Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Menace
I watch Hill’s face as he looks around the private jet, his eyes wide and mouth agape. “Menace, is this yours?”
Shaking my head, I sit down in one of the seats and cross my legs. “Hardly. I only reserve one when I have to fly halfway across the world. I’d rather do that in comfort.” I thumb toward the back of the jet. “There’s a bed back there we can use to stretch out in.”
“Just to stretch out?”
I waggle my eyebrows at him. “Ever joined the Mile High Club?”
He snorts then sits down. “We have more important things to worry about than getting your dick wet, Menace.”
The flight attendant comes back to introduces herself and gives us her flight spiel.
The pilot also comes back and speaks with us, telling us we’ll land in Australia in sixteen hours.
I huff, though it’s not his fault. The flight is just long as fuck.
I’m glad I chartered this private jet so at least I can stretch my legs or take my damn shoes off without someone giving me the eye.
Hill practically bounces in his seat as the jet takes off toward our destination. I watch him as he looks out of the window, staring at the landscape below.
About twenty minutes into the flight, Hill finally turns to me, a grin alight on his face. “This is how the other half lives, huh?”
I shrug. “It’s nice to have money, but this isn’t normal for me. Most of the time, I fly first class like normal people.”
Hill snorts and rummages around in his bag. “Yeah, normal people. Any time I’ve flown, it’s been so far back in coach, I was sitting in the bathroom.”
“From here on out, it’ll be first class all the way.”
He peers at me, hands still in his bag. “Why is that, Menace? You staking your claim on me?”
Ticking up an eyebrow, I say, “As soon as you let me fuck you against my window, you were mine. Even though you did lie to me.”
Hill huffs and pulls out a tape recorder and a pen and pad. “You gotta let that shit go, Menace. I lied because I didn't know you’d be okay with murder. I think I should get a pass for that, don’t you?”
“Fine,” I say, holding my hands up in surrender. “But that’s the only time you’ll lie.”
“I promise.”
I beam at him, and Hill shakes his head as if he’s fed up with me. “You ready to get this interview going?”
“Yep. Do your worst.”
Hill sent me over the questions a few days ago and it’s nothing too deep. The part about why the charity means so much to me will hit me hard, but I finally want the world to know. Maybe then more money can be donated, and I can open more centers around the country.
Had any help been available for my mom, maybe she would have left.
Crossing his ankle over his knee, he mutters, “I hate these fucking things,” as he turns on the recorder. “But we do what we must.” He flips the notepad open and looks at me, smiling. “So, Mr. Grant, may I call you Menace?”
I give him a deadpan look, but say, “Of course.”
“Is your first name really Menace, or did you change it?”
Steepling my fingers, I answer, “No, it’s my real name.
” Hill waves his hand for me to continue, so I say, “My father didn’t want my mother pregnant, but she wouldn’t hear about getting an abortion.
She tried to give him an out, telling him that she could do it on her own, but he said he’d do right by her and marry her.
The entire time she was pregnant, my father said I was the menace that came between him and his freedom. So that’s what he named me.”
Hill squirms in his seat, his face a mask of disgust. “That’s…I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It’s a good name. How many people do you know has a badass first name without going through all the paperwork to change it?”
He stares at me for a few beats before he says, “So, Menace Grant. How did you get your start? Did you wake up one morning and decide you wanted to walk the runway?”
After a slight chuckle, I shake my head and tell him how I was discovered.
I gloss over why I was in the mall but give him the standard answer I’ve given to a few other journalists that have interviewed me.
I do add, “Sya saved my life. I don’t think I would have lasted long in the trailer park where I was raised.
It was…it was soul sucking. She saw something in me that I didn’t see in myself and made my dreams come true.
She made it possible for me to start my charities, to give other men and women what my mother wasn’t able to get for herself: help. ”
Hill leans forward. “What do you mean by that?”
Finally, I’ll tell the world the reason why my charity for domestic violence victims is so important. If anyone has dug into my background even a little, they’ll find that my mother was killed by my father, but I’ve never talked about it.
Not until Hill.
He makes me feel safe enough to give up that information, like when he prints my words, it won’t be to make me look bad.
He’ll make the piece powerful, so victims can come forward, knowing that someone like me will be able to help them get away and get back on their feet. He’ll give victims the choice.
Pulling in a deep breath, I say, “My mother was killed by my father, then he killed himself.” Hill nods, prodding me gently to continue.
“I didn’t spend a lot of time at home. My father was a violent man, bad when he was sober, even worse when he was drunk.
And he drank a lot. My mother and I walked on eggshells every day, afraid that anything we said or did would set him off. ”
“Did she ever try to get away?” Hill asks—a question that’s not on his list, but I answer anyway.
