Simon & Schuster, Belletristik, The Mansion (Englisch, Ezekiel Boone, 2018)

The Mansion ONE LET OLD ACQUAINTANCES More than anything, what Billy Stafford wanted to do right now was to smash Shawn Eagle's smug little face in. Shawn Eagle: former best friend and business partner. Shawn Eagle: founder, visionary, and CEO of Eagle Technology. Shawn Eagle: one of the ten richest men in the world. Shawn Eagle: lying, cheating, backstabbing scumbag. Ten years since he'd seen Shawn in person, and just the imagined sound of his fist hitting that bastard in the face was enough to make Billy happy. He could hear it. The wet sound of flesh on flesh, the follow-through of his knuckles against Shawn's teeth, the way it would sound both hollow and solid at the same time. He could picture it, too. Shawn's head snapping back and bouncing off the plate glass window. Mashed lips and teeth jutting out at an odd angle, Shawn crumpling to his back on the plush carpet, frothy bubbles of blood bursting out the old kisser. Shawn wouldn't be doing any kissing for a while after that. There wasn't anything Billy could think of that he wanted right now more than he wanted to cave in Shawn's face, and he was trying to think of other things that he wanted more. Billy wanted to punch Shawn more than he wanted to drink a frosted pint glass of Ommegang Witte Belgian ale poured right from the tap. More than he wanted a bucket of a dozen Yuenglings, the bottles of beer settling into the crushed ice. Billy wanted to hit Shawn Eagle more, even, than he wanted four neat lines of coke or, Jesus, most of all, a sip of a Bombay Sapphire gin and tonic in a heavy, cut-glass crystal tumbler full of solid squares of ice. And he wanted all of those things. Still. Desperately. Nearly two years sober, and he hadn't stopped burning for any of what he'd left behind. But he didn't want to get high or drunk anywhere near as much as he wanted to punch Shawn Eagle in the mouth. Best not to think of the booze-it was mostly booze-and drugs. No. Not booze, then. Punching Shawn would be more satisfying than . . . a blow job from Shawn's ridiculously attractive personal assistant? How about that? Cindy or Sammy or Wendy or something? Was that a safer thing to think of than booze and drugs? Just the thought probably made him a misogynist, but sexual objectification and his long-suffering wife, Emily, be damned. Shawn's assistant, a black woman of maybe twenty-five who looked like she could have doubled as a lingerie model, was hot. And he was sure she was smart, too. She was almost certainly an Ivy League graduate. She likely came from Cortaca University itself, his and Shawn's good old alma mater. She probably had an IQ that could serve as a respectable batting average in the major leagues. But however smart she was, that wasn't what Billy was thinking about watching her ass sway while she led him into Shawn's office had been one of the great pleasures of Billy's life. Okay, fine. He was a sexist pig and a theoretical philanderer-though never an actual philanderer-and he was a terrible person to have the thought at all. He already knew he wasn't going to win any humanitarian awards. The question, however, was would he take a blow job from Cindy or Sammy or Wendy or whatever her name was over the chance to punch Shawn in the face? No. Not for an instant. Billy glanced down and realized he already had his right foot weighted and back a step. All he had to do was cock his fist and let go. Boom. Punch through your target. Punch through Shawn Eagle's shitty smile. Punch through those capped and whitened teeth. Punch right through the grin that was part of the reason Shawn Eagle had last year been named one of People magazine's sexiest men alive. In college, girls said he.