Filthy Gods (American Gods 0.5)(2)

I froze, my posture straightening and I couldn’t stop my eyes from widening as I stared up at him.

His family owned Hawthorne Country Club.

This club.

How did I not know that? I’d researched the owner.

“It’s inherited by my mother’s family. She runs it,” he added, a shrug of his shoulder. “Hawthorne was her maiden name. It was a gentlemen’s club until 1997 when my mother took over and reinvented it more as a family resort.”

The families of the rich and famous flocked to this large estate. A white stone house with fresh green ivy climbing to the black roof. It was massive with forty-two bedrooms and five large suites, not to mention the private housing spread out on the many acres of fresh green land.

Any person able to afford the generous membership required to stay at the Hawthorne estate was here. Anyone with power, money, a significant family name.

None of which I held.

But one day I would.

One day I’d be powerful and feared and I wouldn’t be scrubbing their dirty country club floors.

As I sat on the floor under his watchful gaze, I tried to repeat that in my head.

I would be better than him.

I would be stronger than him.

But I felt naked, exposed to him. My dark hair was tied back in a strict bun, but from the humidity outside flyways framed my reddening face. My skirt had ridden up on my thighs and I tried to pull it down, but his eyes flickered to the movement and I stopped. I was a mess—he was perfect. Like always.

For years I had kept to myself. I had studied hard and earned my keep. None of the rich kids at school knew I wasn’t rich. None of them knew I was riding on a scholarship from the foster care system, one I was on the dangerous edge of losing due to not keeping an average of a 3.8 GPA in all our courses. I had to up my grades to keep the scholarship.

There was only one student who always scored higher than me.

Nathaniel Radcliffe.

I wanted to smother him with gasoline. With both of us being Pre Law majors, and at the top three percent of our graduating class, I desperately needed to be recognized by the Law Schools I planned to apply to in hopes of being offered a full scholarship. Because I would be accepted, there was no doubt about that. I just needed something to differentiate me from everyone else. I needed to be at the top of my class. And I needed money more than he did to pay for them.

He was a mere man, I knew that, but he and his friends were treated like gods. It didn’t help they looked like it, too. Intimidating, perfect and deadly.

Nathaniel walked around campus with his Ralph Lauren sweaters and I walked around hoping no one could see the dark bags under my eyes.

Too many nights spent studying Latin after waitressing until midnight tended to do that to someone.

While most students thrived in their social lives, I didn’t have one and I was completely fine with that. I needed to focus on my dreams of becoming a lawyer and one day working as a senator.

I didn’t mind making sacrifices if it meant I’d achieve my goals.

As a very driven and confident woman, most men preferred to stay as far away from me as possible. They tended to fear those things in a woman because it was intimidating—as if being with a confident woman made them any less of a man.

But Nathaniel Radcliffe? He feared no such thing. In fact, he took sick pleasure in pissing me off as much as possible for those exact reasons.

And I met each of his well-crafted refutes with one of my own.

I had worked hard to hide my multiple jobs, between working at the campus library and waitressing to keep myself afloat. Once the school found out about my second job though, I had to choose between the two and I chose the library. The library job was only during the semesters. I wasn’t making enough money and because I didn’t keep my average of a 3.8 GPA, they had cut my scholarship down to almost half of what I had the first three years. I couldn’t lose it now. Not when I was so close to finishing. One more year. One more deadly year at Yale competing against the likes of Nathaniel and I would be free.

But now, kneeling before him, I was shaking.

In rage, in fear, in horror.

If he told others what I was hiding, that I wasn’t well off, people would treat me differently. They’d pity me or scoff at me. I’d be labeled the poor girl of Yale.

He had connections all around campus. To the Yale Political Team, to the Yale Herald I volunteered at.

Nathaniel had successfully inserted himself into every aspect of my life—he was everywhere. All the time.

When Professor Adams offered to be my reference to Hawthorne Country Club, I jumped at the chance. I needed money and from the amount he told me I could make working there, I would be set for my last year.

I never thought he would be here.

“I must admit, I didn’t expect to see you here,” Nathaniel whispered, the corners of his mouth twitching as he glanced at my white uniform.

It was painfully obvious that I worked here.

A red flush climbed up my neck, but I took a deep breath and exhaled through my nose.

“This will be the only time you ever see me on my knees before you,” I said through gritted teeth and managed to stand, fixing the white pencil skirt. All the maids were required to wear a white blouse, a white pencil skirt that ended mid-thigh, and their hair tied back into a low ponytail or bun. No jewelry, no flashy lipstick. We were to be invisible, silent, the least intrusive possible.