Page 1 of Axton
Chapter One
Axton
We all knew Addie was with us to stay, nonetheless, as the judge handed her that little teddy bear, and then shook Creed's hand, relief came over me. I couldn’t remember being as nervous as I was when we walked into the courtroom for Addie's adoption hearing.
It was one of the best days of our lives. Adeline Doyle was officially Adeline Creed, daughter of Alistair and Morgan Creed. The judge just made it official, and I couldn’t help but stand and clap along with my brothers and sisters at arms. The adoption was finally complete, and Addie was going home to Creed’s Lake to stay. I had to admit, I was a bit wary about the home study and the length of time it took for it to finally happen. I thought for sure the social worker from Sinclair County that did the home study would have had a few problems with Creed’s Lake. Mainly the armed guards and secrecy behind the gates, but it seemed she respected what we were doing to help mothers and children escape abuse.
Addie was my niece, maybe not by blood, but by something I didn’t speak of often, and that would have been my heart. There was a fortress built around it many years ago, but Addiepenetrated it with ease and made herself comfortable inside it. It had a soft spot for that little darling, well maybe darling took it a little far. More like the little fallen angel. She had a mean streak toward just about anyone of the male species. Mainly ones that were considered children because she loved her adopted uncles, excluding her new father’s younger brother, Weston. She might have been tiny, but she was definitely mighty.
I had to push back my emotions when Addie let go of Creed and ran into Irons arms. She was so happy and loving the idea of being the center of attention. Travis Irons was honestly her second father. Then came Josh Magnus and me. She ran to both of us and squealed with delight. I wasn't sure she fully understood why everyone was so happy, and what becoming the next heir of the Creed fortune and what the daughter of Morgan Rossi meant, but she was happy, nonetheless. I was sure a day would come where she would resent her mother’s fame, and the attention that would come with it, but for the time being she had everything she needed and then some.
My brothers and sisters at arms were my family, and suddenly they were all dropping like flies. Granger was already married to Stephanie, the girl next door when he joined CAD, but in the last several months Creed, Irons, and Drakos also fell into a spell cast by the girl next door types.
First it was Creed who married America’s sweetheart, Morgan Rossi. It was a shock to all of us that the object of nearly all of our teenage obsessions was actually an innocent and very sweet young woman. Then Irons reconnected with his first love, who literally was the girl next door when he was a kid. Then Drakos, the last one we all suspected, fell for Melissa. A pint-sized older version of Addie who took no shit from anyone, especially Drakos.
I typically stayed away from the girl next door types. I had a girl next door once, and the pain they could bring a man was excruciating, and it lasted a lifetime. My brothers thought they knew me. I might have been broody at times, and I took business seriously, but there were things about me they would never have understood. We weren’t selling ice cream and handing out lollipops on Creed’s Lake. We had the lives of many loyal operatives in our hands, and I refused to mix my personal life with business like my brothers did. I did not want a wife and children to think about while I was sending good men out on missions that could cost their lives, they would have been a distraction I didn’t need.
Once upon a time I had the girl next door. We were young and dumb, and life was just as shitty as it always was until I joined the Army. That was when life finally looked up for me, and I met Creed. I met my best friends, the men that became my brothers, and they were my family.
After the hearing was over, we returned to Creed’s Lake for a celebration. Felicity and the girls had the banquet room decked out in Addie’s favorite themes, evil Disney queens, Wednesday Adams, and The Wizard of Oz. We all waited inside the banquet room for Addie and when she walked in, she squealed in delight as we all clapped. She looked around the room in awe over the hard work Felicity and her girls put into the celebration. There were flying monkeys dangling from the ceiling along with munchkins faces. Each table had a small cake with a different evil stepmother’s face slapped on them. There was a life-sized cardboard cutout of the wicked witch of the west up by the buffet of food, and of course, it wouldn’t have been complete without the Adam’s family over on the far wall. I wasn't sure what budget Creed gave the girls, but it must have been extreme, because all of Felicity’s girls were in costume. I had to laugh when I saw theentire Adam’s family. Julia was dressed up as Pugsly, Felicity is Morticia, and I laughed harder when I saw a prospect dressed as Uncle Fester, and Sam must have dressed Addie’s dog up as Cousin It. The poor dog was bumping into everything because he couldn’t see through the hair, but for some reason he just went with it. There was a bouncy house setup on the far side of the room, along with a corner where one of Felicity’s girls was dressed up as a witch stirring a pot with real fog coming out of it. There were a few games for the kids and a face painting booth. It warmed my heart when I saw all the little kids run up to Addie and pull her away from her parents to join in on all the fun. It was crazy to think of the kind of life she had a year prior and what her life became. She was an abused child that suffered at the hands of an abusive father and a mom that didn’t exactly put Addie first in life.
Addie’s obsession shortly after she arrived at Creed’s Lake was Maleficent. Then around Halloween it was the Wicked Witch of the West, which earned Drakos a costume of a member of the Lollipop Guild for trick or treating. Then it became Wednesday Adams, which I could easily see made Morgan uneasy. Addie wanted to dress in all black and have her blond curls dyed black to wear in braids, but she lost that battle. She was seven, not fifteen, and her movie star mother would never allow such a thing. Morgan wanted Addie in blond pigtails and little dresses, and someday she’d lose that battle.
