Chapter 1

Alexandria

I tried to process Alton’s words…

Christmas wedding.

Suzy.

His question…

Will Adelaide be well enough to attend?

And finally, his declaration…

Welcome home.

The words formed phrases in my native language. I understood each one individually, but not combined. Their meaning—in the order spoken—was beyond my comprehension. With the sting of his slap still tingling on my cheek, I pressed my lips together and waited for more, for him to explain what he’d said, what he’d decreed.

I’d played this game too many times—I knew the rules and the outcomes. My few winning moments had come in my mother’s presence. She wasn’t here. I was alone with Alton in the moving limousine. Not completely alone, because Brantley was behind the clouded glass, though no matter the reason, he’d never intervene.

I swallowed my thoughts and retorts. They’d only earn me another slap. Even in times of confusion, the old me—the one who understood her predicament—knew that if I were to survive, self-preservation and common sense needed to overrule impulse.

Now that I’d willingly entered Alton’s trap, survival was my new goal.

The wheels of the limousine turned and time passed, but Alton didn’t offer anything more. No explanation. No enlightenment.

With each ticking second, the silence loomed around us, settling like a cloud. The muted hum of tires against the pavement drowned out our breathing. There were no words or piped-in music; even Brantley remained silent, his silhouette beyond the clouded window barely moving. It was as if most of the world had stopped, leaving me a captive unable to affect the future.

Mile after mile, the car continued forward, undoubtedly taking us to Montague Manor, away from life and—almost literally—toward death. Charli couldn't live behind the iron gates and tall stone walls. She wouldn't survive.

Summoning Alexandria, I turned toward my mother’s husband. His lips thinned as his attention moved from the side window to the screen of his phone. Though I stared, not once did his beady eyes turn my way or his words offer an explanation. By the smug satisfaction in his expression, he appeared confident that he had my acceptance or at the very least, my compliance. My neck straightened as I realized that in my stepfather’s mind, I’d already acquiesced to my future as my mother had done.

What the hell did that even mean?

Taking a deep breath, I lifted my chin. “Will you explain yourself?”

His gaze turned my direction as his smile faded. “My mistake. I assumed a Stanford graduate would understand a simple statement. But by all means, Alexandria, I can dumb it down for you. After all, I’ve been doing that for your mother for the last twenty years.”

Copper coated my tongue as I applied the pressure necessary to bite back my retort.

“As I stated,” he offered in a most condescending tone, “we will discuss this at length once we’re home.”

Stifling my disgust, I called on my childhood training and did my best to equal his patronizing pitch. “Perhaps I need to make this simple for you also. You see, I have a home, in New York. I have classes and a boyfriend. Despite what you assume, I can’t acquiesce to anything that will interfere with any of that.”

Instead of being offended, Alton smirked. “It’s you who doesn’t seem to understand. Alexandria, you don’t have a choice.”

This can’t be real.

I continued to stare, waiting for the telltale crimson to rise from his collar. In some strange way, its absence frightened me more than its predictable presence. The anger, his normal barometer, was gone. In its place was an arrogant confidence that sent a chill down my spine.

“Do you have anything to say?” Alton Fitzgerald asked.

To an outsider, his question could be construed as an offer of enlightenment. That wasn’t what my stepfather was doing. His inquiry served no other purpose than to bait me into saying something—anything—to warrant another of his slaps.

Taking a deep breath, I tried for another angle. “Please, tell me about my mother.”

“In due time.”

Suddenly, I startled. A shrill ring filled the interior of the limousine. As Alton reached for his phone, he nodded my direction, pressed his pale lips together, and wordlessly silenced me.

“Hello, Suzy.”

Suzanna Spencer was Bryce’s mother and my mother’s best friend. Would Suzanna tell me what was happening? Surely she was worried about my mother. That had to be why she was calling Alton.

With a conscious effort to appear as though I wasn’t listening, I turned toward the window. The muscles of my neck tightened as the scenery beyond the glass became increasingly familiar. No longer near Savannah’s city proper, the roads were now more rural. Canopies of trees created dimmed tunnels as Brantley swiftly drove us in and out of sunlight.

Mulling over each of Alton’s responses, I searched for a morsel of information. With each statement, I came up empty. Each sentence, each response, was calculated and well thought out.

As the strobe of light continued to illuminate, I contemplated what I’d been told thus far. Both my mother and Jane had mentioned that things in Savannah were changing; however, with each mile we moved nearer to Montague Manor, I knew that wasn’t true.

Settlers created these paths hundreds of years ago. Horses and wagon wheels had carved the Georgia clay, their tracks making what would later become today’s paved and pristine roads. Though the settlers wouldn’t recognize the current hardened black surfaces, the trees lining the route were still the same.

It was another example of the Savannah way: change without actual change.

