Chapter 1

Growing up an orphan, I ached for a family of my own for as long as I could remember.

When I was little, I always envied the classmates whose moms and dads picked them up after school, walking them home hand in hand.

When I got older, the envy hit a peak whenever friends in the dorm swapped stories about their family vacations.

Honestly, there wasn't a moment of my life I wasn't envious of someone.

Maybe heaven took pity on how desperately I clung to that dream, because eventually it smiled on me.

After my SATs, I was admitted to Kingsford University as the state's top scorer.

Right after that came the news that my birth parents had found me.

Back then, I was completely lost in the joy of it, with no clue that what waited for me would be torment of body and mind.

In the end.

I got nothing.

I died that summer.

Right before I died, they had me locked in a second-floor bedroom of the Lawson house. The doors and windows were sealed shut. I'd clawed at the door so hard that all ten of my fingers were bloody.

Downstairs, the house was lively.

My husband, Wade Holt, was sitting with my father over tea, working out how to drag me back home and keep torturing me.

My mother sat off to the side, peeling an orange with elegant grace.

Caleb, my eldest brother, was on a phone call, closing some deal.

Carter, my second brother, was sprawled on the couch, scrolling on his phone.

They all knew exactly what kind of man Wade Holt was.

They knew he had a physical defect, that he got off on violence, that he liked beating women half to death and locking them in a basement.

They all knew.

And then they handed me over to him with their own hands. The cleanest, the most obedient, the most desperate to be loved.

That day, Yvette pushed open the door and walked in.

She laughed so hard her shoulders shook, telling me she'd been the one digging up Wade's sick tastes herself, that Mom and Dad and both my brothers had known full well this marriage was sending me to my death.

Then she said,"Willow, you know what? I was never your sister. I'm the Lawsons' adopted daughter. Long before they brought you home, they'd already given me everything that was supposed to be yours."

In that moment, it finally clicked.

From the very first day I set foot in that house, they had never seen me as their daughter.

The family love I'd ached for over eighteen years had been a death trap from the start.

What happened after that?

I don't remember the rest very clearly.

I think I picked up a knife.

I think Yvette ended up dead.

I think Caleb and Carter went down too.

Then bodyguards rushed in and knocked me out.

And then,

I opened my eyes and found myself standing outside the testing center on the morning of my SATs.

My phone rang.

The screen read: [Mama Helen].