Love vs. Payne
Love vs. Payne
By Z. Stefani
Curiosity’s Irreversible Challenge
Reality’s Serious Sucker Punch
Desperation’s Infinite Combustion
Nevermore was a beautiful albeit superficial town on the northern side of the earth. It was just a few numbers short of being declared a city, but way too overpopulated to be considered just a town. The town was known for its beautiful summers as well as its harsh winters and even harsher attitudes. Nevermore was a money driven place where the residents catered to the almighty dollar and the wealthy became their local celebrities. The poor were left to either idolize the rich or be smashed below the couture shoes of the money-hungry citizens.
Gia Love and Maddox Payne were predestined to be bitter enemies before they were even born. Their fathers had educated them on the family's feud before they had been taught to read or write. Legend had it that their great, great grandfathers had been business partners and friends before the feud. It had been one very nasty business deal that had taken the Payne family to multi-millionaire status, while taking the Love family straight to middle class.
The Love family had never recovered from the loss and what little finances remained, had diminished significantly over the years. By Gia's birth, they had been reduced to a small two-bedroom trailer with a dwindling bank account and more debt than they would ever be able to pay. Victor Love had his own personal string of bad luck, the only lucky charm he had ever had was his wife, Patrice. She had come to America on a scholarship and he had instantly fallen in love with the beauty. She did not even care that he was broke, she still said yes when he asked her to marry him.
It had been pure perfection and so unbelievably joyous that Victor had even forgotten that he was dirt poor. Unfortunately, reality had come rushing back to him in the form of a work related accident. Despite her college education, Patrice had worked at the local paper mill with him, to help support their growing family. The company paid exceptionally well because of all the dangers involved and between the two of them, they were able to provide a good life for their children. As Victor’s string of bad luck would have it, it had only taken one man drinking on the job and neglecting his duties to destroy his entire family.
Victor cried as he held his wife, her blood flowing to the floor to puddle around the shoes she had bought for him. She had been dead before the ambulance had even gotten there.
***
The Payne family on the other hand had prospered. Xavier Payne was the eldest of the Payne clan, he was a genius who ran his business and his three sons with an unflinching, iron fist. He was neither lenient nor pleasant and most ran for cover when he came near. His wife was the very opposite of him, with her naturally pleasant demeanor, Beatrix was the slim ray of sun to Xavier's constant storm. Regardless of how infectious her laughter was, Xavier was still unpredictable. Her kindness and understanding had been passed down to only one of her children, her middle son Axton who, for the most part, was well rounded. He was usually joking around and laughing although his moods switched with the speed of lightening.
Her eldest son Dexter was a workaholic and had absolutely no time for anything or anyone else. That was the reason Dexter was engaged to the ultra-snobbish Vivi Roberts, a woman who cared about nothing but spending insane amounts of money and gossiping with her fellow, shallow friends. That left Dexter to do as he pleased and that was exactly how he preferred it. Beatrix did not understand their relationship and could barely tolerate the girl, but was in no position to do anything about it. Dexter had stopped listening to her when he was three years old, so there was nothing she could do to help him.
It was her youngest son Maddox that she worried about, he was his father's golden child, and he had succeeded in everything he set out to do. At eighteen, he was already developing an impressive new plan for the family business and his father could not be more proud. It seemed like there was nothing he could not do if he put his mind to it. Maddox had everything going for him, but despite his unbelievably good looks, the way women of all ages adored him, his keen intellectual insight and his superior athletic skills, he was miserable, moody and overly aggressive. She knew it was because Maddox was buried deep under the pressure that he and his own father had created for him. He was almost perfection and keeping up with himself was slowly driving him insane. She had a deep fear that one day he would explode, and she prayed for anyone around him when he did.
***
Gia Love was the ignored family member in her house. Her father worked long, hard hours at a non-prosperous job just to put food on the table. He also spent his free time trying to turn his slacker son Trent into the successful businessman that he himself was unable to become. She knew her father loved her and sometimes she wondered if he avoided her because of how much she looked like her mother, the love of his life.
Victor’s personality had changed upon is wife’s death, not only had he become bitter to the world, but he had also started avoiding his daughter like the plague. Her mother's death had been hard on her as well and having no one to talk to made it even harder. Her brother had always hated her and refused to let the grudge go regardless of how badly they were suffering. Gia never understood what she had done to make her only sibling dislike her so much. She had spent her childhood doing everything in her power to change his mind, but nothing had worked, not even avoiding him. No matter what she did, he would go out of his way to get her in trouble. Every bad thing he ever did, he automatically blamed on her and her father had automatically believed him. Being civil with him was out of the question and she refused to kiss his ass any longer.
She was just plain miserable, she had no one besides Alice and Gwen, her two best friends. She could only see them during school hours as it was, being to overwhelmed with her chores to have any kind of social life outside of school, she didn't even have the time to talk on the phone. She spent every second of her free time cooking, cleaning, and studying. She did not mind studying though, she preferred it since it was the only tool she had to make a good life for herself once she left her father’s house.
***
Both Gia and Maddox had spent their lives enslaved to the best interest of others, while sacrificing their own happiness in the process. Their fathers, regardless of their personal wishes, planned every step they took.
Amongst the chaos and the repressed angst, there was only one thing that they did without permission, one thing that was theirs alone. It was the one thing that they did, solely for their own satisfaction, the only time where they made their own rules. It had been the only thing that had brought them a personal satisfaction they had not been able to achieve with anything else in their well-planned out life. To them there was only one thing that was important- the dare.
It had all started way back in the third grade.
It was Gia, who due to her remarkable intelligence had been taken out of the second grade an advanced to the third grade. The principal had led her to her new class and straight to the empty seat next to Maddox Payne.
It had not taken a second for him to notice the pretty, new girl, even back then, he had an eye for the ladies. While the rest of the class teased the new girl for being a full year younger as well as tiny in structure, Maddox watched her with curiosity. After a few moments, he could no longer resist the urge to touch her hair, so he reached out, and stroked a long dark curl. She turned to him with a look that defied her tiny frame, while promising certain death and he almost grinned.
“I like your hair.” he said and she continued to glare before finally gracing him with a smile that would haunt his dreams for years to come. He normally liked the older girls, the fifth and the sixth graders, but there was something about her that melted his angry little heart.
When the boy that sat behind her pulled her hair, Maddox jumped to her defense before she had a chance to react. He also defended her from the automatic harassment that the new kid always got at lunch and the two had become instant friends. They sat together at the lunch table, talking and laughing as if they had known each other since birth. Maddox had even shared his caramel brownies that his mother had prepared especially for him. He had never shared his brownies with anyone in his life, not even his own brothers.
It had been the most perfect first day of school that either of them had experienced and the perfect beginning to what seemed like the perfect lifelong friendship.
Until the end of the school day.
***
Xavier Payne and Victor Love froze when they saw their children come out of the school together, walking hand in hand. It was almost a fight in front yard as the two men separated their children, the principal himself had to intervene and pry the men apart. Both men screamed, throwing obscenities at the other as they dragged their kids through the parking lot before shoving them into their cars. Gia and Maddox looked at each other through the back windows. Shock and disappointment written all over their little faces, as they listened to the blow out between their fathers.
It was the very first time Maddox had experienced his father's rage, and the first time he realized how deep the feud ran between their families. His father was brutal when he was disappointed and he relentlessly tore into his son about betrayal. He had never felt so happy and then so guilty all in one day. That was the day that Maddox found out the true meaning of the word enemy and the rules about family loyalty. It was also the day that he decided to payback Gia Love for making his life a living hell.