I looked around the room and saw Irons standing behind Wrenly with his arms around her as he smiled at Addie’s reaction. Drakos stood next to Melissa, who just punched him for trying to lift her up like a child so she could see, and Creed was helping a very pregnant Morgan into a chair. Darren was standing with his arm around Val, and the rest of the Rossi family was standing off to the side. Well, except Patrickwas trying to flirt with Morticia AKA Felicity. He was probably asking about her family history. Ever since Morgan brought up an unfortunate event at a family reunion, Patrick had gone into some sort of insecurity he had laid to rest for many years. Morgan, his older sister, stirred his trauma up again and it was funny as hell.
Morgan was about to have twins, and by the way she looked it could have been any day now. She was obviously miserable, and the woman was as big as a house. It was almost disgusting the way Creed looked at her, like she was the most beautiful creature on the planet, and he still had lust for her. I wasn't sure how that was possible since she had the most lethal farts and needed help with her daily hygiene. I knew way too much about that woman, and though she was gorgeous, I couldn’t look past the flatulence and talk about mucus plugs and amniotic fluid. Just the thought made me shutter with disgust. Why? Because I was an asshole, that was why. Well, that and some trauma of my past liked to slap me across the face every time I thought about childbirth.
Granger was our seasoned dad of the original group, before Jennings joined us. Creed was ecstatic to soon be a father of three, and I had no doubt that Irons would have wanted to have kids someday with Wrenly. Drakos was also excited about Melissa being pregnant, although he was the last one of us that should have been raising a child.
I was no saint, although many on Creed’s Lake might have thought I lived a clean life. They didn’t know what lived beneath, it was something I didn’t understand. I didn’t often “hook up” the way they always did, and certainly not with Felicity’s girls.
I realized I was cold toward Wrenly and Stephanie, but it was not meant to show. They reminded me of someone I once knew, andthat person was partially responsible for all the confusion, guilt, and grief I tried so hard to hide.
I lived with Creed for several years in a shit hole apartment. You’d think he would have suspicions that something more was wrong with me than just having a shitty dad, but in those days, I ignored the feeling I had inside me that I was missing something. I could enjoy sex with a beautiful woman, and had plenty of female visitors to our apartment, but after Bolton was raped, that part of me died and I only craved something I couldn't find. The guys noticed that I was not all that sexually active, but they had no idea what I did on my weekend trips. They didn’t even know where I went, but it was private and not their business.
Chapter Two
Bellamy (Belle)
Darkness, something that most people only welcomed if they were sleeping, but I invited it. To me, the darkness made me feel safe, unwatched, and provided moments of peace and tranquility. There were no eyes on me, nobody studying my tall curvy frame, or looking upon me as if their sinful thoughts alone would send us both straight into the fires of hell. There were no judgements in the darkness, no so-called guidance, and no fear in people’s eyes. I was safe to experience the sinful thoughts and dreams that sneaked into my psyche, but nobody would ever know what kind of dark thoughts invaded my mind. Men wanted to see me as the darling child of innocence, a girl untouched and saving herself for God’s soldier when he came to earth, but they saw me as a test. They all wanted me, all the men in our community. I could see it in their eyes when they looked upon me. They were sinners, but I was an angel sent to earth to tempt the most faithful of men. An angel that had sinful desires I had to work very hard to control. I could see the lust in men’s eyes, and I was not the only one that saw it. The thing was, they didn’t know me. They didn’t know that I had dreams and also desires. They mistook my quietness as shyness, but they couldn’t have been more wrong. I was studying them, learningwhat I could about them, and not wasting a moment of my time or intelligence engaging with them. I was smarter than I should have been, and prettier than what was acceptable, but it was my curiosity that was my weakness, but my beauty was theirs.
My name is Bellamy Theresa Ann Ashford, an anomaly, and also the daughter of Reverend Henry Ashford and the youngest of his many wives. Some said he was a man of God, while others said he was the leader of a religious cult. I was his prized possession, the only daughter he gripped on to long enough to come into womanhood and not have been made a child bride. I was sent to my papa as an angel from God. My beauty at the moment of my birth came as a sign from our almighty father, and it had been my papa’s mission to protect me from sin ever since I took my first breath. I had forty seven siblings, making my oldest living half-brother seventy four, and my oldest living half-sister seventy two years old. She was married off to a church elder when she was only fourteen, and she had grandchildren older than me. My mama was still considered young to the outside world at the age of thirty seven, but she was given to my father at thirteen years old. She would have another marriage after my father and bring more children into the world. When people outside of our community learned Sister Eloise was in fact my older biological half-sister, their minds instantly went to math just to figure out how old my father was when I was born. My Papa was dying at ninety five years old, making him seventy two when I was born, and I was his youngest and most adored child. The only child he made with my mother. He was always a wonderful papa. He never denied me of anything. When he learned Koty was sneaking books to me, he homeschooled me. When he learned I was self-teaching certain subjects, like child development, he allowed me an education. I was the only female in our ancestry to have graduated high school, letalone earn a bachelor’s and master’s degrees through an online program and allowed me to take some courses at the local community college. The rest were all online. He implemented a homeschooling policy for the young ladies in our community and I taught them. Most left public school once they learned to read and write, but my papa saw and acknowledged our need to actually comprehend what we were reading, like the Bible for instance. For the first time in our history, the young ladies in our community had their own Bible study. He would be known as the most progressive bishop in our ancestry. Although he was a good father, my brother and I suspected he was not the best of men. My child development studies told me as much.
