Chapter 1
AVALYNNE
Spit sticks like sludge to my teeth as tears needle my eyes.
How long has it been now?
Six hours? Seven? Maybe more?
I suck in a long breath through my stuffy nose and blink out at the heavy rain falling beyond the car window. I don't know why I bother though. I can't see the storm as much as I can hear it. It pings against the vehicle's metal frame and whips into the glass with the rushing wind.
One fat raindrop rolls down the windowpane at my side, catching another and then a third.
I watch as they meld together and slide, slow and thick, to where the window meets the car door.
White lightning splits the heavens overhead, and for a moment, I see the world outside the vehicle.
Rocky spurs sheer the side of the mountain to my left while rolling waves of black churn the sea to my right.
An instant later, the lightning vanishes, and I'm sitting in darkness again.
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
I'm not supposed to be here.
My sister and I were meant to spend one last summer at Grandpapa's estate before starting college this fall.
Isabella and I had already registered for classes.
She was excited to be free from beneath the heel of our grandfather's authoritarian boot.
I was excited to see the world beyond fancy dinner parties and charity galas.
I've never been comfortable in Grandpapa's gilded life.
I don't think I ever truly left the two-story colonial on the New England coast Isabella and I used to call home.
Part of me will always remain there, playing dolls in the attic with my twin and waiting for Mama and Papa to walk back through the door.
I'm supposed to be on my way to college with my sister by my side. All we had to do was be good for a little while longer.
A pang shoots through my middle, stealing my breath as a soul-shattering thought tailspins through my brain.
I ruined everything.
The vehicle smells like my grandfather, polished leather and imported cigars, and every breath reminds me of how far I've fallen. I didn't topple off the pedestal Grandpapa put me on. I detonated it to smithereens and dug until I met cold, lifeless earth.
I should have talked Isabella out of it.
I'm the responsible twin, one minute and thirty-seven seconds older than her, but a decade might as well have separated us.
She was the carefree sister, laughing at a moment's notice but tough as railroad ties when she needed to be. I was serious and studious. I followed the rules, and I guess I thought if I was everything our grandfather wanted, then I'd be good enough for both of us.
But I'm the reason we aren't together anymore.
Because I wasn't good enough.
I let her bring the boy into Grandpapa's home.
Isa walked him through the front door in the early evening hours, and I didn't say a word. I should have told her no, shoved them both out the door from which they came, and called it a night.
I didn't though.
Grandpapa wasn't supposed to be home for another day, after all.
I found them just inside the foyer, beneath the hulking gold chandelier. The boy stood beside her, tall and spindly, nearly swallowed up by a bleached jean jacket. Even from the top of the stairs, they reeked of pot and booze.
"Damn, girl," he'd drawled, pulling his hand out of hers and whistling as his head swiveled, taking in the abstract artwork and museum-caliber paintings hung on the walls. "You didn't tell me your gramps was loaded."
My heart thumped in my chest as I skittered down the steps. I stared in horror as the strange boy lumbered across the travertine floor and tugged open the double doors to the parlor, my sister dawdling after him.
"Stop it, Jace," she whined, reaching for his hand again.
He easily slipped from her grasp and continued down the hall, falling against an antique cocktail table and knocking a vase to the floor. It shattered when it hit, sending shards of seafoam green glass scattering like spilled emeralds across the tile.
The sight sent a shiver straight through me, and the memory does so again as lightning dissects the stormy sky outside the car.
Grandpapa loved that vase. It was an old gift from a business associate. The housekeeper didn't even dust it without two hands.
"What the fuck?!" my sister had exclaimed, blinking down at the mess, as the boy did the unthinkable and opened the carved wooden doors to our grandfather's study.
I couldn't believe it. The doors were unlocked, a mistake my grandfather considered worthy of a maid's immediate termination.
"You can't go in there," I called, though neither he nor my sister seemed to hear me.
"Woo-eee," the boy whistled between his teeth as he walked into the room. Isa abruptly sobered.
"Get out of there," she called to his back, her face reddening with anger.
The boy didn't listen though.
I wish he had.
