Chapter 1

The truth hit me so suddenly that my head spun, and my chest felt stuffed with cotton.

Steve Machleit wiped away my tears with infinite gentleness and went on, "Actually, while you were sedated, we took the chance to have you put your thumbprint on a settlement agreement.

"But the dose was too high. We only found out you'd been pregnant after you miscarried, and since we were busy celebrating with Jess at the time, we forgot to come see you."

I still remembered.

After Jess Plaxton ran down and killed my mother, Catherine Eaton, I'd rushed to the police station, my belly round with pregnancy.

Then came one shot of sedative. Blood slowly trickled down my legs as I was forced to press my thumbprint onto a sheet of paper.

But no one told me that piece of paper had bought my mother's killer three years of freedom.

My face was ice-cold, and my throat had gone hoarse from crying. "Why are you only telling me now..."

My father, David Plaxton, was driving. He looked at me in the rearview mirror and sighed.

"I was afraid you wouldn't settle down and repent in there. Now that you've learned your lesson, you won't hurt Jess even if you know the truth."

Repent?

When I learned the truth, all I did was slap Jess once, and it cost me three years of imprisonment.

The endless pills were so bitter they made me vomit violently, and the electroshock therapy kept knocking me unconscious.

And all of it was their revenge for that one slap.

I laughed, a terrible, broken sound, and lunged at my father behind the wheel.

The car swerved hard.

"Alicia, have you lost your mind?!"

Steve pinned me tightly in his arms, and I screamed wildly, "Yes, I've lost my mind!"

My mother's corpse was barely cold when my father promised his mistress a lifetime together, right there on the spot.

Then he joined forces with my husband to let my mother's killer walk free.

I should've gone mad long ago!

Once we got home, they locked me in the basement.

My father held up a photo of himself and his mistress and told me to call her "Mom."

I spat on it. "No."

Seeing the stubbornness in my eyes, he gave up and answered a phone call. On his way out, he warned me, "Camilla is going to treat you like her own daughter, so you'd better learn to respect her!"

With a furious scream, I hurled the photo album, and it burst apart.

A shard sliced open Steve's face, and blood welled from the cut.

He didn't dodge, but he frowned in disgust. "If you keep treating Jess like this, I won't mind sending you back in there!"

Only when he saw the blood and tears mingling on my face did he crouch down to meet my eyes. "If you can let bygones be bygones and accept Jess and her mother, everything will go back to the way it was.

"Whether you want to rejoin this family is up to you."

With that, he stood up and slammed the door behind him.

But none of them knew that when they signed my discharge papers, a divorce agreement and a disownment agreement had been tucked in among them.

I didn't want any part of this "family" that only loved an illegitimate daughter and a mistress!