Chapter 1
Chapter one
Camryn
Fourteen Years Later
My eyes scan through the crowd of mourners at my sister’s funeral.
I don’t recognize any of them.
Well, that’s not entirely true. A couple of her friends from high school are here, but she hasn’t talked to them in years—at least not that I know of.
She could have reached out in the last couple of years, but I doubt it would have been for anything other than giving them her sob story and asking for a little help to get by.
That’s usually why she called me, apart from wanting me to watch her daughter, and I gave it to her every damn time.
Her daughter Sydney came to see me nearly every weekend at my little apartment in New York.
It wasn’t the swanky one that Samantha thought she would be moving into when she went to New York.
Hell, she never even saw the apartment our father intended to set her up in.
He cut her off before she moved out the summer she graduated high school, and she was left mostly penniless.
I still remember that conversation like it was yesterday. Up to that point, all the other fights my parents and Sam got into felt like child’s play.
The good thing about being the one who everyone thought of as the dutiful daughter is that when I’m told to stay in my room, it’s assumed I’ll listen. Instead, my back is pressed against the wall on the other side of my father’s study as his yelling thunders through the door.
“You’re getting rid of that bastard you’re carrying, and I won’t hear another word about it!
” My father hasn’t stopped calling my sister a myriad of names since he found out about her pregnancy two days ago.
The man literally locked her in her room and refused to let me see her.
He was the only person in the house allowed to open the door for two days, and that was only to give her a plate of food.
I wanted to go in there so many times, but I couldn’t bring myself to defy him.
I’d never seen him so angry as he was when he found out she was pregnant.
Well, until today, that is.
“You can’t tell me what to do with my body!” Sam screams back. “I’ll leave this house and never come back. You won’t ever see this child or me again.”
The caustic laugh that escapes my father is downright bone chilling. “Oh really, and who do you think is going to support you?”
“I have money,” Sam states firmly.
“Enough to raise a child and care for yourself? Enough to get your own place to live and support you both?”
“I’ll get a job,” she replies.
I have to give it to my sister; she is absolutely determined to see this through and is holding her ground a lot better than I ever dreamed she would.
“You aren’t good for anything other than whoring yourself out to some bottom-feeder from the wrong side of town. What kind of job could you possibly get, huh?”
“William,” my mother admonishes. “Don’t say that.”
“Oh, shut up and have another drink, Marion,” my father throws back.
I don’t hear my mother say anything else, which is typical. The fact she even tried to stand up for my sister is surprising.
“Once Barrett knows that I’m pregnant, he’ll get me the hell out of this house,” Samantha says confidently.
My father’s humorless laughter once again fills the room.
“He knows. I went and had a little chat with him yesterday. Did you really think I didn’t know you were out there fucking that piece of trash?
I put someone on you weeks ago. I know what you’ve been doing.
I know you let that scumbag, Barrett O’Neil, fuck you at the carnival against the back wall of that fucking food stand, and I know you’ve been sneaking out to meet him.
The only reason I didn’t lock you in your room is because you’ll be out of this house at the end of summer and no longer my concern. ”
“What did you do?” Samantha grits out.
“I gave him a choice, dear daughter. I told him you were pregnant. Told him he can get out now, no questions asked. I showed him a check for five thousand dollars and told him he had two options: take the money and leave town, or play out this stupid little fantasy you seem to have about your knight in shining armor coming to rescue you from your castle. I made it clear that you would be cut off financially, so his little rich princess would be left penniless. Guess which option he chose?”
“It doesn’t matter. I’ll do it on my own, then. You don’t control me. Not anymore. I don’t need anything from you.”
The door to the study opens, and I duck behind the corner. When I peek out, I see my sister’s back as she retreats to her room.
“You were too hard on her, William. She’s in a fragile state right now,” my mother says.
“Darling, this was a lot for you, but you need to let me handle it. I know what’s best for this family, and this has put too much strain on you. Why don’t you go upstairs to your room, and I’ll be up in a couple minutes with some tea and your medication. All of this yelling can’t be good for you.”