Alton continued his conversation with his back toward the car’s back window, leaving me seated to his left. My seat faced the side, directly across from the door that had led to my current imprisonment. My gaze wandered from window to window.

My lips came together as I suppressed a gasp and my pulse quickened. I shouldn’t have been surprised by what I saw in my peripheral vision, but I was. My childhood had a way of doing that—isolating me—but from where I sat I could see from the corner of my eye that I wasn’t alone. A few car lengths behind the limousine was Clayton’s black SUV.

What did Deloris think she could do, run the gate at Montague Manor?

That would never happen. Alton’s employees were too well trained. They’d never let Deloris and Clayton pass.

I clutched my purse, wishing for my phone. If only I could send a text...let Deloris know not to try. Her efforts would be futile, possibly instigating other problems.

Why hadn’t I shared more with her about the operations of Montague Manor?

Then again, there was a part of me that wanted her to try, wanting her and Clayton to storm the gate. I imagined the guards calling the police. When they arrived, I’d tell them the truth—that I’d been taken against my will and my mother was in danger. In the story forming in my head, the good people would win and the bad ones would lose.

That was how fantasies worked.

This wasn’t a fantasy or a fairytale.

This was Montague—I knew too well that the bad would win. They always did.

Alton’s conversation went on as I continued to try to glean any news of my mother. Other than a comment or two saying he’d tell Suzy about that situation later, nothing about my mother was mentioned. He mentioned Bryce’s name but not Chelsea’s.

Momentarily I closed my eyes and tried to decipher the puzzle being laid before me. Pieces were being moved, but I couldn’t make out their destination.

For only a second before Alton powered off my phone, I’d seen the screen. It was Deloris’s name. She’d been the one who’d called, undoubtedly wanting answers, wondering what I’d done by getting into this car and why I’d done it. I wanted to believe she was talking to Nox, messaging him, or somehow relating what had happened.

Why did I get in this car?

The question ate at my insides until a hole remained.

It was a familiar void, one I’d carried for most of my life, one that up until recently, allowed me to cope and survive. It took away my emotions. I worked to fill my lungs, to fill the emptiness with air. I would survive. I’ve done it before.

But this time was different. This time I had help. Though Alton may believe I was alone, I wasn’t.

Nox was with me.

I reached for my necklace and ran the platinum cage up and down the chain. He may not be with me physically, but he was there. I was with him—a small dot on his phone, but there nonetheless.

Nox knew many of my secrets, my shadows, and he still loved me. I loved him. That was something that I’d never before had. It was something my mother never had. The knowledge that I did—I do—gave me strength.

The void inside of me shrank as Nox’s love rushed through my veins and swirled with my own regret. I opened my eyes, wishing I could go back in time. Wishing I could undo my decision to get in this car.

Suddenly, I stiffened my neck, straightened my shoulders, and held my breath. It was the involuntary response to the simple movement of Alton’s arm.

The corner of his lips rose. His gray gaze momentarily met mine as he dramatically lifted his wrist and pulled back the cuff of his suit coat. “We should be to the manor in less than ten minutes,” he spoke into his phone. “Have everyone assembled in my office. I’m done with this farce.”

I exhaled as he disconnected his call, mad at my own show of weakness. My flinch had shown vulnerability. I needed to be strong if I held a chance of saving my mother.

With a thin grin, wide enough to expose his stained teeth, Alton reached out and patted my knee. “Patience, as soon as we get back to the manor, Father will explain everything.”

I fought back the rebuttal and concentrated on the reason I’d gotten into the car. I zeroed in on my mother. Alton could say whatever he wanted about my future. It wasn’t his to decide. However, what he’d said about my mother’s fate was accurate. As her husband, her future was in his hands. No doubt he had the legal documentation to back his power.

He already had power over her shares of Montague. How difficult would it be for him to obtain more, the power to make all of her decisions, especially if she’d been deemed legally ill?

There was so much I needed to know.

Who admitted her to Magnolia Woods?

From some of my reading, I knew that the legalities changed if someone admitted him- or herself to a facility as opposed to being committed by another.

“My mother?” I asked again.

“You see, she has a problem.”

I waited.

“As time passed and your mother requested your return, she became more and more distraught.” It was the same word my mother had used when I questioned her about Bryce's accusations that she was ill. “None of us realized the extent to which she’d fallen, the state of depression that she was in. Perhaps it was because your mother never complained. We didn’t see it until it was too late.”

“What do you mean too late?”

“Her behavior became…” He paused. “…odd. Very unlike the Laide we all knew. She drank more than usual, but not only that. It wasn’t just the constant wine—that wasn’t out of character. It was that she suffered more and more headaches and asked Dr. Beck for stronger and stronger painkillers.”

My lips pressed together as he doled out small bits of information.

“She stopped taking the medicine the doctor prescribed, the one that kept her migraines away. We can only suspect it was because she wanted the stronger drugs.”

