Wheeler (Four Fathers Book 4) Page 3

  I’ve watched her through the window as she reaches for it and slips it beneath the covers. The gasp of breath as she pushes it inside herself always made me hard. The writhing in the duvet, the heavy pants and flushed skin caused me to stroke myself for her. She’s quite something. The innocent act is her façade. In here, in her room, she’s a minx. She’s mine. We all wear masks for the outside world.

  I leave the toy on the bed in case she’s checked for penetration. None of my girls’ deaths have ever come into question, I make sure of it.

  Pulling away from her, I go to her en-suite to turn on the shower. There are products left out and a towel slung over a wash bin instead of inside it. Why are females so messy?

  The steam fills the room almost instantly and the thrashing of the water pelting the glass walls matches the humming high in my head. Nothing else in my life makes me feel the way my girls do. It’s addictive, and I’m already thinking about who my next girl will be.

  Lucy.

  No. I can’t.

  I come back and carry Stacy into the bathroom. Already thinking of a new girl is unfair to her. She deserves all my devotion. I made her wait long enough for it. Dragging her into the shower, I place her body on the floor. It’s small, so she lays at an awkward angle, and I have to stand over her to fit inside with her. I use her soap to clean my cock, then wash my seed from her body. I shower the rest of myself until I’m satisfied I’m clean, then lift her up gently, not wanting to leave any bruised fingerprints. With little effort, I force her body backwards through the shower cubicle glass door. Her weight crashes through the sheer wall, causing it to shatter around her like a Lego tower being knocked over. She lands on the tiled floor with an ungodly thud.

  A crimson puddle forms beneath her head, coating her hair and creating a halo around her. How fitting. She was an angel indeed.

  Glass has blemished her beautiful, soft cheeks, causing blood welts there.

  She looks so perfect, I debate taking her again, but I know better than to change my plans. To get sloppy is to risk exposure.

  I empty the drain of any hair there and take a piss, making sure to flush and wipe the seat. I stand naked while I air dry, then redress in my running gear. I locate the needle and tip from the injection I gave her and stuff it back into my sock. The injection site won’t even show a mark. It’s why I locate a mole or blemish.

  Checking the room to see if there’s anything I need to do, I notice the mug of coffee she’d brought in here. She would have had that before her shower. Picking it up, I use the bottom of my shirt to cover my hand, drain the cup, and place it down. I can’t help but need to see her one last time before leaving.

  The shower has filled the room with steam and continues to rain down, flooding the floor.

  I take a knee beside her and lean in to kiss her lips. They’re growing cold already, but are still plump and precious.

  Goodbye, sweet Stacy.

  Chapter Two

  Jax

  Psychopath red flag

  #3

  They are liars

  I enter my house from the side and make my way upstairs to wake Rowan. She’s already prowling around her bedroom when I get there, and I gulp down the guilt of leaving her alone. I’m still riding my high and feel like I’m vibrating all over. I hate to see her right after leaving one of my girls, but it’s something I’ve learned to deal with over the years. My alter ego slips into place with more ease when it’s Rowan because I don’t have to pretend to feel around her. I do feel. If I could love completely like normal people, it would be for her.

  “My little girl is growing up,” I say from my doorway, pride evident in my voice. And I am proud. This unity wasn’t one I planned, but look how well I did raising a child. It’s amazing what the internet and text books can teach you. They make it almost too easy for people like me. They give us the tools we need to stay under the radar. To fit in among the lesser mortals.

  Rowan grins over at me, and the brightness in her smile could rival the sun. She’s such a vision. Nothing like her mother, although I’ve lied to her many times saying so.

  She’s looking directly at me, and in her eyes, I see love and devotion. My daughter doesn’t see the emptiness echoing inside my gut. The darkness lurking in my mind. She will always be Daddy’s little girl, only seeing the best in me.

  “Hey,” she replies, flashing her brilliant white teeth.

