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Our past should never define us. At least, that‘s what I’ve heard many people say, the self-help gurus and life coaches, the people teaching us to move on from past mistakes to find a better future.
But what if it’s your future that defines you? What if the fate you’re moving towards is the problem that will defeat you?
And what if there’s not a damn thing you can do to stop it?
That’s my life.
My fate.
My burden to carry since before I was born.
I was bred for it, raised for it, reminded of it every day of my life.
I never knew anything except that I would one day be married to man I don’t love. That I would be a wife to a man that doesn’t love me. And that I had to accept that arrangement regardless of whether I wanted it or not.
For eighteen years, I believed I would never know love, never experience true heartbreak, never have anything to look forward to except what I was born to become.
Mrs. Mason Strom.
A wife.
An ornament.
A trinket.
That was before two twin boys walked into my life. Before the weeks of freedom they gave me. And before I had to walk away from them despite what it did to me.
You think you know violence?
I promise that you don’t.
Not like I do, at least.
Not until you experience true annihilation.
Ezra and Damon Cross were beautiful when they were young.
They were my world for the short time we had together.
They were all that mattered until the day came that I had to leave them.
Now, they’re men forged in fire and shaped by the hands that beat them.
Beautiful.
Scarred.
Cold fury and blinding chaos.
I thought I knew violence.
But I was wrong.
Because if Ezra has taught me anything in life, it’s that the worst kind of pain isn’t what we do to ourselves, it’s what the person your heart belongs to can do when he’s learned to hate you.
. . .
Past