"I bet this shit's worth a fortune," he'd said as he began rifling through my grandfather's built-in bookshelves, sending knickknacks and expensive first-edition books tumbling one by one to the tufted rug.
I reached for my phone.
"Get out," I said, my voice steadier than my fingers. "Or I'm calling the police."
His brown eyes caught mine, but he didn't back down. If anything, he grinned at the challenge.
"You do that, sweetheart," he said as he snatched Grandpapa's silver letter opener off the lacquered veneer of the desk and slid it into his front jacket pocket.
With a sharp turn, he moved to push my grandfather's leather chair out of the way and began yanking on locked drawers. One wrenched free on a violent tug.
In the minutes that followed, Grandpapa would arrive home, our entire world would be cremated, and our plans for college laid to rest.
In the dark of the car beneath the roar of the storm, I still hear the slap of Grandpapa's hand as it imprinted against my sister's cheek. The clap of it ricochets between my ears. It would bring fresh tears to my eyes if I had any left.
I run my tongue across my teeth, but my mouth has turned to cotton.
I watch more drops roll down the window as thunder rumbles above me, and I remember how my sister's head flew back as her fists curled, ready to make a mistake she could never take back.
Grandpapa had never hit us before.
Not once.
Not ever.
Not when we disobeyed as children and made a mess of the dining hall.
Not Isabella, when she snuck out at fourteen years old and was gone for the whole night, and he was so angry his face bloomed with color to match his crimson pocket square.
But she'd pushed him too far. She'd committed the ultimate sin and brought a stranger into the one place neither of us was ever allowed. Of all the rules our grandfather made, that was the most important: never go into his study.
Another blink in the dark of the car, and my words rise from the grave like ghosts come back to haunt me. I wish I could take them back and say something else, something that would make it better. All I did was make it worse.
"Grandpapa," I'd said with a wet sniffle, holding onto his forearm and tugging at his tall frame. "She didn't bring him. It was me. It was me, Grandpapa."
My fingers punched into the starched linen of his suit jacket.
"It was me," I lied. "Please don't. It was me."
The mark from his slap spread across Isabella's face, engulfing it in pink.
Slowly, Grandpapa turned, rage cutting deep, unforgiving lines across his face. He blinked at me before his mouth parted. He would've been less shocked if I had slapped him myself.
"Avalynne?" he'd murmured, my name a whisper.
"Yes." I nodded quickly. "It was me, Grandpapa. It was me. Not Isa. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
I started to cry.
Isabella stepped forward, no doubt to intervene, but I forced her back with one hand.
My decision had already been made.
I was a good girl, and Grandpapa would forgive me. He'd never forgive her.
But I was wrong. He didn't forgive me, and I didn't protect her. Now, I'm here, confined to the back seat of one of my grandfather's cars.
I reach for my phone, calling my sister for what's got to be the hundredth time. I expect it to go straight to voicemail, as it has for hours. Instead, I receive a message stating the number has been disconnected. I nearly scream.
I try to call our grandfather next, staring down at the blue LED screen in the darkness. He doesn't pick up, though, and the call goes ignored.
I've left so many voicemails that the inbox is full.
I have cried. I have begged. I have pleaded.
The last words he said to me ring between my ears.
"You will learn to be a good girl again," he'd told me, holding my chin with his thumb and forefinger. "And when you are, you can come back to me. Until then, this is for the best."
Then my sister was shoved into one car, and I into another.
If I had to guess, Isabella's still probably screaming about kidnapping and illegal imprisonment.
I bet there are two big foot imprints against the backseat window of her car, but I know there's no fighting against Grandpapa once he's made up his mind.
Per court order, he has guardianship over us until our twenty-fifth birthday or until we graduate college, whichever comes first, and right now, that day feels farther away than ever.
Blackness blurs with the trees outside as we climb the mountain. The headlights illuminate the winding road as the storm continues to rage outside.
At my grandfather's estate, you could see the city lights in the distance, but there are no lights here. Even the stars are blocked by the storm.
I've given up asking the driver where we're going. He hasn't said a word to me since we left Grandpapa's home. He just stares straight ahead, the clear partition dividing us. I'm not sure he can hear me through the glass.