Chapter 1

The next second, I dragged my half-sister, Sienna Thomson, off the bed by her hair and shoved her into the stall.

I grabbed the plunger and brought it down hard. Dirty water and blood splattered everywhere.

The crowd scattered with sharp gasps. The looks directed at me shifted from pity to contempt.

Sienna, who had always walked all over me, clutched her face and shrieked in utter shock, "Charlotte Thomson, are you crazy? Your mom was trash, and so are you! You think I want to pick on you? Dad thinks you're an embarrassment! He told me to put you in your place!"

My eyes burned red as I hit her harder. Years of repressed anger burst wide open.

The calm smile on my boyfriend Daniel Lowe's face faded.

A loud bang echoed, and the plunger dropped from my hand.

A high-pitched ringing filled my ears.

It wasn't until warm blood dripped down my cheek that I realized what happened.

Daniel had just shot me.

The scene mirrored the moment ten years ago when he risked everything, threatening Sienna just to protect me.

Except this time, I was the target.

An overwhelming wave of grief washed over me. "Daniel…"

"Charlotte! How could you do this to your own sister? She's your family! You've completely lost your mind!"

I stared at his moving lips, unable to process his words.

Sienna wasn't my family. Her mother, Reyna Boyd, was the mistress who ruined my mother, Lily Davidson.

After Sienna was born, Mom suffered a fall that left her paralyzed from the waist down.

From that day on, our lives became a living hell.

When Mom died in a fire, I was reduced to scrounging for moldy scraps in trash cans.

Risking exposure, Daniel would scale the wall again and again just to hand me bags of food.

Warm tears had dripped onto my hands back then.

Those hard rations were the sweetest things I'd ever tasted.

Daniel had walked through the mud with me, yet he now had the nerve to call Sienna my family.

I couldn't hear the rest of his tirade.

All I caught was his final line. "You're still going to be my wife."