  I push off the frame of her door and enter her room, holding my arms out to hug her. I can’t believe she’s eighteen.

  She hugs me back with vigor, then starts to pull away. Her eyes drop to a stain I hadn’t noticed on my shirt. It’s small, but it’s there. A blood splatter screaming up at me, and my Rowan has seen it. It must have been when I went back for a last kiss. I knew her skin was broken with the scratches of the glass, but I was careless, foolish. All the high drains from me, anger at myself taking its place.

  I’ve worked my entire life to keep this part of me from her. She will never know the demon who rattles against his cage inside me.

  “Did you hurt yourself?” she asks, pointing to the spot with a frown before checking over my body.

  My smile and happiness from moments before has extinguished like water on a fire, and she notices the change in me. I can see it in her body tensing slightly. I say the first thing that comes to mind.

  “Yeah, shaving.”

  Her mouth pops open, but then closes. I need to take her mind off it, and off the fact that I want to punch a wall.

  “Rowan, how mad at me would you be if I rescheduled your birthday dinner?” I ask, changing the subject. A little part of her light penetrates my heart as she chuckles, and I sigh internally.

  “Depends on the reason.” She narrows her eyes, playing with me.

  Rubbing a hand over the back of my neck, I shrug. “I met this woman recently…”

  Her eyes expand and elation flushes her cheeks. “You have a date!” she screeches, a huge smile plastered on her face.

  A date? Sort of.

  I want to go back and watch from the trees as Mary returns home from work and finds my Stacy.

  “Something like that.” I smirk, giving her the hope she wants so badly of me finding someone. I just wish she could understand I don’t need anyone but her.

  Her and me is how I like it.

  How it will always be.

  “Go!” she tells me with a giggle. “And take a shower. You stink.”

  I return her laugh, lifting the shirt over my head. “I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

  “I know you will.”

  My gaze flits over to the dollhouse I made her, and a genuine smile lifts my lips. I want to shrink her down and keep her inside that dollhouse, to keep her safe. To keep her from ever learning she lives with Jekyll and Hyde.

  I leave her to get dressed and take the stairs two at a time down to the foyer. I grab the fire lighter and march to the back of the house, pushing out the bi-folding doors to the yard. I throw a couple logs onto the firepit and light the thing.

  Once the flames ignite, I chuck the shirt into the fire, watching the golden licks pull the fabric into its embrace and turn it to ash.

  “You killed someone or something.” A voice comes from behind me. I turn my gaze to his over my shoulder.

  The sneaky little bastard. Usually, it’s impossible to sneak up on me. Nixon, the only son of Eric’s I consider an acceptable friend to Rowan, is standing there brazen and curious.

  Curiosity killed the cat, little boy.

  His words ring loud in my head. I’ve never killed a boy before, and his youthful age is too close to Rowan’s for me to be comfortable snuffing it out, but if he’s seen something he shouldn’t, what choice is there?

  “I’m kidding, Mr. Wheeler.” He smirks and prods a stick into the firepit, helping the fire destroy the remnants of my shirt. Under his breath, he mutters, and in the quiet, I can tell he’s counting. Counting what? I don’t know.

  “What are you
doing here?” I growl, grabbing him by the collar of his shirt. Not because I care, but because it’s the response I should have and hopefully it will keep him from sneaking around the place.

  He’s tall, like his father, and there’s something glaring back at me in his eyes. Something so familiar, if I could be unsettled by it, I would be.

  It’s not fear; it’s something worse. It’s something I recognize every day in the mirror.

  Indifference.

  Darkness.

  The monster lurking under the skin.

  As if the blackness surging through him calms him, the counting grows quiet.

  He takes my pause as I study him to his advantage and pushes me off him. He holds up a box and looks up to Rowan’s bedroom window.

  “I just came to give Rowan her birthday present.”

