America 1982-Chapter 180 - 68: The Previous Lesson

On the sands of Quincy Bay, Ottelia, dressed in a bright yellow bikini, took a few running steps and leaped high into the air like a gracefully poised mermaid emerging from the sea. She swung her arms and finished the round of beach volleyball with a beautiful spike, eliminating Sophia and Mary from the game.

Then, she celebrated happily with her teammate Pia, high-fiving her before waiting for their new opponents to take the stage—her mother and Pia’s mother.

Robert Miller and Julian Farrell were rowing a rubber dinghy and fishing in the distance, while Tommy Hawk was the only one who insisted on staying under the nearby parasol. When they invited him to join them in fishing, he politely declined on the pretext of needing to ponder the future prospects of the company.

He even deliberately asked them a question: why was fishing more attractive to the two of them than cheering their wives on during the match?

After he asked this question, neither Robert Miller nor Ottelia’s father showed further interest in inviting Tommy to join them on the boat for fishing.

Eliminated from the game, Sophia came over and discovered that Tommy wasn’t ogling Ottelia and the Miller daughters in their bikinis on the beach as she had imagined. He was looking down, pinching a cola straw in his hand, focusing intently on playing a Pick15 number game on the neatly smoothed sand.

"You’re really not staring at those girls? Especially Ottelia, before coming to the beach, you were enthusiastically chatting with her and those three girls about Broadway musicals. Now that they have put on bikinis, you’ve lost interest?" Sophia slowly sat down beside Tommy and asked, "Did something happen?"

Tommy looked at the numbers on the sand and eventually circled the number 6 with his straw, saying, "No, I just don’t need to act around these women. As for our discussion about Broadway musicals, it was to encourage Ottelia and the others to fly to New York this afternoon, so Ottelia wouldn’t invite me to stay a few more days. I don’t want to waste time here. After lunch, we’ll head back to Boston."

"Isn’t liking someone supposed to make you feel like time flies when you’re together?" Sophia asked, puzzled,

"Didn’t you think Ottelia was the woman you couldn’t resist? You like her, yet you also feel it’s a waste of time. Even philosophers don’t have theories as complicated as yours."

Tommy tossed away his straw, "Another tie."

He picked up a cigarette from beside him and looked at Sophia, "My ’like’ is merely a simple appreciation of her appearance, fantasizing about getting her into bed. What do you think my ’like’ is? Do I like her demeanor, conversation, cultivation, views, abilities, background, or wealth? No, I’m shallow. A woman I like only needs to meet three criteria: first, she must be beautiful and have a good figure, to make sure that I feel desire every time I see her—ensuring that I won’t get tired of sleeping with her dozens of times. Otherwise, if you always look at her with no interest and your ’bat’ doesn’t respond, you won’t be able to satisfy her, and eventually, you’ll be faced with the image of her asking someone else to complete the job you should have done."

"Second, she should not be too smart, so she will never find out when I cheat because I know I will eventually. Third, she comes from a background that has given her a good upper-middle-class traditional education. That’s the only good point I see in high society: daughters taught to have a high tolerance for their husbands for the sake of family unity and reputation. So far, I have found that only Ottelia fits these three criteria for me to consider her for marriage. Well, Renee is barely passable, too."

"After hearing your conditions, all I can do is pray—pray that there are never any women who fulfill these three criteria in this world so they can avoid falling for an unfaithful husband," sighed Sophia.

Tommy lit his cigarette, "Don’t worry, I won’t marry you and then cheat on you with other women behind your back."

"Thank you for sparing me, Tommy. I truly appreciate it," Sophia said with an eye roll, devoid of enthusiasm.

Though Tommy spoke in jest, his gaze was fixed on the distant sea, "You should just be thankful for your breasts."

"You seem a bit unhappy. Didn’t you say that Mr. Miller helped you a lot, gave you Mr. Perot’s business card, and taught you many things?" Sophia noticed that Tommy’s sarcasm seemed distracted because, according to the bastard’s character, he would never casually miss an opportunity to provoke her if there wasn’t something serious on his mind.

Tommy exhaled a puff of smoke: "All just variations of tricks I’ve played before. What’s there to learn? It’s simply a different version of what I did to Delia. Do you understand? I gave Delia the freedom to choose, and in her eyes, either choice seemed right, right? But you know she chose the wrong answer, and you’re aware of the surprise I had prepared for her in secret. That’s why you called me a scumbag. But this scumbag, at least, offered Delia a choice where one was barely the correct answer. If she chose to help me for free, I’d definitely give her more in return. Whereas ’Gentleman’ Mr. Miller gave me two choices that seemed like great opportunities, but in reality, one was to help him steal Perot’s EDS business, and the other was to cut off any potential collaboration I might have had with Perot."

"But didn’t he give you Mr. Perot’s business card? He also said he would call Perot to introduce you to him. He didn’t stop you from seeing Mr. Perot," Sophia said, puzzled.

