Chapter 1

I don't remember how I made it back to the servants' quarters.

For five years now, Marcus Kane had made a habit of tormenting my daughter and me right in front of Diana Winslow, and Diana always took his side, punishing us without ever asking what actually happened.

So that was it. She was proving her loyalty to Marcus.

Numb with despair, I pushed open the door and heard my daughter's cry for help.

"Daddy! Daddy, it hurts!"

Inside the room, Marcus's son, Tobias Kane, was shoving a huge wedge of peanut cake down my daughter's throat.

She was allergic to peanuts.

I rushed over and pulled the two children apart. A second later, Tobias's palm cracked across my face, and he spat at me.

"You're nothing! Just some filthy driver, and you think you can stop me?

"My mom's the richest woman in the country! Without her, you two beggars would've starved to death years ago!

"Forget the cake—if she told you to eat garbage off the ground, you'll have to do it!"

When I didn't react fast enough for his liking, he stood up, stuck out his little belly like a general inspecting the troops, and looked around the room with disgust.

"Ugh. No wonder people like you live in a dump like this. My dog's kennel is bigger."

He wasn't wrong. This cramped, filthy storage room was where my daughter and I had been crammed together for five years.

When my wife had left home for her assignment, I couldn't bear the thought of her struggling for money, so I sold the house my parents had left me and handed her every cent.

I never imagined she'd take that money and pour it into starting a business for the penniless Marcus and his son.

Tobias, decked out head to toe in designer labels, strutted around the room like a general touring a refugee camp. Then his eyes landed on a photo of my wife, Diana, and he hurled the rest of the cake straight at my daughter's head.

"You stupid oaf! Why do you have a photo of my mom hidden away? Just because your mom's dead doesn't mean you get to steal someone else's!"

He must have caught a few glimpses of Diana's real face, the one hidden under the mask.

My daughter, blood trickling from a cut on her forehead, lunged to snatch the photo back.

"Daddy says that's my mommy. My mommy's a hero. Don't you dare talk about her like that!"

Furious, Tobias tore the photo to shreds.

"This is my mom! My mom looks like that sometimes! You broke roach, you think keeping a photo makes you some kind of princess? Let me tell you something—you're nothing but a filthy pest!"

That was the last straw. My daughter threw herself at him, and the two of them tumbled to the floor, grappling.

I tried to pull them apart and failed. Then, behind me, a crisp voice rang out.

"What is going on here?"

Diana stood in the doorway, taking in the scene: Tobias with nothing worse than a scratch, and my daughter with a bleeding forehead and bruises all over her body.