space. Most of them young women.
The ones who've found out this is the hunting ground for older, wiser dick that doesn't come with attachments.
Aurora's teacher sits at the far end of the bar, finishing his pint.
He's a real piece of work, I found out. Not only an asshole, but also a cheater with a taste for twenty-something pussy.
He's fucked at least seven of his female students since he started teaching at ASU.
And every one of them started out with shitty grades that eventually turned into top marks in his class.
Thinking that might've been his intention with Aurora makes me want to cross the pub, smash his pint glass, and gore his throat with the broken pieces.
She isn't mine to be possessive of. I know that. And she might never be, but I did promise to protect her, and I don't see why that protection shouldn't extend to all aspects of her life, not just what she's doing for us with Ambrose.
Lucky for Mr. Ryan, we're trying to keep a low profile.
So instead of making a very bloody scene, I settle for sipping a half pint alone in the back of the pub until he's paid up and ready to leave. I follow him only a minute after he's gone, already knowing the route he takes when walking home.
When he gets to the alley that serves as a shortcut to get from the pub to his middle-class neighborhood, I speed up.
He glances over his shoulder, hearing me coming too late to do anything about it.
My hands curl into his jacket as I shove him hard into the brick wall, making him cough and splutter from the impact.
I had no plans to hit him, but somehow my fist finds his face, anyway, and the satisfying crunch of his nose shattering beneath my knuckles makes me feel at least ten percent better.
"Fuck!" he cries in a pitiful, garbled voice, having trouble speaking with a mouth rapidly filling with blood. "Take what you want. Just—"
I pull him forward to shove him harder against the wall, keeping him pressed there with one fist curled into the front of his jacket that he tries and fails to rip free.
"Shut up, you piece of shit."
"What do you want? You have the wrong—"
"Oh no," I sneer in his face, and he cowers like the candy-ass little bitch I already knew he was. "I have the right man. Paul Ryan, lives at 30 Kennedy Crescent, married to Candice Ryan, father to Kyle Ryan…"
His eyes go wide.
"Professor at ASU," I continue. "Who enjoys sleeping with his female students. Ring a bell?"
He pales. "I don't know what you're—"
I slam him into the wall. "Yes, you do. If you didn't want to get caught, you shouldn't use shit like Instagram and Snapchat for your fucking booty calls, Professor. You have to be the stupidest son of a bitch I've ever laid eyes on."
"W-who are you?"
Now I smile. "Who? Me? I'm the guy who's going to make your entire life implode."
"No, please, I—"
"Shut up."
His throat bobs.
"Aurora Bellerose," I say. "She's a student of yours."
"I didn't touch her!"
"No shit. If you did, you'd be dead right now."
He goes still, seeing the truth of the threat in my eyes.
And I let him go, not because I want to, but because I'm worried I might make good on that threat if I don't.
"I'm going to talk and you're going to listen," I tell him in an even tone. "You're going to stop fucking your students, and you're going to fix the grade on Miss Bellerose's paper."
"This is about grades?"
His head snaps to the side when my fist lands against his jaw. He sags against the wall, and I think I've hit the bastard too hard, but he recovers enough to stand on his feet, leaning into the brick for support.
"I wasn't finished."
He spits blood onto the ground.
"You will stop fucking your students and will grade them fairly."
"I'll give her whatever fucking grade you want."
I resist the urge to hit him again, if only because I know even a gentle tap would bowl him the fucker over, and I need him lucid for this.
"No. You'll give her the grades she deserves, and you will stop attacking her in class.
You'll treat her with respect, or I will send your wife copies of every dirty conversation you've had with at least one student from each of your class since the moment you started at ASU.
And when I'm done with that, I'll forward the same files to the university board and local law enforcement. "
I stalk closer, and he recoils into the wall. "And then when you think your life can't get any shittier, you'll have me to look forward to."
He chokes out another clotted chunk of blood and snot, panting as the side of his jaw and the skin around his eyes begin to swell and turn purple.
"Who are you?" he asks.
"I'm the guy you don't cross, Paul. Now listen real close."
He squeezes his eyes shut as I lean in to whisper, "I was never here. You never saw me. And you will speak of this to no one…or I will have to kill you. Do you understand?"
"I—I understand."
I clap him on the shoulder, giving it a hard enough squeeze that he flinches.
"That's good, Paul." I shove him toward home. "Run home to Candice and Kyle. They should be home from basketball practice by now."
He slips on a puddle in the pockmarked pavement and almost falls in his haste to get away, craning his neck back to make sure I'm not following him.
I give him a little wave, and he finds his footing, sprinting as far away from me as he can get.
Letting out an audible sigh that puffs in the frigid air like smoke, I check the time. Only another twenty minutes until Aurora shows up for her semi-weekly laundry trip and tonight's meeting to go over everything for her lunch with Ambrose in a couple of days.
Just enough time to scrub the blood from my knuckles, pick her up a shake from Chick-fil-A, and get back to the office.