"Do I need him to give me Perot’s business card? I can find Perot’s contact information in the SSD alumni directory! Guess what impression Perot would have of me if he knew I had just visited someone who could mess up his navy order. No matter whether I collaborated with Miller or not, Perot would be on guard, because he wouldn’t know if what I told him was true or false. To avoid any potential accident, Perot’s best choice would be to ignore me. It would have no effect on Perot but a big impact on me. I got into the SSD internal magazine hoping Perot would see it and reach out about cooperation, and then this ’gentleman.’ After he was sure I had refused cooperation, he conveniently closed the door Perot had opened for me," Tommy said with a cigarette in his mouth, looking out over the Atlantic with a profound gaze.

"So, that’s why Robert Miller doesn’t deserve to be called a scoundrel—he can only be called a gentleman."

After hearing Tommy’s words, Sophia’s eyes went blank. In her view, the gentle and cheerful Robert Miller was just an SSD alumnus who cared for the younger generation, and she couldn’t reconcile the image of a man capable of doing such things that Tommy was now describing.

"After hearing all that, you must be thinking, ’Tommy did nothing wrong, right? He just wanted to get some help from an alumnus, and if you don’t want to help, you could just turn a blind eye. Why ...’" Noticing Sophia’s expression, Tommy laughed, gently straightening her long hair which had become disheveled during the beach volleyball match, teasing her with the same tone she had used when she was so shocked to learn of his plans to manipulate Delia that she was rendered speechless.

Sophia stared at Tommy, nodding gently: "Yes, you did nothing wrong ..."

"Delia did nothing wrong either, this world is just like that, there’s no law saying you must do wrong for trouble to find you." Tommy finished fixing Sophia’s hair and leaned back on the lounge chair, saying to her, "The United States has an enormous sea of various legal statutes, but so what? Even if there are many statutes, they can’t completely seal away human desire."

Sophia said, "Right now, your heart must be filled with anger."

"No, there’s no anger, Sophia. This is normal social behavior. Wasting time being angry doesn’t bring any benefits. When the opportunity arises, paying him back will suffice," Tommy said in a calm voice, cigarette in hand. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

"It’s just that now is not the time for Tommy Hawk, this scumbag, to be qualified to play a game with the gentlemen."

Sophia quietly looked at the man before her, and she had to admit, when Tommy Hawk used his brain instead of his *** to think, she found him very attractive. In fact, aside from his vulgar habit of sexualizing women, Sophia greatly admired Tommy. She had never seen a college student with such astounding self-control. He could let her sleep on his shoulder on a red-eye flight while he himself took out a book to complete reading assignments given by a teacher. He could resist the temptation of putting the money he earned into his own pocket. He was never low-spirited. Every time she saw him, he was always full of energy, tireless. Nobody knew what he was thinking, and nobody knew where he would take Actor Corporation, now caught in the eye of the storm. Not only her but also Holly, Susan, Mark and even Jason couldn’t guess his thoughts, yet they were unconsciously attracted to him, accompanying him as he moved forward.

Whether in success or failure, one has to admit that Tommy Hawk, this scumbag, is a strong person, even if he swears like a sailor and disrespects women.

It is simply the mentality of admiring strength that makes one unable to resist being attracted to him, which then becomes a habit, just like what Jason said, "What’s there to worry about? No matter who the opponent is, we have Tommy."

"I guess right now you’re wildly imagining something happening between us?" Tommy glanced at Sophia, who had become still, and asked with a mischievous smile, "Give it up; unless you’re willing to pay, I’m definitely not going to undress you."

Sophia also smiled: "When you’re not talking, I indeed indulge in some fantasies, but that sentence just shattered my fantasy and brought me back to reality."

"I’ve thought of the perfect revenge against Robert. Sleep with his three daughters, film it, and send it to him as a Christmas gift during his family’s Christmas dinner. Maybe Santa Claus will take him away when delivering gifts to his house."

"The family could just gather around his corpse and discuss how to divide the inheritance. That would be my good deed. What do you think? Would his family write me a thank you note?" Tommy mused about his method of revenge, consulting his legal assistant for her opinion.

Although she knew he was joking, Sophia still reminded him, "Tommy, these words are too much for even a listener like me."

"But I’ve got to f*ck something, I’m not a queer who can screw Miller... " Tommy made a disgusted exaggerated expression: "Right? I can only fantasize about heterosexual images."

Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip ...

Tommy glanced at his pager, stood up to ask where the phone was, walked over, and dialed: "Delia?"

Delia shared the news she had learned with Tommy, "We’ve received confirmation that Jim Manzi has resigned from Lotus Corporation, and a vice president named Byron Kennedy has taken over his work."

"Jim Manzi was the only scumbag in that company. Without him, our preparations seem a bit overdone. The internal SSD magazine only got me ten million. I was worried, but now it seems enough. I’m heading back to California to get that money," Tommy said after hearing Delia’s report.

"I’m just afraid that scumbags like me never fear gentlemen. Let’s give this naive Mr. Kennedy a lesson and teach him another concept besides technological equality—moral hijacking."