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"What about the girl?” Tracy laughed. “She's an annoyance who's practically begging for attention at every corner. You know how I feel about that. It's pathetic. But I need her soft, shiny little smiling face in the pictures, and I needed you two at my side to make this look real. I can't believe you two would risk yourinheritance like this. I warned you both, you needed to be here, or I'd cut you off."

Something broke. Inside me, that small hopeful seed cracked straight down the middle.

I stared at the bracelet in my hand. The heart bead gleamed up at me, innocent and pink.

I didn't knock.

I didn't move.

I just stood there for a long moment, too stunned to breathe, before my fingers clenched tight. After a moment I dropped the bracelet on the floor.

Then I turned and walked away from the door, the broken heart, from the fantasy.

From the fake mom I'll never ever have.

Chapter 1

Cindy

The necklace gleamed like a secret at the base of my throat.

It was delicate. Silver with a single teardrop-shaped opal that caught the light and shimmered with pinks and blues. My fingers brushed over it, the metal warm from my skin. It was the only thing I had left from my mom.

I remembered little about her; she died when I was just a toddler, but Dad said she wore this necklace every single day.

He gave it to me on my fifteenth birthday, tucked into a velvet box with trembling hands and glassy eyes. Just before he told me he was marrying someone else.

Her.

Now, three years later, I stood in front of the mirror, finally having the courage to wear it.

I'm almost eighteen.

Only one more day.

My reflection stared back. Older, sharper and even more jaded than the girl who once believed in birthday cake wishes and happily-ever-afters.

The wild watercolour of rainbow my hair sported this week was mostly a mix of soft lilac, cotton candy pink, and turquoise at the ends. A defiant choice, one I'll probably pay for later, but it's the armour I needed.

Tracy would hate it, which only made me love it more.

She believed young Beta women should look natural, soft and pretty in an unforgettable way.

But I yearned to beseen.

Heard.

I tilted my head, trying to see myself through my dad's eyes. He would've smiled at me, chuckled at the hair, but he always said I reminded him of my mother when I laughed.

Goddess, I missed him.

A full year had passed since he'd died. A year of aching silence and polite lies.

A year of living under the same roof as Tracy, who hadn't even cried at his funeral.

And after we put my hero in the ground? She kept me. But not out of kindness. No. Out of convenience.

She'd inherited everything. His business, his properties. I still couldn't believe that he'd not madeanyprovisions for me.