Darkness faded as the sun rose. It was time to start a new day, and it was barely dawn. I rose from my bed, wearing my white cotton long sleeve nightgown that buttoned all the way up to my neck. I did not dress like the women I saw outside of our community. I dreamed of being able to express myself through fashion someday, along with many other freedoms that intrigued me. The style given to the women of our community was one of decades ago, but my looks were far different than the looks of my family. We wore baggy dresses, our hair was styled the same, and no woman ever really stood out until I was born. There was nothing typical about me, which brought me more grief than anything else. Even more than the headaches I suffered from almost every single day.
I did not appear as the daughter of sister Abigail, or brother Henry. My mama’s light blond hair was not passed on to me. My papa’s once raven hair was also not passed down to me. As I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, I was reminded of how different I was than my entire family. The reason my papa believed wholeheartedly that I was to be the bride of our almighty father’s angelic soldier peered back at me through themirror. My dark copper hair flowed down my back in thick natural waves. My cornflower blue eyes might have been too large for my delicate nose in my opinion, and they also did not match both of my parent’s onyx brown eyes. My skin was fair, my lips were full, and my nose seemed too delicate to have been handed down from my father’s more bulbous nose and my mother’s larger bumpy nose. My stature exceeded what would be expected for my family. At five foot eleven, I was nine inches taller than my mother and three inches taller than my father when he was a younger man. I had a slim, but curvy frame, where my mother was on the shorter side with small breasts and a large waist. My papa had almost fifty children, and none as tall and slim as me. None had an hourglass figure like mine. My papa said a woman of my beauty was nearly sinful all in its own, and must always stay protected from the natural male instinct to sin against our almighty father. Ancestry was important to us, and when my father’s followers questioned if I was truly my parents child, they tested my genetic genealogy to prove that I did in fact belong to my parents, and I was a match.
My day started off as usual. I washed my face, brushed my hair, then changed into my dress for the day. It was light pink with puffy sleeves and hid my figure quite well. My hair was pulled back into a ponytail with a large bow attached to the top of the hair tie. I did not apply makeup, such things were not welcome in our community, but my somewhat rosy cheeks and long dark lashes might have fooled some into thinking I was wearing it. Women in my community were not to stand out, but I still stood out like a sore thumb.
After dressing for the day, I made my way downstairs and prepared to become the caregiver to our generous prophet, otherwise known as my papa. The old stairs creaked with each step, just as a reminder of the age of that old farmhouse. Thevery farmhouse where I was born and took my first breaths. It was my mother’s week for my father’s visit, which had been the typical place he stayed for his last few months. He had begun his journey to paradise where he would reap the rewards of a faithful long life. Most of his wives had already passed on, only leaving three to care for him. Being that my life was lived so differently than my siblings, caring for him had become my primary responsibility. I had no husband or children, therefore I was at my papa’s side, helping ease him into his eternity. My students were without a teacher for the time being. For twelve hours per day, I cared for him, while his wives shared the evening shifts. Our days did not change much, he had been in a decline of health for months and we made him comfortable. He chose our home to stay, but each wife had their week with him. Since it was my mother’s week, it was just the three of us during the day, and my mother was with him at night. The next week, it would have been a different wife with him at night, there in my mother’s home.
My first duty of the day was to change him from his wet sheets and diaper. I rolled the sheets and plastic bed protector from under him, gave him a sponge bath from head to toe, dressed the bed in clean linens and put clean clothes on him. In my opinion, no daughter should have had to see her papa’s naked form and washed those more private areas of his body. It was a terrible task, but it had to be done. After he was cleaned, I made our breakfast then prayed with him before I hand fed him. Once he was fed, I ate my own breakfast. After breakfast, I read the Bible to him for the next four hours, only taking breaks to help him use the urinal or clean up after his dirtier bodily functions. After lunch, three of my brothers visited daily and they privately discussed church business with him while I did laundry and cleaned. Well, that was what I was presumed to be doing, butinstead, I let my curiosity get the best of me and listened outside the door.
“We observed until we finally spotted her sneak through the woods. He took off and we chased them down. The threats are no longer working on this younger generation. They see a modern world, a false promise of a shiny new life calls to them.” My brother, Paul, informed my papa.
“Did you stop them?” Papa asked.
“Yes, we now have her with Steven. She can’t be trusted to stay with her mother when her husband is at work at night. The boy and his truck took a beating, but I think the young man got the message. He won’t be back.”
