Chapter One
Robin
Idon’t understand.
Those three words are starting to lose all meaning for me. They’ve spent too long repeating on a loop inside my head. It was the first thought I had when I was shoved into the hallway back home, pushed away by the only person who’d ever seemed to care for me, and it’s still echoing in my mind now that I know the truth.
That house was never my home.
I was just stuck there, too dumb to realize I was a captive.
I questioned nothing.
I simply did what I was told and made the best of whatever I was given.
The housekeeper was tough but fair, and she liked me enough to take me under her wing.
Colleen wasn’t my mother, but sometimes I imagined she was.
She could be a little testy at times, sure, but she kept me safe.
I know she looked after me the same way she would have if I’d been her daughter.
When she was around, no one ever tried to bring me into other rooms and parade me around to groups of people who whispered amongst themselves before shaking their heads.
I didn’t know what those moments were about while they were happening.
I only knew they weren’t good.
Now, I’m starting to understand the bigger picture that framed them, and I don’t like what I’m being shown. I wasn’t an orphan left on the back doorstep, taken in by Colleen, like I believed when I was young.
I was born in that house, to a mother who suffered for a long time before she died.
It hurts to think about everything she must have gone through at the hands of the rich, powerful, truly evil Alpha who bought her from another vile man who kidnapped her.
The place I thought of as my home for the last twenty-six years was the servants’ quarters of that Alpha’s house. A tiny bedroom in the same passageway as the pantry, right next to the kitchen where I spent most of my time cooking and cleaning for that disgusting excuse of a man.
I wish I’d known the truth while I lived there.
I would have snuck into his bedroom late at night with a knife, to make damn sure he could never hurt another person ever again. While the thought of killing him is equal parts terrifying and satisfying, and it would have tortured me to commit such a violent crime, I know beyond a doubt that it’s what I would have had to do.
I’ve never wanted to cause harm to another person before, much less carry out such a final act. It’s a concept that’s almost alien to me. It goes against every instinct and moral I have.
Yet, when it comes to that man, it’s the only answer that feels like real justice.
Maybe that’s why Colleen never told me about my mother.
It’s why she let me believe I was a random orphaned child.
She knew the truth would be dangerous.
It would have made me see that man for the monster he really is.
He would have ceased to be a virtual nobody to me.
My feelings about him were completely neutral.
He didn’t feel like a threat, or a friend.
