Preston Vance Eaton
The day my father was taken from me was the hardest day of my life.
Mostly because everything he had ever worked for was handed to someone other than his first-born son.
Way before his hot new wife secured herself a sucker, or his other children, I existed.
You would never know because he never spoke about his life in Atlanta.
Never mentioned how he married my mother and lived a different life here.
A life that one would say was the perfect life.
A doting wife, star athlete son, and a peaceful home.
Golf on the weekends, and an outstanding member of the country club.
My mother lived her life worrying about his peace more than her own, and the man was never home.
It was always about business trips, but as an adult I was smart enough to know that meant he did his dirt somewhere else.
While Atlanta was home to me and mom, it had never been home for him.
Only a stop on his rolling stone tour. When we received word that he was murdered, my mother stressed.
She had only ever been his wife and lived to serve him.
All of her friends were his. She didn’t know what it was like to work a job because she was a kept woman.
A weak woman.
My mother helped me early on discover that I didn’t want a weak ass woman as a wife. She didn’t know what to do and was lost when it came to trying to collect some of her husband’s fortune.
Only to find out that their marriage was a sham. Nash Eaton never married any one of his wives legally. Haven List was a bullshit business endeavor that my father was trying to cultivate in Atlanta.
He was trying to rival his brother’s Case House and quickly realize it wasn’t to be compared. Atlanta and New York City were like apples to oranges. Each city had things about them that made it unique, but selling peaches wasn’t one of them.
Haven’s List was abandoned before he could see the potential. He decided right then and there that if he couldn’t replicate it, he would just take it.
That was exactly what he did.
He took what he felt was owed. I had only met my uncle once when he was visiting Atlanta. It was right before he died, and my father allowed me to attend. At the time, I was a teen and excited he was allowing me to tag along. Business meetings were always off limits.
When he walked into the room, the entire room stopped to stare. He smelled like wealth, and not the kind my father had. Everything about his mannerisms were different from my father.
His security, a dark-skin man with a gray beard and hair stood nearby. I was so star-struck meeting him. He must have known about me because he greeted me by name. I didn’t think my father told anyone about me.
Although brothers with the same parents, they were different. He spoke about his children and wife. His eyes lit up when he spoke about them. He pulled his phone out and showed us the house be bought his wife their anniversary.
He was excited.
The estate was huge, so I knew that he didn’t just smell of wealth, he was wealth. His family would have everything and that should have been exciting for my brother. His baby brother found his way, and he was making major moves.
Wrong.
My father was angry. He sat at the dinner choking back his jealousy and anger for my uncle. I couldn’t understand why he would be upset? He already had all the things his brother was just now being able to afford for his family.
Then he died.
Life was good for a while. My Pops fed me little pieces of Case House, never letting anyone touch it. It was like his pride and joy, and he wanted his hands involved. I was tired of living like a trust fund baby. Always depending on him to shell out money to me.
My mother always told me to stop complaining and to be grateful. I wanted to be, but I also wanted to be a man too. I had gone to college and then back again, and I had nothing but small connections to show for it.
He was stingy and wouldn’t put me onto anything because of his fear of his new wife and his kids.
Kids that came after me.
I was being hidden like some slut that was found fucking animals. When in reality, I should have been the head of things. Able to run business deals for him because I was his first-born child.
Then he was murdered.
My mother was never legally married to my father, and he wasn’t on my birth certificate.
We were walked out of our home and lost everything.
Aside from a bank account he had my mother’s name on, everything was taken from us.
With his other kids dead along with him, I should have been inheriting Case House.
How do you stake claims on a high-class whore house?
You couldn’t.
I watched it continue to operate and grow bigger than it was. While I sat behind my desk in my townhouse in Roswell with my mother. She clung onto me, always needing me to do something for her. This was why I hated a weak ass woman that wasn’t good for nothing.
She couldn’t even pay the damn storage bill and we nearly lost what we had of my father. It was something that I thanked her for, because if she hadn’t been late on the payment, I wouldn’t have gone to that storage unit.
All the information and bank accounts for Haven’s List was in that storage unit. My mom wasn’t as useless as I thought. He gave up on Haven’s List because it didn’t bring in what he thought was acceptable.
My father was an impatient man.
Had he stayed the course, called some favors in, and continued to build, he would have had what Case House had.
Atlanta made me good money. So good I was able to leave my mother and move into my own home. Money and business were both great, but I wanted more.
I needed more.
