Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 69025 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69025 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 345(@200wpm)___ 276(@250wpm)___ 230(@300wpm)
“I would like that a lot.” Ben’s wide smile revealed two missing front teeth.
“Good. You can join our football game at recess. I think we’re going to be awesome friends.”
CHAPTER THREE
As Mason drove to Parents’ Night, he thought about the past two weeks.
Living as a white man was certainly an eye opener. He’d gone into a department store to buy Ben a present and he wasn’t followed or looked down on by a snooty salesperson. On his way out of the store, he accidentally bumped into a little old lady, and she didn’t clutch her purse or look at him suspiciously. It was a shame that because he was now a different color he was treated differently. He experienced plenty of racism in his prior body, but the differences hadn’t been as apparent to him then as it was now.
Being Mason Collins was another story. It was harder than he could have imagined. The man almost made Charles Manson look like a decent human being. Through Paul and tidbits, he heard from people who had known Mason well. The new Mason knew a lot more than he wanted about the fine example of human waste the old Mason was.
He had been born to a wealthy family in the Philadelphia suburbs. His father, a self-made millionaire, owned a couple of fast-food restaurant chains and car dealerships.
It was an all too familiar story. As the only child of parents who tried to have children for nearly twenty years, he was spoiled and overindulged. Throughout his life, he had been denied nothing and took what he wanted to the detriment of others. When Mason was in college, he used his money to bribe professors and deans. He used women as mere playthings, discarding them when his use for them wore out. His first marriage was the result of his parents’ threats to cut him out of his inheritance in a last-ditch effort to get him to toe the line.
Poor Becky Joseph didn’t stand a chance. Not married a week, he cheated on her with her best friend. Becky had been raised in a strict Irish Catholic home and did not believe in divorce, so she stood by her man through the verbal abuse and public humiliation. After a while, Mason didn’t bother to hide his affairs. With no family to offer support and unable to withstand her husband’s forceful personality, Becky downed a bottle of sleeping pills chased by a bottle of whiskey.
After a night and day with his mistress, Mason found her body the following evening. He had been more upset that she died sitting in his favorite chair than the fact that she had died at all.
By the time he was thirty-two, he had complete control of the family business, taking power of attorney over his parents’ finances when his father was struck with prostate cancer. By then, he met Karen, a pretty blonde flight attendant who refused to have sex with him without a wedding ring.
After several frustrating months, he married her, but not without an iron-clad prenuptial agreement. She was young and naïve, willing to sign anything to be with him.
He became bored within five months of their marriage. Besides, she gained weight and her body disgusted him. It didn’t matter that she had been pregnant with their child. It had taken Karen three years of putting up with his indifference and his affairs before she took their son and left him. She had to sue for alimony, but the pre-nup was so clearly designed for his benefit that she lost before she’d even begun.
Mason rarely saq his son, telling himself that he hated children, so he didn’t see why he should make an effort when he didn’t want the kid in the first place. He only paid the minimum amount of child support despite having so much money of his own.
Yes, Mason Collins had been one of the biggest sons-of-bitches around. To top everything off, when his father passed away after a long fight with cancer, Mason sold his family’s house and put his mother in an inferior nursing home. How the man slept at night was a mystery to Mason. He knew redemption would be hard, but he hadn’t realized how dammed evil this guy had been. It was a good thing he had a guardian angel as a friend, or he wouldn’t have known how to sort out this man’s twisted life.
Mason’s first order of business was to take his mother out of the nursing home and put her in temporary accommodations because she had refused to come home with him. She would barely look at his face and Mason could hardly blame her considering what was done to her.
He could tell that Brie Collins had once been a regal, gracious woman, but now she was just an empty shell, barely acknowledging him as when he walked in the room. The poor woman. His heart went out to her. Mason hired a private nurse to take care of her and vowed to bring a smile to the woman’s face again. It was the least he could do.