His father didn’t like kids walking around outside of his house and would often take any balls that were accidentally kicked over the fence or had found their way onto his property and pop them. No parents dared stand up to him as they had all the money and power, and everyone else didn’t.
Pulling out of his driveway, he noticed the scared kids watching him. All of his life, kids had been scared of him. Even his supposedly best friends were. Not that he cared. He was so used to watching others cower in fear that if they didn’t do it, it made him nervous.
Prudence.
From the first moment she entered their school, she had smiled at him. Fucking smiled. No one had ever smiled at him. Not even his parents. He was an obligation. Something they had to create together in order for someone to inherit the family fortune. The men who had the first-born son of the next generation inherited a fortune, and well, his father got in there, but then he did fuck everything that walked until one woman came forward with a son that would be born before his uncle’s.
Competition was always rife within his family. You had to be the best at everything. Even his mom, who got the crown of glory for getting knocked up first, had to fit into a certain role.
Again, all his life he was used to playing by a certain set of rules and well, now all of that was changing and he didn’t fucking like it. No, it wasn’t changing at all. One person out of an entire fucking town was testing him. The moment she moved here, she’d been testing him and it grated on his last fucking nerve as well.
Prudence was nothing and yet, kissing her last night had been the last thing he intended to do but he’d done it. Why?
He didn’t have a clue why.
Driving out of town, he pressed his foot to the gas, ignoring all the speed warnings. He needed to fucking breathe and the only way to do that was to drive like crazy. Pulling onto the main road, even with oncoming cars, he overtook vehicles that were going too slow for him, not caring as they honked their horns at him. Nothing was going to stop him from getting what he wanted.
He laughed as he pushed on through. Coming to a diner, he made a quick stop. He jerked his car with the force of his braking but slid into the space easily. One thing he was good at was driving his car. No one else was better than him.
No matter the risks he took while he drove, he’d never been in a single accident. He didn’t think it was down to his good driving either, it was down to sheer luck.
He grabbed a breakfast burrito and a coffee to go.
Lingering in the diner’s parking lot wasn’t his idea of fun, so he left, finding a quiet space near a falling-down garage. He stared at the crumbling building that had probably once been a really busy place. There were no signs and most of the windows had been smashed. It looked like there had even been a fire and coming out of the roof there appeared to be a small tree. To most, this was just an eyesore, but he could easily see it being rebuilt and once again being a thriving business.
Too many people were happy to write something off if it looked like it was going to take too much money or too much time. When something was worth the time or effort, Drake didn’t mind dealing with it.
For him, people were never worth either precious commodity. They always had their own agenda, constantly working for something else, which he never failed to find fucking irritating. It was one of the reasons he liked to push people, to see what he could get them to do and how far they were willing to go before they called him on his bullshit.
Prudence, for example. If Sean hadn’t been there, she wouldn’t have gotten naked for him. Drake didn’t like how much the little pussy had control of Prudence. He rarely was there for her when she needed it. If he got into a fight with the little shit, there was no way he’d be able to protect her. Most of the time, Prudence always got involved and it annoyed him how she was still friends with him.
She deserved better.
They were both fighters. They were both better than everyone else, and he didn’t fucking see why they had to put up with the kind of shit that was thrown their way.
Finishing off his food, he tossed the wrappers into the trash bin that looked like it hadn’t been emptied in years. That was another thing he hated. Once someone lost interest in something broken, they always turned their back on it. Why bother putting any energy in the first place if you were just going to give up when things got hard?