Vicious

Vicious reflects on his boredom with the wild parties he regularly throws. He callously brushes off a classmate who shows romantic interest in him. The classmate invokes the nickname for Vicious and his friends Dean Cole, Trent, and Jamie—“the Four HotHoles of All Saints High” (17), a name that invokes their physical attractiveness and tendency toward cruelty. Trent recently suffered a broken ankle that ended his aspiration toward a football scholarship. Unlike most of his classmates, Trent is not wealthy and needed the scholarship to afford college.

Emilia enters the room, something that annoys Vicious, as his friends use the media room as their private area during parties; only those invited are permitted inside. He dislikes that “something weird [happens] in [his] chest” when he sees her (18). He further dislikes that Emilia and Dean seem interested in one another and that he finds Emilia “sexy” despite “her apparent devotion to trying not to be sexy” (19). He blames his jealousy on his concern that Dean will hurt Emilia, which will then cause “drama” in Vicious’s home. Dean and Emilia leave together.

Jamie and Trent reassure Vicious that Dean, who eschews serious romantic connections, cannot have a close relationship with Emilia. Though Vicious protests to his friends that he doesn’t care what Emilia does, he thinks with pleasure that her lack of a college scholarship means that she will lack opportunities and therefore “stay small and insignificant” and in his orbit (21).

Vicious pushes away two classmates vying for his sexual attention, musing about how he enjoys his peers’ shallow admiration. He retreats briefly to a basement storage room, where he keeps weapons that make him feel safe, though he does not use them. He leaves his weapons behind as he plans to play “Defy,” a game in which All Saints students brutally fight one another. Before he can find an opponent, Trent approaches; he plans to tell Dean to break up with Emilia, fearing that it will “drag everyone down a very dark path” if Emilia comes between the two friends (24). Vicious dissuades him from this plan, as he anticipates taking advantage of Emilia’s heartbreak after her relationship with Dean ends “to show her she [i]s nothing more than [his] property” (25).

In the narrative present, Emilia lives and works as a waitress in New York City. She rushes to work through the rain as she talks on the phone to her sister, Rosie, who is chronically ill with cystic fibrosis. Emilia laments being let go from her assistant job at an advertising agency. Though she reassures Rosie that she can easily find more work, she worries about the expensive medication Rosie needs. While running through a dark alley to avoid being late for work, Emilia is mugged. Her manager, Rachelle, is friendly and sympathetic, especially when Emilia explains being fired earlier that day.

Emilia is shocked when Vicious is one of the bar’s customers. She pretends that nothing is amiss as she admires his more mature style since high school. She laments that she looks disheveled in her revealing bar uniform. She watches from a distance as Vicious has an argument with a man in a suit. When Emilia takes her break, Vicious follows her into a back room, where he taunts her about not working in a fine arts field, as she received a degree in the subject. On impulse, she tells him about getting fired from her job. He taunts her with the nickname “Help,” which he used to demean her for her poverty in high school. She quickly flees, annoyed that she still finds him attractive. She returns to her tables. At the end of her shift, she is furious to see that instead of leaving a tip for her service, Vicious summoned her to an address. She throws away his note, determined to refuse.

Vicious is surprised but pleased to see Emilia, as he planned the trip to New York to use a dubious lawsuit to strong-arm a competitor into dropping a countersuit against the investment firm he runs with Trent, Jamie, and Dean. He schemes to use Emilia to get revenge against his stepmother, Josephine “Jo” Spencer (whom he later reveals facilitated her brother’s abuse against Vicious), relishing the idea that Emilia’s “innocent little soul” would “probably shatter” in the process (41).

Emilia debates telling Rosie about Vicious’s reappearance in her life as she retrieves the numerous medications that Rosie needs to manage her cystic fibrosis. Rosie’s health fluctuates; she is currently battling a serious bout of pneumonia that left her extremely weakened. The sisters lament their financial straits, and Rosie cites feelings of guilt for being unable to work while ill. Emilia dissuades Rosie from returning to California to live with their parents, who are also lacking money, as Rosie would have to begin her college degree over again if she did so. Emilia works on a commissioned painting, an activity that soothes her. The sisters joke about their dreams and aspirations, which makes Emilia reflect that she is lucky to have a loving family, despite her difficulties. Over the next several days, Emilia continues to hunt for work and take on as many extra bar shifts as possible. Rosie’s health worsens, as do their finances.

One night, she returns home late and is startled to find Vicious waiting for her. He offers her a job as his personal assistant, which she rejects immediately. He offers increasingly large salaries and then adds free housing and healthcare for Rosie before she agrees. She is suspicious, but he promises that “nothing too seedy” will be asked of her and that he will not make sexual requests (50). He gives her a $10,000 advance on her salary, and Emilia resigns herself to taking the job, as she and Rosie desperately need money. Emilia agrees to begin work the next morning, though she vows to “leave on [her] own terms, not his” (52), when she can afford to do so.

Vicious toys with a pen he stole from Emilia, as he has been stealing from her since high school, and fumes that his stepmother, Jo, has demanded that he “clear [his] schedule” for her unexpected visit to New York (54). He complains over the phone to Dean, who is overseeing their company’s Los Angeles office while Vicious is in New York. He doesn’t mention Emilia, whom Dean hates. (Dean believes that Emilia broke up with him abruptly and left town because she had fallen in love with someone else. He later learns that Vicious blackmailed her into leaving Todos Santos.) Vicious callously fires his old assistant to open the job for Emilia, thinking about his belief that “people [are] disposable” (59).

When Emilia arrives, the two immediately fall into a combative working relationship. Vicious enjoys ordering Emilia around but is discomfited when she comments that FHH, the acronym for his company Fiscal Heights Holdings, also could stand for “Four HotHoles” (62), Vicious and his friends’ high school nickname. He considers that he hates Emilia because she reminds him of his stepmother and because he fears that she knows his secret (that he was abused as a child); however, he also respects that she refuses to be impressed or cowed by him.

Vicious reluctantly meets Jo for dinner, though he blames her for his mother’s death. Jo confides that Vicious’s father, Baron Sr., is ailing and predicts that he doesn’t have long to live. Vicious considers Jo’s love for her husband false. Jo worries that Baron Sr. will leave her little in his will and asks Vicious to give her the Todos Santos house, where she lives, if this happens. Vicious refuses. She threatens to sue him, but Vicious relishes the challenge of getting “justice” against her for the physical abuse that she and her brother perpetuated against him when he was young.