𝐔𝐆𝐇! {𝐋. 𝐇𝐨𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐝}

Prologue

Cal Jacobs was fucked. Jacobs Senior liked fucking little kids, and was good at covering the fact up, until one night.

Cal forgot to pull out of fifteen year old Grace Morales, which resulted in her pregnancy. However, her pregnancy turned out to be a beautiful blessing for her.

Grace Morales was rich, spoilt and broken. Her mother had died birthing her, her older brother hated her, and her father sought comfort from a bottle of rum. The baby had been her only comfort in life.

However much Grace wanted to sell Cal Jacobs to the cops for being a pervert and cry statutory rape, because at the end of the day, Grace never consented, she never could, but she didn't run to the cops because the sum of money Cal offered her to keep quiet was too high.

Yes, her father disinherited her brother from his millions and made Grace his heir, but she needed the five hundred thousand dollars to help with her baby. She'd never see her father's money until he was dead.

Five hundred thousand dollars. Five hundred thousand dollars that would buy baby stuff, her child's first car, and maybe even send her child to college.

Grace continued to attend school. Grace was that smart she graduated high school at sixteen and was raising a beautiful baby girl by the time she had went to Yale a month later.

Faith Morales. She was a quiet baby. The midwives and the doctors thought she was dead when Grace pushed her out. She never cried, unless she hurt herself.

She was Grace's pride and joy. They lived in a one bedroom flat together in New Haven, and would attend classes with Grace everyday, and while Grace was disappointed she couldn't do normal college student things like go to parties, she didn't mind staying in and watching Disney films with her daughter.

When Faith was five years old, Grace had hired a babysitter for her when she had to work one night. Neither Grace or Faith could remember his name in the years to come, they just remembered his face and the sick things he had done.

Faith had been watching her favourite Disney film, Robin Hood, when the man Grace had hired started to touch her a little inappropriately. Thankfully, for Grace's sake, Faith had some smarts and knew what the man was doing was wrong, so she screamed and ran, much to man's horror.

Thankfully, somebody had been passing in the hall had heard the scream of a small defenceless child, and manage to break through the door.

The man later turned out to be Cal Jacobs.

Cal had beaten the man senseless. While he himself was disgusting, he'd never stoop so low to fuck a five year old. One Cal had beaten him into a coma, he alerted the cops and sat with Faith in the corner of the living room, having no clue he had just saved his daughter.

Now the reason Cal Jacobs was in New Haven and not in California with his wife and son were unknown, but that didn't matter.

The cops had alerted Grace who had instantly left her job, not caring she'd been fired, and when she had gotten back to her apartment she was in shock when she saw Cal and Faith sat on the floor.

Faith. How innocent she'd been. She didn't know Cal was her father, she didn't really know what the situation was, but here she sat with the man who saved her, showing him her drawings.

At the time, none of her drawings were good. Just the usual scribbles a five year old made, but Cal pretended that she had been better than Salvador Dalí and even Da Vinci.

Cal had left shortly after that, and even Grace never questioned why he was in New Haven, but two weeks after the incident, Grace received a package in the mail.

It was from Cal. The letter talked about how he didn't want to be apart of Grace's and Faith's lives, but he wanted to make sure something like the incident never happened again, and the package contained a set of keys to a house back in East Highland, California, Grace's hometown.

So begrudgingly, just for her daughters safety, Grace moved the two of them back across the states, to where they were settled down.

Twelve years had passed since the incident, and although Grace and Faith Morales lived in the same town as Cal Jacobs, they never once interacted with each other.

Faith was seventeen now. A junior in high school and the best friend of Maddy Perez and Cassie Howard, two girls who were her age, but took her under her wing in middle school when Faith was just a shy girl. It turned out her and Maddy were literally born only seven minutes apart, and Grace and Sonia Perez were right next door to each other.

Faith inherited her mother's smarts, but she struggled with Math. While Faith had A*'s in every subject in school, she always failed Math, so when Faith had turned fifteen, Grace took her for a test, where they learned she had Dyscalculia.

Dyscalculia is a specific and persistent difficulty in understanding numbers which can lead to a diverse range of difficulties with mathematics. Grace hired tutor after tutor to try and help her daughter understand Math, but they all failed.

That was until Faith Morales turned to the only person she thought was smart enough to help her. Lexi Howard, the girl next door.