I shook my head. “She’s always drank, but she’s always handled it well.”

“There were a few incidents.” He laid his head against the seat. “I almost hate to tell you.”

My mouth dried. “What? What incidents?”

“Laide began hallucinating. She’d drive somewhere, refusing to be driven, and then not know where she was. She started to forget, well, everything and fabricated tales that made no sense at all. This hospitalization is for her own good.”

“Did she agree to Magnolia Woods herself? Was this her idea?”

Alton scoffed. “It’s obvious that the simplest of decisions are now beyond her ability. Dressing, showering, eating…”

My chest ached. It was clear that she hadn’t admitted herself. “Please, I want to see her.”

He shook his head. “She wouldn’t know you.”

“What do you mean she wouldn’t know me? I’m her daughter.”

“The doctors say that it’ll take time. The combination of drugs and alcohol can’t be stopped suddenly; the withdrawals could be life-threatening. She’s lost weight and cutting off what her body craves would be dangerous for her heart.”

“Her heart? She’s never had heart problems.”

His eyes narrowed. “Alexandria, how well do you really know what’s going on with your mother? Maybe if you’d done as she requested, if you’d come home, gone to Savannah Law, or been here, you might have seen the signs. You might have seen them earlier than we did. But you didn’t. You were selfish and now…now the narcotics have damaged her heart and mind.”

Tears welled in my eyes as I tried to remember recent conversations. I sought anything that could refute what he said, but I couldn’t think of one rebuttal. In the recent past, my mother had seemed scattered. She’d said things about duty and information, about changes…none of it made sense. That didn’t mean I’d thought she was losing touch with reality. I’d thought she was desperate. Maybe she was. Maybe she needed me and I didn’t hear the reality behind her pleas.

“Thank you.”

His brows rose. “Yes?”

“For telling me.” I knew how to play this damn game. “Please let me see her. I don’t care if she doesn’t know me. I want to be there for her now.”

“New York?”

I wanted to say that it wouldn’t go away.

I prayed that if I spoke to Dr. Renaud, my opportunities would remain at Columbia. I wanted to believe that Nox would support my decision to help my mother, but I didn’t know if any of that were true. “I’ll contact Columbia. They offer teleconferencing of lectures. I only have another month of this semester before finals.” The accommodating words tasted vile on my tongue. “And then if I have to, I can look into transferring to Savannah.”

“There’s more,” Alton said, “things that you’ll soon understand, but for now, that’s a start.”

Just as I began to believe I’d done what I needed to do, said what I’d needed to say, if only to buy me some time until I could get to my mother, Alton’s tone changed.

“I expect to be obeyed.”

The dreadful taste left behind by my vile acceptance of my near future bubbled from my stomach to my throat. I shivered at the finality of Alton’s decree.

“I may not be your father,” he went on, “but you will, from this point on, show me the respect that comes with that title. No one sees Adelaide, except through me. There have been decisions made in the past that affect your future as well as your mother’s and Montague’s. It’s not within your ability to argue these decisions. They’re done.”

The car slowed as the large iron gate moved to the side. I fought the urge to look through the back window to see if Clayton and Deloris were still behind the limousine. I feared that if I did, I’d alert Alton.

“They won’t be allowed in,” he said with more than a hint of disdain. “Ever.”

My heart sank as I turned to the back window and watched the gate close. The limousine’s tires bounced against the long driveway as we moved beneath the giant oak trees.

“When we enter the manor,” he continued, “go directly to my office. Suzy and Bryce will be there. I have a few things to discuss with the front guards. Remember what I said. Your refusals and disrespectful tone are done. Don’t make me refocus your attention again.”

I fought the nausea twisting in my gut as the car came to a stop on the circular cobblestone driveway.

Before the door opened, Alton leaned closer, his hand once again on my knee. “In each directive, Alexandria, I want you to ask yourself two questions.”

His words were heavy chains, securing my obedience as well as my captivity. I didn’t dare speak for if I did, I’d surely say something I’d regret, something to cause him to refocus me.

“Ask yourself,” he went on, “do I want to see my mother? And do I want her to get better?”

The door opposite me opened, flooding the interior with light. Though it came with a blast of warm Georgia autumn air, my flesh prickled with a familiar chill.

Before I could move or speak, Alton squeezed my knee. “I’m waiting.”

Swallowing the bile, I replied, “I want to see her and I want her better.”

“Very well. Remember that.” He motioned for me to get out first.

Lowering my sunglasses over my eyes, I accepted Brantley’s hand.

“Welcome home, Miss Alexandria.”

Not acknowledging his words, I looked up and up toward the tall walls filled with windows. There was no need to correct the name Brantley had used to address me. Instead, I forced myself forward, step by step, as my flat shoes moved over the cobblestone toward the opening front door.