Moms went from being a liability to helping me. She met and fell in love and was his problem. I cried at their small wedding because I was happy that she was no longer my problem anymore. I was glad that she wouldn’t be calling me to do everything for her.
Especially when I found out he had two daughters. They hated him because he cheated on their mother with mine. It was a dog-eat-dog world, and I would rather her be his problem than mine.
My mother knew how to catch a big fish, because going from helpless housewife to the first lady to mega church pastor Rubin Ester was a big ass leap from where she came from.
She picked up and moved to New York City because Ruben was opening a new church there. Every week she was posting on her social media new pictures with ugly ass hats and group photos with powerful ass people.
Ruben was well connected.
Too connected, and I wanted a part of it.
It was because Ruben’s ass that I was even involved with all this damn eggs farming bullshit.
He was able to get one of his judge friends to drop it, because Judge Case refused.
Bitch was trying to nail me to the ground.
I bet when she watches the news, she’ll be fucking shocked with her mean fine ass.
Ruben’s own daughter was missing and his ex-wife thought she was connected to the egg farming missing girls' cases. While she had been missing, his wife spoke to every media outlet that would pay her attention. Ruben had moved on with his life like she wasn’t his daughter.
On Sundays, he held a special prayer for her safe return home.
Other than that, he never gave a fuck. Ruben was trying to work on his relationship with his other daughter, Montana, who attended school in New York.
From what my mother said, Ruben was cheap when it came to helping his daughters.
Especially since they chose their mother in the divorce.
It wasn’t until I did some deeper digging that Menace Caselli came into play. He was who took control of everything the Eaton’s owned. While I was trying to revive my father’s failing pussy palace, that nigga was throwing his clients parties on private islands.
It wasn’t hard to find his sister. She was hidden in plain sight, and that was exactly what Menace wanted. She was too easy to retain as an attorney. Getting closer to her meant getting closer to him. If something happened to her, he would respond.
Those bullets at that party were meant for her.
With Ruben’s connections, I was able to bring Haven’s List to New York with the plan that one of us would have to be forced out. Seeing the Mayhem that he put onto the city, I severely underestimated him.
I let all those old clients of his get inside of my head. There were more people against Menace, than for him, and the minute I gave them hope to have a more affordable Case House, they wanted it.
From my understanding, Menace had a bunch of dirt on these men that could bury them. All I had was my word and they latched onto me thinking I would be their savior. If I took Menace out, then their dirt would be erased.
It wasn’t as easy as that, but I never told them that.
I let them believe that I could give them what he had given them, and for a fraction of the price and without the blackmail.
Alex was sitting in a hospital chair with his hands wrapped up in balls. He had burns on his legs and even some on his face. There was a piece of his hair that had been melted. He looked like one of those Halloween masks in the costume store.
I winced when I looked at him.
Alex Dass couldn’t afford Case House because he couldn’t afford shit. His basketball team was sold, homes, and even a private jet. The only thing he had was that ugly ass big toe that was poking out from the skin grafts.
I think Menace knew I wouldn’t show up at my own ball and still went through with his plan. He wanted me to see that he could get to me and wouldn’t lose sleep doing the sick shit that he did.
“Well, how are you healing up?”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Ho…How am I healing?”
“Don’t raise your voice… it’s alright.” I sat on the edge of his hospital bed and looked at him feeling bad.
This could have been me. Sitting up in here looking like melted licorice. “You did this to me.”
“Blaming me and not the man that did it, is crazy.”
“He wanted…” he broke out in a fit of coughs. “You.”
The door opened, and a beautiful woman walked in with soup containers. Her hair was pulled back and she was worried. “Thank yo…you, Kennedy,” he choked, as she rushed to put the straw to his cup into his mouth.
“No problem, Honey… do you need anything else?”
He held her hand as best as he could. “Not right now. Let me have this conversation, okay?”
“Okay.” She smiled at me, as she quickly took her soup container and left the room as I watched her.
“We keeping secrets, Alex?”
He looked at me confused. “What?”
“Her.”
Alex continued choking and I didn’t move to help him. “Who, Kennedy? She’s my fiancée.”
“How did you meet?”
“She used to be an escort.”
I smiled. “For who, Alex?”
He broke out into a coughing fit as I stood up and grabbed him around the neck. “She was an independent contractor.” He choked out.
“Bitch, she’s not a damn graphic designer… who the fuck she worked for?”
“Case House.”
I smiled to myself. “Guess whose fiancée she is now?”
“Who?” this dumb nigga asked.
“Mine.”