  I snatch the box from his hand and point to his house. “Go home. I’ll give this to her, and, Nixon?” I shout after him because he’s already begun to leave. He looks over his shoulder at me.

  “Start using the front door, or I may mistake you for an intruder.” I make a gun with my fingers and gesture to the trigger being pulled, making sure to aim it at his head as I mouth, “Bang.”

  A warning.

  “Whatever,” he scoffs.

  I turn my attention back to the fire, then to the box in my hand, creaking the lid open.

  There’s a locket inside. A simple white gold heart. I open it, and my body tenses. It’s a picture of the woman in the few photos I gave to Rowan of her mother. Except they’re not actually of her mother. They’re from a clothing catalogue that came in the junk mail. She kept asking about her mother and what she looked like when she was little, so I gave her something to hold onto, to look at and love. The woman had the same coloring as Rowan and she was beautiful, so I laminated the pictures and framed them.

  She can never know this deceit. She can never know her mother didn’t die during childbirth…well, not in the complication aspect of childbirth.

  The picture in the locket isn’t one I’ve given Rowan, so Nixon must know my lies. But to what extent? And how?

  I throw the chain into the fire and roll my head over my shoulders, cracking my neck.

  He may have to go after all.

  Chapter Three

  Jax

  Psychopath red flag

  #4

  They don’t like social situations

  The lights flash, illuminating the street as I creep past in my car. There’s an ambulance and one police car. The paramedic is talking to an officer, and the other has a blanket around Mary’s shoulders, comforting her.

  It will be ruled non-suspicious. I played her defect perfectly against her.

  If I pull over and disappear into the tree line, I’ll be able to wait and watch the coroner arrive and wheel out her body packed up neatly in a bag.

  She’s gone.

  And life goes on.

  Without her.

  When I make it home, Rowan is already turned in for the night. I find some leftover chicken from lunch still in the fridge and whip together a sandwich. The adrenaline eats through your calorie burn like a bitch. Maybe I’m onto a new weight loss method. All the fat housewives just need to kill to get thin.

  I smirk to myself at the thought of Mrs. Ringwood from across the street going on a rampage with her cockapoo stuffed in her handbag.

  Ha.

  I finish my sandwich, then go to the basement and collect all of Stacy’s files. The image I keep is of her sleeping. I add it to the other’s hidden inside a cookie tin and stash it in the wall space I carved out when I first bought this house. I can’t help pulling them out and looking through them. There’s one girl not amongst the others, and it torments me. She needs to be with them.

  I drop them back in the hiding spot and slot the brick back into place, camouflaging that there’s even a space there. I take the rest of the images and documents I accumulated about Stacy to the firepit, checking first that Rowan’s bedroom lights are in fact out so I know she’s sleeping.

  I reminisce with each image I burn until nothing is left but the imprint on my brain and the ashes. A breeze cools my skin, and I sense I’m not alone before anyone makes themselves known.

  I don’t like being crept up on or watched.

  I’m the watcher.

  “I know you’re there,” I announce, rising to my feet and walking over to the bar area I had built out here. I open the beer fridge and grab two bottles, popping the lids off.

  Nixon stalks from the corner like a shadow. This is becoming a habit.

  “I left some schoolwork in Rowan’s backpack,” he lies.

  I glower at him. “It’s a little late to be skulking around the place in the dark.”

  “I noticed Rowan wasn’t wearing her locket,” he says, changing the subject effortlessly.

  “You know I didn’t give it to her. Let’s not play games.” I smirk, offering him one of the beers. He takes it and nods toward the firepit.

  “More shirts?”

  Ha. “Not quite.”

  “Why does Rowan have pictures of Nina Drake framed in her room believing her to be her mother?” he questions.

  I should ask him why he thinks Eric is his dad when he looks just like Trevor Blackstone. Instead, I focus on something more paramount.

  “How the fuck do you know what’s in Rowan’s bedroom?” I growl.

