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PROLOGUE
“You’ll find your dreams out there, Hellena.” My mother’s whimpering voice echoes through my mind as I try to find a comfortable position to sleep. Damn her for having the nerve to say that. Damn her for marrying that horrible man in the first place.
Except I would never have gotten out without her help, her last-ditch effort to protect me. Exactly what she swears she was trying to do when she married him. When she let him promise me to another criminal degenerate’s son.
That son and his friends who tried to…
A shiver has me wrapping my arms around my legs. The road slips by outside the window, the world bathed in the grays of the early morning. I haven’t slept.
Pressure grips my head. Pure panic. Dread. It’s a vice grip.
A tiny, hysterical laugh slips out, and the only other guy on the bus probably thinks I’m unhinged. But if he only knew what I’d just done. Where I’d come from.
Vice. Grip.
My stepfather. Marco Vice.
And his grip, his absolute control of my life, is the very thing I’m running from. A name that I hope I never hear again and that man I pray I never see again. Because if I do… it means I’m dead.
But I’d be dead right now if I hadn’t…
I can barely think of it. The blood on my hands. My fiancé’s blood. Davi’s sneering face flickers through my mind, and I nearly gag, gripping the filthy fabric of the Greyhound bus seat as we crawl through the night to somewhere far, far away from my nightmare.
I see his empty eyes every time I close mine, stabbing me right through the heart. Even though I still feel the bruises from his clawing hands, the blows his friends rained down on my back.
It’s all too much.
I hope, I pray that time and distance will erase the pain, the terror. Maybe I can start over, be someone else.
“You’ll find your dreams out there, Hellena. You just have to find sanctuary…”
The weather-worn sign that slips by as we drive up the coast is close enough. It says “Sanctum Harbor.” And it’s the last known address of my real father. Maybe it can be my home. Maybe he can be.
I’m going to make all of my dreams come true there.
I’m going to become who I’ve always wanted to be. At any cost.
1
HELLENA
Ideal in trust.
It’s a complex currency.
Hard to earn, easy to lose. Especially mine. I’ve built up a little nest egg around me, a safe haven of work/home/school/fun that is pretty well-founded and paid up in full. Well, at least as far as the trust goes. I could always use more money. Overall, though, things are looking up for my master’s program in the fall.
But even I make mistakes sometimes.
“What’s missing from this envelope, Hellena?”
“An apology letter…?”
“Smart ass. It was rhetorical. Yesterday was the first.” Aunt Rachelle taps her finger twice.
“I know. I’ll write you a check right now.” I snatch my purse and dig for a pen. Aunt Rachelle holds one out for me, looking more than a little put out.
“Not the point and you know it. I bet you don’t miss your deadlines paying your little party friends.” The remark is right on the money, so to speak. I curse under my breath at the fact that she knows exactly how I make my money.
