Destiny’s Chastity

Chapter VIII

Mistress of Cellblock 7

There were, Destiny’s mother once assured her, only 10 really great days in a person’s life. And this wasn’t one of them.

Destiny sat in her orange jail jumpsuit--absolutely her worst color--watching the TV report on the shooting, the horrible incident two nights before when she had accidentally gunned down her boss, a despicable man who had harassed her, kidnapped her and, worst of all, spoiled a darned good first date.

“This is sure to be the trial of the century,” the TV reporter said earnestly. “Possibly, the trial of the millennium.”

“The millennium?” Destiny thought. “What did that mean, ‘millennium’?”

She had heard that word a lot lately but never used it. She hated when words came along that she didn’t know, especially when they were used about her.

Inmate No. 90210 squinted at the TV, hoping the definition would come to her. Sometimes, when she squinted, it made her brain work a little better. Not this time. All it did was give her a little headache right between her big emerald eyes.

“This trial will have it all,” the TV reporter was saying. “Corporate greed, romantic triangles and finally, a brutal shooting in the back seat of a Bentley in a dark desert parking lot.”

Already, the media were swarming the Municipal Courthouse, where the preliminary hearing would be held later that day.

“Where is Hunter?” she wondered. Where is the gentle man-beast who had been with her that fateful night, then slipped away into the desert after she accidentally shot Sir Sneddley?

Won’t he be here to corroborate her story, to explain to the police how Sneddley had drugged and kidnapped the two of them while they were miniature-golfing, then dragged them out to the desert to do lord knows what?

After all, wasn’t it Hunter who had actually lunged at her that night, who, in his effort to take the gun away, had inadvertently made it go off in her hand?

“Where are you, Hunter?” Destiny said softly in her cold cinder-block cell.

On TV, the reporter was giving a status report on the condition of Sir Sneddley. From what the reporter was saying, Sneddley would survive the gunshot wound to the belly.

Apparently, the .380-caliber bullet had ricocheted off a small silver pillbox of Viagra that the coffee baron kept in the pocket of his dress shirt.

If not for the Viagra, the bullet could have caused far more serious damage, perhaps even finding the Java Universe coffee baron’s tiny British heart.

“I guess you could say the Viagra saved his life,” the doctor was saying.

“Where are you, Hunter?” whispered Destiny, the prettiest inmate in Cellblock 7. “Where are you?”

*

As Destiny sat in her cell softly crying, Hunter was taking care of business. First, he made sure that Destiny’s pet ferret, Suzy, was fed and cared for.

Next, he called an emergency meeting of the board of Cuppa Joe’s Coffee Co. to vote himself in as chairman and CEO. As heir to the empire, he controlled 73% of the stock. But according to SEC regulations and company bylaws, a vote would be necessary to install him as chairman of the publicly traded firm.

After that, he would appoint himself chief financial officer as well.

Only then would Hunter have the financial resources necessary to assist Destiny in what newspapers and television were now calling “The Trial of the Millennium.”

“I want the head of legal in my office in 15 minutes,” Hunter told his secretary when the vote was completed.

“Sir, the head of the legal department is in London,” his secretary said.

“Then make it half an hour,” Hunter said crisply, with the authority of the nation’s soon-to-be newest Fortune 500 chairman, a position he once disdained but now found he was liking more and more.

Hunter knew it was vital that Destiny have the best legal counsel possible to clear her of charges of gunning down his coffee rival, Sir Sneddley.

With proper legal counsel, Destiny would have no problem convincing a jury that she had fired the gun accidentally, and even then only when she was fearing for her life.

With great legal counsel, Destiny Bettencourt--so lovely and so courageous--would be set free to be by Hunter’s side forever, as they took the reins of one of the world’s greatest businesses. To love, to prosper, perhaps even to marry.

“And mostly,” Hunter said to himself, with the confidence of the newly rich, “to do as we damn well please.”

*

Back in her cell, Destiny looked up at the trio of guards and two men in dark business suits marching down the hallway, walking like warlords.

She was scared and in no mood for visitors this morning, a morning when she hadn’t had a chance to shower or even look in a mirror.

It gave her shivers to imagine how she might look in her hideous orange jumpsuit and jail-issued orange brassiere, which wrapped her bosom like a drunken congressman.

On the sink rested a tube of jailhouse orange lipstick.

“Miss Bettencourt?” one of the men in the dark suits said, his voice like rolling thunder, his face vaguely familiar.

“Yes,” Destiny answered, her voice tiny as a child’s.

“I’m Mister Johnny,” the gentleman said. “And I’m here to set you free.”

* Meanwhile, somewhere in Chapter IX:

“Yeah, well, honey, I have something to tell you,” said Chad, lowering his voice. “You know how I was adopted? Well, my real mother is also the mother of Hunter French Roast Simone. I’m Hunter’s half-brother. Half of everything he owns is mine. Or, soon, ours.”

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