Chapter 1

RAYNA'S POV

“You stupid thing!” The whip landed hard on my back and the ceramic plates toppled from my hands, crashing to the floor.

“You disgust me!” my mother continued, just before her palm landed on my cheek with a blinding slap.

Not once did I shed a tear or wince which made it worse.

Bastard, daughter of a whore!

She called me everything while repeatedly hitting me, none was new though. She'd been doing these things since I was child.

So I kept mute.

Assault had become a part of life. Let's just say it had toughened me up.

I was the unwanted daughter of the Colin family, which in itself wouldn't be a bad position to be in if they didn't all treat me like I was the devil.

They treated me worse than scum. And I'd soon realised that the majority of the reason for that was their deep hatred for my father. Which I didn't understand.

Mum had me when she was young. She said I ruined her life. How was that even possible when she took the unanimous decision to keep me?

“Mum, please, that's enough,” I heard Michelle say as she walked into the kitchen, pulling mother away from me.

“No! You don't understand,” Mother yelled. “Dinner was supposed to be ready an hour ago and I caught her on the phone, giggling with a boy??”

“It wasn't a boy, it was…” I began.

“Shut your mouth!” Mum snapped, cutting me off.

“You need to calm down,” Michelle said. “Your blood pressure might shoot up at this rate.” She patted her arm gently then she turned to me with that irritated look she always had.

“Rayna, just make dinner and if you need help, let me know.”

Oh please, she could save that useless messiah move for someone else because I wasn't interested.

She was always acting like she treated me any better, always turning her nose down at me, speaking condescendingly. I despised her quiet hatred for me, I would have preferred if she was more open with it like everyone else.

“I don't need anything from you,” I snapped at her and that didn't go so well with mother. How could I, a mistake, as she claimed, yell at her golden daughter?

She picked up the whip, ready to launch another assault but the messiah herself stopped her.

“You're just jealous that Michelle is going to be attending the prestigious Elmor College and she'll study with top students and get a high paying job afterwards while you rot in this mansion.” she scoffed, “you couldn't even pass the entry test. How the hell are you my daughter?!”

“Mum, stop.” Michelle pretended to be sad but she wasn’t fooling me. “Come on, let's go. Rayna will make dinner.” And pulled her out of the kitchen.

“Michelle is a better daughter than you'll ever be, Rayna. She has brought me nothing but pride while you…you disgust me!”

——

Now, that is why when I stole Michelle's admission letter to the prestigious Elmor College, I didn't feel one bit of sympathy for her.

"Hey, we don't have all day here." A nudge on my shoulder brought me back to reality. I had zoned out and the queue was moving.

A stout looking lady upfront was yelling for each person to have his or her slip ready to hand her.

I dug into the pocket of my jeans and produced the slip. Cream-coloured and official-looking, stamped twice across the top with the Elmor College crest. Michelle had kept it tucked inside her Bible of all places, like it was something holy. Maybe to her it was.

To me, it was a ticket out of that hellhole.

It was only a matter of time before they found out that I was gone, along with the admission letter.

“That evil bitch!” I smiled as I pictured how mother would yell.

The queue moved again. I shuffled forward. Around me, everyone was dressed like they knew where they were going in life — blazers, neat hair, parents lurking nearby with proud, irritating smiles. I had on a hoodie I'd worn for three days running and a pair of beat-up trainers that had seen better days. I fit right in the way a weed does in a manicured garden.

I didn't care.

The stout woman at the table was built like she'd never entertained a single moment of nonsense in her life. Reading glasses perched on her nose. A lanyard around her neck that read -REGISTRAR- in block letters. She took the slip from the boy ahead of me without looking up, scanned it, stamped something, and waved him off in one fluid motion.

"Next."

I stepped forward and laid the slip flat on the table. The woman glanced at it. Then at me. Then at it again.

"Michelle Colin?" She narrowed her eyes on me.

"Yes," I said, as easy as breathing. I'd been answering to the wrong name my whole life anyway.

“You look a bit different here.” She held the paper up. Now I wouldn't have taken Michelle's form just like that.

Michelle and I looked like mother. Her genes were strong and for the first time in my life, I had something to thank that old hag for.

She stamped it and slid a lanyard across the table. A student ID sleeve that was still blank for now. "Orientation starts in fifteen minutes, east courtyard. Don't be late." She was already reaching past me for the next slip.

I picked up the lanyard and walked away.

That was it. That was all it took. 20 years of being screamed at, beaten, denied of anything that looked even slightly like a future — and it came down to a two-second table exchange and a woman too busy to look at my face properly.

It was almost funny.

The east courtyard was already filling up. I found a spot near the back, far enough from the cluster of new students doing that exhausting thing where they introduced themselves and laughed too loudly at nothing. I pulled out my phone and acted like I had somewhere important to be digitally.

A cheer went up from somewhere ahead, right in my path. I looked up in time to see a group of boys on the far side of the courtyard.

Instantly, I knew they were all trouble.

And not just because they all looked like the leads from a popular boy-band. Or the fact that they were all circled around a scared and timid looking kid, laughing maniacally at him.

“Just mind your business, Rayna,” I murmured to myself, adjusting the strap of my backpack on my shoulder.

I'd impulsively packed my entire life into a single battered trunk, convinced that stepping through the wrought-iron gates of this Academy would instantly right every wrong that had ever been done to me.

This was none of my concern.

The morning air bit sharply against my cheeks as I navigated the sprawling Gothic courtyards, the noise from the crowd kept growing louder. Everywhere I looked, students dressed in impeccably tailored blazers were whispering in tight, paranoid circles, and fidgeting like frightened rabbits.