“That sounds nice,” my mother replies, and I hightail it out of there before they walk out and catch me spying.
With light feet, I run through the hall and up the stairs to my sister’s room. Knocking once, I turn the handle and walk in. She’s lying on her bed, facing the doorway.
“Oh my God, I’ve been so worried about you,” I tell her, softly shutting the door behind me and walking over to sit on her bed. “How did Dad find out about the pregnancy?”
“I don’t know. I think one of the housekeepers must have found the test in the trash and showed him.”
“You think they spy on us?” I ask, never having considered that before.
Samantha huffs. “Of course they do. That man has spies everywhere, apparently.”
“Maybe you should just get rid of it, Sam. Is this pregnancy really worth it to you? What are you going to even do?”
My sister sits up. “I’m not his pawn anymore. This baby is my ticket away from here without him coming after me.”
“What are you talking about?”
Samantha has made these ominous comments several times in the last few years, but she never elaborates.
“Nothing,” she says, shaking her head. “I just mean now I can get the hell out of here. He wants me gone? Wants to cut me off? Fine. He can have his wish. I have Grandma’s money.”
“That’s not going to last you long.” Especially considering how she likes to spend money.
“Then I’ll figure it out. But our father doesn’t get a say in what I do with my body.”
“It sounds like this is about you just wanting to do the opposite of what Dad says.” Not at all unusual for my sister.
“I don’t care what anyone thinks. It’s my choice, and I’m making it,” she says.
“What about Barrett? Are you going to try to get in contact with him?”
“Fuck Barrett O’Neil. Apparently he already made his choice.”
She left that night, or maybe it was early the next morning. I didn’t hear from her for nearly a year. Her cell phone and all her credit cards had been shut off at my father’s behest, of course.
Then one day, I got a text from an unknown number with a picture of the sweetest baby girl’s face I’d ever seen. Samantha’s daughter looked so much like her, but instead of a head of blonde hair, she had dark locks like her father.
I was about to start my senior year and planned on going to NYU for college. Maybe part of me was hoping my sister had made it there and I’d be reunited with her. She did, in fact, move to New York, but that high-end apartment and those fabulous parties were far out of her reach.
There was a small inheritance that our grandmother left her that she was entitled to when she turned eighteen, but that only lasted a couple years.
Long enough for me to come into mine. We each also had a trust that we should have started getting payments from when we turned thirty, but my mother is supposedly in charge of them.
In reality, that means my father holds those particular purse strings, and I know damn well Samantha never saw a dime of that money—even though she had turned thirty-one before she died.
My mother chokes out a loud sob next to me, which jerks me out of my thoughts.
Everyone has begun to stand and wander away from the casket on display at the gravesite.
I look to the other side of me and see Sydney, Samantha’s daughter, picking at her nail beds with her head down.
Her dark hair shields her face from my view, but a tear splatters on her hand.
“Hey, sweetie. You ready?” I ask the thirteen-year-old girl sitting next to me.
She nods, but doesn’t meet my eyes.
Placing a hand over hers, I lean over and kiss her head. “I love you. And so did your mom. So much, Syd.”
Sydney nods. “I know, Aunt Cam.” She looks at my dad, who is talking to a few older men in business suits.
I recognize two of them from parties we’ve had at our house over the years.
I assume they’re here to show support for the “grieving” father who just lost his firstborn daughter. What a crock of shit.
“I don’t want to have to live with them,” Sydney says, looking up at me. I take in her terrified gaze, and my heart breaks. She shouldn’t have to be worried about living with people who are virtual strangers while mourning the death of her own mom.
“You won’t, Syd. We’ll get it all worked out.”
Sydney was staying at my apartment in the city when the cops showed up at my door.
We were in the middle of some ridiculous horror movie, stuffing our faces with popcorn, when a hard knock sounded through my small apartment.
I answered the door to New York’s finest: one female officer who had a sympathetic look on her face, and a male officer who looked like he was there to report the death of some junkie no one cared about.
Unfortunately, that’s what my sister had turned into. A junkie. But she was my sister, and I loved her. Her daughter loved her, too.