 by Lani Lynn Vale.jpg)
Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 68814 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 68814 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 344(@200wpm)___ 275(@250wpm)___ 229(@300wpm)
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
PROLOGUE
Raise your hand if you’re a little bit of an asshole.
-Hades, age 12
HADES
15 years ago
“You’re going to have to find a healthy way to deal with this,” I heard Dad say to me.
I looked at him and felt my stomach pitching at the idea of my mother leaving.
“What does that mean?” I asked, unable to stop myself.
I knew he hated when we asked questions.
In fact, I knew better than to ask him anything.
Yet, he’d just won full custody of us. Or my mom had given us away. I didn’t really know.
What I did know was that we were alone, Caristonia and me.
Well, not alone.
We had a brother and sisters, of course.
But we didn’t have our mom anymore, and our dad hated us, or me at least.
I wasn’t sure why.
Well, I had my guesses. I had a feeling he absolutely hated my mom.
As in, he was glad to be rid of her.
He’d done everything he could to make it to where she had no other choice.
“You,” he pointed at Caristonia. “Leave.”
Caristonia—Tony for short—got up and walked out without a backwards glance.
The traitor.
My dad waited until the door closed before he said, “I don’t want you here.”
My stomach once again rolled.
“In fact, if I had a choice, you would be a bad memory,” he continued.
I looked down at my hands.
“I’ve done nothing but support you for the last few years when all I wanted to do was kick you and your mother out and never look back. But that wouldn’t get me your sister,” he said.
I’d heard this before.
In fact, it was one of the most normal things in the world to hear—him telling me I wasn’t good enough.
Today was no different.
“In fact, I would go as far to say that I tried finding a way to get Caristonia and not you, but she would’ve thrown a little fit, and we both know it.” He narrowed his eyes. “What she sees in you, I’ll never know.”
It was like a slap to the face. He really knew how to choose just what to say to get the most meaning across.
My mom had said the same thing to me once.
Sadly, it was a rare thing to hear my parents tell me they actually wanted me in their lives.
Strike that. They’d never once said they wanted me there. I was the burden. The extra. The one they didn’t plan on having.
Caristonia really was it for me. She was the only one that truly loved me.
At least, that was the way it seemed sometimes.
The thing about living the circus life was it was sort of survival of the fittest.
The last freakin’ thing I wanted to do was live here where we would be forced to work, have absolutely zero social life, and ultimately be Dad’s bitch.
“The best thing you can do right now is keep yourself skinny, dress in sparkly numbers, and do your fucking job,” Ansel Singh muttered darkly. “And if you get in my way, you’ll regret it.”
I knew that.
I’d experienced it a lot in my short life.
There I was, twelve years old, and I already knew what it was like to be hated by everyone that was supposed to love you.
If I got in my dad’s way, he would make sure I would regret it. He wasn’t lying about that.
One time, I’d tripped and fallen on stage in front of his ringmaster skit, and he’d kicked me in the face so hard that I’d rolled off the stage out of sight.
I knew that was what he was trying to accomplish—he was embarrassed by my homeliness—but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.
I would do what I had to do to keep my head above water, and when it was time, and I could survive in this world on my own, I’d be gone and never look back.
• • •
12 years ago
He backhanded me so hard that I saw stars.
“Stay out of my fuckin’ way,” he ordered harshly.
I stretched my jaw out and winced, feeling the already tightening muscles protest the movement.
God. Dammit.
“And,” he pointed at me, his finger getting so close that I could see the dirt in the fingerprint lines on his pointer finger. “Wear some fuckin’ makeup. You’re butt ugly when you don’t.”
Then he was gone, leaving me staring at him with my jaw and eye socket smarting.
I resisted the urge to scream ‘I wear a fucking mask, douchebag!’ at him. Barely.
I was staring daggers at his retreating back, my eye and my cheekbone tingling as I did.
“What happened to your face?” Keene asked, sounding not even a little bit concerned.
None of them ever were.
This was a dog-eat-dog world, and all of us were just trying to survive.
Keene was the closest one of us all to getting out of here, though.
He had one more year to go, then he would be gone.
His plan was to join the military and never look back.