Prologue
Jax
Psychopath red flag
#1
They create a façade
Six years ago…
The boisterous laughter and constant catcalls anytime a woman walks past the Pearson boys irritates me on a level I’m not used to.
These people are mundane and my intellect is dropping points every second I’m forced to be around them.
Overcooked, chargrilled chicken is dumped on my paper plate by Rowan, my twelve-year-old firecracker. She beams up at me, and I can’t help but relax my tense posture and offer her a smile in return.
“Thank you,” I tell her, picking up the flesh and taking a chunk into my mouth. I chew and swallow to appease her, but it’s rubbery and lodges in my trachea, more than likely because Eric insists on barbecuing his own meat at these get-togethers rather than hiring a cook or caterers. For someone who’s rich and likes to flaunt it, the paper plates he has us all juggling are cheap. Just like half the women here. Not hiring a chef to barbeque is an alpha male trait, and he’s too busy drooling over the half-dressed housewives flaunting their bought tits and veneer smiles to concentrate on doing a good job of it.
“I’m going to get my suit and swim with the boys,” Rowan tells me, pulling my attention back to her. She’s been a friend of the Pearson boys since we moved here six months ago.
They attend the same school, kids’ parties, after school activities. I can’t escape the little bastards.
I don’t like her being around four boys, especially Eric Pearson’s boys. Those kids are trouble. Hayden is the oldest, but he isn’t right in the head. I don’t like the way his eyes track my daughter—as though he might do something to her. Over my fucking dead body. Brock, the second to oldest, and around the same age as Rowan, is destined to turn out just like his dad, even has the same goddamn smirk. Nixon is a few years younger than Rowan, but seems lost inside his head and is always muttering under his breath—something I can certainly relate to. And the youngest, Camden, is still a titty-baby momma’s boy despite being in third or fourth grade. Eventually, Eric Pearson will influence that kid too. His idea of role modeling is cheating on his wife and throwing money at any problems that arise. The Pearson boys don’t stand a chance of being anything other than scum. It’s in their gene pool.
But Rowan sees the best in everyone, which works for me, so I don’t try to dull that glitter from her personality. Her soft brown hair that matches mine fans over her delicate shoulders, and her eyelids flutter as she waits for my permission.
I scan the boys who are all taking turns dive bombing into the swimming pool, and visions of the water turning red as I wade through with a carving knife and cut each pecker from their pubescent bodies invade my mind, bringing a real smile to my lips.
Apparently, it’s healthy to socialize with your neighbors, and good for Rowan to have play dates. Those play dates didn’t used to include boys and swimsuits, though.
This is going to be a real test of restraint.
“Go ahead, sweetheart.” I nod my head in the direction of our house.
Her auburn hair falls down her back and sways as she bounces across the lawn and out of the gate.
I pull on the collar of the shirt I took ten minutes choosing just to come to this shit-show. I hate wearing polo shirts, but it’s what I see most men wear when they’re going for a casual look. I paired it with some beige slacks, but I’m thinking I should have gone for shorts like everyone else here. It’s hard for me sometimes to fit in—to adjust to the norm and blend in with other parents.
Bodies mingle and talk animatedly to each other, and all I want to do is flee back to the comfort of my own house—my own company. I have things to do, people to check up on. One of Eric’s wife’s friends keeps looking over at me offering a coy smile, but she’s older than the girls I like and too fake. I hate the rich women who think paying to have toxins pumped into their skin makes them look young and attractive.
They’re wrong.
It makes them look swollen and desperate. Grow old gracefully or die young, but freezing your youth in time forever is simply pathetic.
Eric catches my eye and summons me over with a motion of his hand, the muscles in his abdomen flexing, showing he works out.
In only a pair of shorts, his over-tanned skin is cooking under the summer sun, and I think about the damage that would show under a black light.
Vanity is such an ugly trait in humans, and Eric has it in abundance. I debate not going over. Who the hell is he to beckon me? But for Rowan, I will make the effort, play the part, wear the façade.
“Eric,” I say with a tilt of my head. I have the brief urge to grab his head and plant it on the grill he’s tossing steaks on, smelling the burning of his flesh, relishing the screams and sizzle. The feeling washes over me like a red mist, dimming the sounds around me and making my fingers twitch, but it drifts away with the smoke of the barbeque evaporating.
“Jaxson, glad you could make it,” he says. Calling me “Jaxson” is another sign of power. He knows I go by Jax. I’ve corrected him many times in the past. I think it’s because his wife, Julia, calls me Jax. She’s over familiar with me whenever an occasion arises where we have to talk, her hands are touchy feely, and it makes my skin crawl so he likes to put me in my place.
Desperation is also a trait in people I despise. But it’s amusing he finds me threatening.
“This is Trevor and Levi. They work with me.” He introduces me to his partners, undermining their positions—another show of how badly he needs to be the dominant alpha, while emphasizing his lack of respect for anyone around him. Unbeknownst to him, I already know exactly who they are. I did my research about Eric before buying the property next door. He’s the CEO of Four Fathers Freight. Levi Kingston is a partner, along with Trevor Blackstone and Mateo Bonilla. FFF is a U.S. based global packaging company and delivery service founded in 2005 by Eric and his partners. They’re a rapidly growing business and already the third largest transport company operator in the U.S. Total revenue for last year hit over forty billion. This is why Eric is such a cocky sonofabitch. Money does strange things to the simple-minded.
I offer a polite hello and study each of them. Trevor appears more reserved than Eric and Levi, who both tip their beers to their lips and eyeball a girl barely into her teens as she saunters past and jumps on the back of Hayden, Eric’s oldest son. She makes a screeching sound when he jumps with her into the pool. The splash soaks a couple younger children, making them cry. Her bikini top lifts as she crashes into the water, her young tits on display for a brief moment. I look away, uninterested in child nudity.
“They grow up so fast.” Eric grins, and Levi smirks in return. “Amen to that, brother.”
Perverts. I’m all for looking at a beautiful woman, but teens who barely have fluff on their cunts do nothing for me, and men who prey on them make my blood heat.
Levi is so much like Eric, they could have been spat out by the same mother.
I eye Levi’s impeccable suit, crinkle free, his tie firmly in place, like he’s going to a wedding and not sitting in the yard of his friend in blistering heat. He sees me looking at him and narrows his eyes.