LANCASTER AND MAXWELL ( ✔ )

part one, chapter one.

Part One: End of Junior Year. Chapter One.

SULLIVAN'S mother has never been one to beat around the bush.

"You can drop out, if you want."

Sullivan stops in the middle of his bite, his emerald gaze falling on his mother in front of him. "Mhm?" He questions, his rough voice muffled and teeth trapped in the rough skin of his apple.

"I mean high school, sweetie," she finishes softly while buttoning the middle button on the navy blazer she wears on her petite body. 

Kitrina Maxwell's main career consists of seducing, manipulating, and extorting wealthy socialites and politicians for money. Her side gig, however, consists of temping at offices while she searches for the next gullible man to pay the mortgage of their home. Kitty will have found her prey and dumped her blazer within the next two week. Sullivan is sure of it.

"It's your sixth school in three years," she adds with a pout. "Your sister still got time to sew her oats down; she's only fourteen, but you? SJ, you ain't got no business sitting in some silly classroom learnin' stuff you already know. A handsome face like yourself needs to be doing something more ... valuable with your time."

Prying the apple out of his mouth, the boy can't help but to roll his eyes because he knows exactly what she means when Kitty speaks of the "valuable" time he needs to be keeping to himself.

Like how families have legacies and legends, the house of Maxwell is no different. They've been the best set of thieves and con artists on the east side of the Mississippi River since ... well, ever. His great grandparents were thieves who stole art for money. His grandfather was a hacker and his granny was a notorious car jacker who now sits in a maximum security prison. Kitty is no different, and hell, even his sister Sadie acts like a female, miniature Frank Abegnale.

Then there was him — Sullivan Maxwell, the boy too simple and well-meaning for his own good, despite his protests.

"So, you don't make money for your family?" His grandfather questions.

"No, Pap," he retorts. "I do make money for us, thank you. I take the ACT and SAT's for people."

"And you actually do it? Such a shame, slugger. I expected more out of your blood than that."

He isn't a liar, that SJ. If he says he's gonna do something, then consider it done. A man ain't got nothing more than his word, after all — that's not a lesson he learned from his dad, but that's another story for another time— and so he aces every test he takes because he told his client he would. Sullivan makes his money fair and square, but to his family the money ain't real unless it's dirty.

So has he thought about dropping out of school before? Only every other time he steps in a classroom. Even though she's wrong about some (a lot of) things, Kitty's right this time. He has no business sitting idle in a beige classroom for eight hours a day, torturing himself with trivial facts that he already knows from textbooks he's already read. Sullivan can go to classes twice a week and still graduate with honors under his arm like he hadn't missed a minute of a lecture. The young man has always been about challenges — school is not one of his.

However, he is also all about proving people wrong. When people come and see a fucking Maxwell in their midst, they expect the worst. Their first thought when they see one is a school drop-out and a dishonest criminal, bad people with bad intentions. And even though they're right about the rest of his family, he didn't want them to be right about him. Sullivan isn't going to become another example of deviance.