Wallflower No More (The Fearless #2)

Prologue

Beginnings

I always wanted a mother, one that would love and protect me. I never got one though.

-Axel Creed

At the moment of Axel Rayburn Creed's birth, his mother declined the doctor's invitation to hold her son for the first time.

She made it known for all to hear that she was tired and not up to the experience.

Alexia Rayburn was an obnoxious busybody who dreamed of riches and a life where she attended fancy parties and did little else.

Her modeling career hadn't quite taken off, and having Theodore Creed's baby was her entry into high society.

A contract had been drawn up, and both signatures followed soon after.

No one thought to ask Axel what he wanted because he was just a baby, and babies were nuisances to everyone they came in contact with.

The first touch that Axel received from his family came from his overbearing father.

He only held him for a minute, and that was only to ensure he was perfect—ten fingers, toes, etc.

Theodore Creed discarded him to the older nanny who was recently employed.

The woman named Margo loved the boy on sight.

She vowed never to leave him until he was fully mature.

However, she didn't get to fulfill her promise; her heart was fragile, and her time was limited.

And on the day she died, the day before his thirteenth birthday to be exact, the boy shed his first and only tear.

That same week, he saw his mother for the very last time.

Alexia Rayburn had run out of money, and as she was known to do every so often, she went to see Axel's father.

Blackmail was her game. She liked to party, and high-grade cocaine was especially expensive in the upper circles of Manhattan that she ran in.

However, Theodore was prepared for her with papers in her face from the family lawyer.

The documents clearly stated that it would be the last time he ever gave Alexia money.

She signed on the dotted line, then patted young Axel's head as she casually walked out of the door and never returned.

Theodore had given her the option of receiving no money but that she could be granted full custody of Axel instead.

His father had done that in front of him without so much of a care about how it would make him feel.

Axel can pinpoint the day and the moment when he became numb on the inside, and that was it.

His mother had left him without any thought as to how it would make him feel.

It was then that young Axel realized that people used others, especially when one had money.

Women also lied, and the only people that he could trust were his father's side of the family.

They may be assholes, but they never once had abandoned him.

Axel grew in stature and knowledge. When he was 15, his granddaddy, Justice, who was especially ruthless, got drunk and took him to a high-class brothel. He lost his virginity that night and, more importantly, a tiny part of his soul.

When Axel turned 18, he craved freedom and longed to be out from under Theodore and Justice's thumbnail.

The University of Texas recruited him, and as he made friends with the men he now calls his brothers, he finally realized that his family was seriously fucked up.

Axel's friends weren't like the rich bastards he called friends back home.

They were different. They were honest, and that's what he decided he wanted for his future.

Although, at the time, he didn't understand what that really meant.

***

When one of your parents dies, a part of you dies, too.

-Scarlett Quinn

Scarlett Renee Quinn was a perfect child. She never cried, and if she ever got upset in the middle of the night, her doting mother, Stephanie, would rock her back to sleep. Her daddy, Rufus, was a good man, even if he did like Jim Beam and beer a little too much.

Scarlett's childhood was ripped apart when her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer the summer she turned twelve.

Cancer doesn't care that you're a wonderful wife and mother.

It will take even the purest of hearts. While the doctors had been optimistic, the treatments enabled the tumor to grow instead of shrink.

Stephanie died after six months of treatment, leaving Scarlett devastated.

Scarlett not only lost her mother that day but also her father.

Rufus turned to alcohol even more than he previously had.

His days were poured into his job, and his nights into his alcohol.

He just wanted to forget, leaving Scarlett to raise herself.

Scarlett had always been chubby, but when her mother died, she swallowed her grief with food, allowing the pounds to sneak up on her.

It was hard being compared to her cousin, Janet, who was the apple of everyone's eye.

Because Janet, although ugly on the inside, was beautiful, skinny, and perfect on the outside.

That was heartbreaking for Scarlett because she knew all too well that people judged you by your appearance and rarely by the goodness within you.

The more that people compared the cousins, the more Scarlett sunk into herself.

And while she wasn't shy and had plenty of friends, that's when the Wallflower was born.

Scarlett was accepted into the University of Texas and moved there without her father's approval.

Rufus didn't understand that they had the best Journalism program in the whole United States.

He only saw her figure and tried to talk her out of her chosen career, for he knew that fat girls didn't make it on television.

Just because Scarlett was passably pretty didn't amount to a hill of beans because of her size.

Rufus was frustrated that she wouldn't take his advice and become a teacher or nurse.

Overweight women handled those jobs just fine.

Scarlett didn't listen to him because she was tired of living in the shadows. She was tired of being scared. Scarlett decided that it was time to live and become a wallflower no more.