It was clear that even in the school of the elites, there was still a social hierarchy.

I kept my head down, clutching my schedule tightly, hoping to slip past the mess and into the homeroom completely unnoticed.

But fate, as it turns out, has a deeply sadistic sense of humor and a penchant for drama.

Rounding the corner of the west wing, near the old brick gymnasium where the shadows pooled thick and heavy, the loud chatter of the courtyard abruptly died away.

Just before a sickening, hollow thud echoed off the stone walls, followed by a muffled gasp of pain that squeezed my chest. I froze, my sneakers suddenly feeling heavy as I turned.

Standing right behind me was a guy, holding a full-sized aluminum baseball bat, casually resting it against his shoulder as if it were a walking stick, while a smug smirk twisted his sharp features.

He was wearing a dark, blood-stained baseball cap pulled low over a mess of ink-black hair, casting his eyes in shadow.

I turned, and instantly wished I hadn't.

A boy was on the ground by the gym wall, curled on his side with his arms wrapped over his head. His glasses lay a few feet away, one lens cracked into a spiderweb. Around him, boys in tailored blazers stood in a loose ring, and not one of them looked like they were having a bad time.

"Get up," one of them said. When the boy didn't, a polished shoe drove into his stomach.

He coughed, a wet, scraping sound. Blood ran from his nose over his lips and dripped onto the stone. "Please," he choked out. "I'll get it back to you. I just need till Friday."

"Friday?" Someone laughed. Another kick caught him in the back and he jerked like he'd been shocked.

Around the edges, some students stared at their shoes. The rest just watched. Nobody moved.

Then the ring parted, and the laughter thinned out the way it does when the person who matters steps forward.

He was holding a full-sized aluminum baseball bat, resting it against his shoulder as casually as a walking stick. A dark, blood-stained cap sat low over a mess of ink-black hair, throwing his eyes into shadow, and a smug smirk twisted his sharp features. He wasn't in a hurry. He crouched beside the boy, nudged his shoulder with the toe of his boot, the way you'd check if something was still alive.

"Look at me."

The boy shook his head, eyes squeezed shut.

The smirk widened. He rose, lifted the bat, and swung it into the boy's ribs.

The same hollow thud that had stopped me in my tracks echoed off the walls. The boy folded around it, mouth open, no sound coming out for one long, terrible second. Then he dragged in a breath in tiny, broken pieces and started to cry.

My back prickled, like it remembered the whip.

Every single fiber of my survival instinct, honed by years of surviving my toxic mother, screamed at me to turn around, walk away, and mind my own business.

Just pretend you saw nothing, I told myself, my heart hammering painfully against my ribs.

I frowned, crossing my arms, my legs moving on their own accord and my eyes fixed on the scene unfolding, with a mix of fascination and self-preservation.

I didn't want to intervene. I really, truly didn't.

But my lack of coordination decided right then to make an appearance right as I pushed through the third layer of the small crowd of students.

I suddenly fell forward. The world spun around me, and all I could see was a blur of gray stone and blue sky. I flew through the air like an awkward human missile, completely losing my balance.

“Oww!” I cried as I hit the ground, the impact knocking the air out of me.

I landed flat on my stomach, right in front of a pair of boots.

The crowd burst into loud laughter.

“Look, guys! We’ve got a birdie over here!” someone teased me.

I winced in shame and fear when a heavy aluminum bat suddenly clattered onto the pavement, landing just inches from my nose.

The laughter stopped instantly.

The courtyard became completely silent. It was so quiet that you could have heard a pin drop.

Slowly, painfully, I lifted my head and looked up.

It was the student wearing the bloodstained baseball cap.

How sweet…

The guy looked down at me, his smirk widening into something terrifyingly amused. He tilted his head, the brim of his cap shifting to reveal piercing, grey eyes that looked like storm clouds.

“So, you want to be a hero and save him?” he asked.

I blinked, as panic flooded my veins.

“Are you kidding me? I tripped okay! I tripped on a rock, you absolute psychopath!”

“Well too bad, you're going to have to pay for disrupting my fun time!”

A rush of Déjà vu almost blinded him. I'd escaped home because of something like this, and I'd be damned if I let anyone treat me like that again.

But Before my logical brain could override my sheer panic and physical humiliation, my body moved on its own. A mix of righteous anger and adrenaline rushed through my bloodstream like liquid fire.

I scrambled up from the pavement, my face burning. And without thinking of the consequences, I cocked my arm back and delivered a sharp, echoing slap right across his cheek.

Pow!

The sound rang through the cold morning air.

For one agonizing second, time seemed to completely stop.

The jerk’s head snapped sharply to the side from the force of the impact, his cap tilting precariously.

A collective, sharp intake of breath rippled through the gathered crowd of onlookers. Whispers immediately broke out.

“Did... did she just...?” I heard someone stammer, their voice trembling with disbelief.

“Are you insane?” another student hissed, clutching their face as if they had been slapped themselves.

“She actually hit him! She dared to hit Tio. The Tio Aldama.”

Hearing that name whispered through the horrified crowd made the color instantly drain from my face.

The pieces clicked together in my head with the terrifying clarity of a lightning strike.

Aldama…Aldama conglomerate. It had to be. Everyone knew their family, rich and poor, old or young…they had a reputation.

Jesus Christ, Rayna…

My stomach plummeted into an abyss. My knees went weak.

“Oh my god,” I whispered, my voice trembling violently as the horrible reality crashed down over me. “I actually hit the son of a Monarch.”