“Once. But she ended up going back when she struggled too hard. I have no family and my mother was a stay-at-home parent. She had no friends. We were gone for a week. It was the happiest week of my childhood. But she couldn’t’ survive without my dad. He made sure of that.”
He knew my mother had no money and refused to help her unless she came back home. She tried, she really did, but with nothing, she had no choice.
I continue, looking Hill in his deep brown eyes.
“When she came back, the abuse was much worse. By the time I was seventeen, it had gotten to the point that I wanted to get us away myself. I’d gotten a job, and I was saving every single cent I could, planning to leave that trailer park when I was eighteen and graduated high school.
” I chuckle humorlessly. “My mom never let me even consider dropping out. She told me that no one could take my diploma away from me, so I needed to get one.”
“Did she graduate herself?”
A sad smile tips up my lips. “No. She dropped out when she got pregnant with me.”
Hill sighs, his eyes filled with sadness.
I hate talking about my past life, hate anyone knowing how hard I had it. But Hill isn’t looking at me with pity. Probably because he grew up in foster care and knew how hard life could be when you don’t have a stable home.
“The day my mother was killed…I didn’t want to go home after work that day.
I didn’t want to be around yelling and cursing and fighting.
I just wanted a fucking break. So, I went to the mall.
That was where Sya, my agent and manager, approached me about modeling.
She fed me and offered me a contract. I rushed home to tell my mother, excited that I had a real way to get us out.
When I stepped inside, I found their bodies.
They’d argued and my father beat my mother a little too hard.
I think when he realized he’d killed her he took his own life. ”
That’s not the real story—a story I’ve already told Hill.
What really happened is, I’d come home directly from work, found my dad sitting in his recliner looking at his bloodied hands.
My mother was still warm, but her eyes were closed and her chest had stopped rising and falling.
When I realized she was dead, I hit my father hard enough to knock him unconscious, the first time in years that I’d lost my temper on him.
I would have beaten the shit out of him like he did to her, but I know my mom would have been disappointed that I threw my life away for him.
So, I found his gun, positioned it in his hand, and pulled the trigger. After making sure he was dead, I slipped out of the back door and made my way to the mall to walk off my nervous energy and give myself an alibi.
Pulling myself back to the present, I say, “That’s why my charity is so important.
If there were resources like what my charities provide, my mother could have gotten away and stayed away.
I try to have locations in smaller, more rural areas where options are extremely limited.
I want any person who is in a relationship that is toxic and abusive to know that the assistance I provide will help them get on their feet. But I can’t do it alone.”
We grow quiet as the flight attendant comes back and offers us drinks and snacks.
Once we’re settled in, Hill jumps back in with his normal questions. “If someone wants to help, how can they provide assistance?”
I rattle off the websites for donations and any areas where we’re hiring.
“One hundred percent of all donations go into the shelters to help victims and pay staff. I keep none of the proceeds and also donate half of what I make annually to keep the shelters properly staffed. I can do so much more with assistance. It’ll be one less person trapped in a domestic violence situation. ”
Hill asks a few more lighthearted questions, many about past shoots I’ve done and just getting to know me as a person, not just as the model everyone wants to fuck.
He wraps it up a little while later and when he turns the recorder off; I sigh and sit back in my chair, my eyes closed.
Dredging up my past is never fun, especially when I’m thinking about my mother.
She was my favorite person in the world. I still feel guilty that I wasn’t able to protect her like I should have. I was almost a man and I let some drunk, abusive fuckhead kill her because I couldn’t deal with being at home.
I don’t want another kid to go through that.
“You okay?” Hill whispers and I open my eyes to find him on his knees in front of me.
Cupping his cheek, I nod. “I am.”
In a low voice, he asks, “Are you glad you killed him?”
“Of course. I would have done it sooner if my mother didn’t ask me not to.”
Hill tilts his head to the side, a question swimming in his eyes. “You told her…?”
“Yeah, but out of anger. She probably thought I was joking but made me promise I wouldn’t. Guess I fucked that promise up.”
Hill grins, shaking his head. “No, you didn’t. He killed himself. The police reports say it and everything.”
I bark a laugh and bend down to kiss him. “Where have you been all my life?
Smiling against my lips, he says, “Waiting for you to come along.”
After I have my fill of his mouth, Hill gets to his feet and holds his hand out to me. “Come on. It looks like that interview took it out of you. Let’s lie down and get some rest.”
When I’m on my feet, I wrap my arm around his waist and pull him close enough to feel my growing erection. “Are we only going to rest?”
It’s his turn to waggle his eyebrows. “That depends, Mr. Grant. Do you plan to join the Mile High Club?”
“I think we can make that happen.” Then I bend to kiss the smile off his lips.