  The tilt of his lips shows his amusement. It’s not often I can tolerate company, but Nixon holds his own. He’s really good at fitting in around them, even though, deep down, he’s not like them—much better at fitting in than I could ever be. But just us guys out here, I feel like I almost don’t have to pretend in front of him—like he knows me better than most. The real me, not the me I display for everyone. It’s an unusual feeling.

  “She tutors me sometimes when I’m struggling in my human relations class.” He shrugs like it’s no big deal. If it were any of the other boys, I wouldn’t believe him, but Nixon is frank. He would say if it was more than that. I admire that about him.

  “Next time you need to study, you do it downstairs,” I demand.

  “You haven’t answered the question.” He looks over at me from the seat he put himself in. I join him, looking out into the yard. I like the night time. It’s where I belong and feel most comfortable.

  I grit my teeth. “I don’t have to answer your questions.”

  Does he forget his age and who he’s talking to?

  “But you do if it was her asking?” He quirks a brow, daring me not to answer so he can run along and tell Rowan I’ve created a plastic life for her.

  “Why haven’t you said anything to her yet?” I ask, curious.

  He swigs his drink and shrugs his shoulders. “I don’t like the thought of hurting her for no reason. That’s why I’m asking you.”

  “How do you even know the woman? What did you call her? Nina Drake?” I query.

  He quirks a brow, looking over at me with a sigh of amusement. Digging into his pocket, he pulls out a cell phone, flicks his thumbs over the keys, then hands me the screen.

  Well, shit.

  Nina Drake, once a small-time model has now turned porn star. This whole time, I’ve allowed Rowan to have a porn star’s image as her mother.

  I hand him back the phone. “When Rowan was young, she was desperate to know about her mother. But she and I were never a couple. Rowan was an accident. One I didn’t know about until her mother was dying and she was born. I didn’t want her knowing that, so I gave her a mother to hold onto. You can relate, right?” I ask.

  His features don’t change, not even a flinch of pain. “Rowan’s mother died, mine fucked off.”

  “Do you ever wonder why?”

  He snorts. “Because my old man likes younger pussy. He can’t let it go, though. He’s still searching for her. I don’t give a shit if he finds her. She made her choice.”

  Eric is still looking for Julia? Well, that is news.

  Nixon s
tands and tosses his empty bottle in the trash. “Lucky for you, Rowan’s not a boy, so she won’t watch much porn.” He winks and saunters off.

  I watch as he disappears though the entrance they made years ago. I closed it up at one point, but the little fucks reopened it. Jumping to my feet, I go grab a hammer and nails to seal the thing shut. Again.

  Chapter Four

  Jax

  Psychopath red flag

  #5

  They are overly charming

  I find myself back in the basement, pulling out the files I kept of Lucy. Memories of when I first found her brighten my mind like search lights seeking her out in the dark sea of my mind.

  Nine months ago

  Throwing some onions into the pan, I brown them and add the cooked chicken. I like to cook for Rowan. A balanced diet is important, and it gives my mind reprieve from thinking about finding my next girl. I haven’t found anyone since Rebecca, and it’s making me jittery.

  “Hey, Daddy,” Rowan says, coming into the kitchen and sitting on a stool opposite where I’m preparing dinner. “What would you say to me and the Pearson boys staying at one of Mr. Blackstone’s beachfront properties for the summer?”

  My hand slows the stirring and my head begins to haze with a storm rumbling within it. She’s so casual with her words, reaching forward and swiping a fresh piece of pepper from the chopping board and popping it in her mouth like she’s just asked me for a pony.

  “Is that a joke?” I ask. Because clearly, she’s fucking joking.

  “He owns like the entire seafront. Well, all but one Hayden said, but he has a different one he said we could use over the summer months. It’s totally safe. The boys and I thought—”

  “No!” I snap, the spatula slapping against the counter. She startles and looks to where my hand grips the handle. My knuckles are white. “You’re seventeen. A child.”