Chapter 1

I'm sitting in the taxi that's now bringing me to my new school, Blackmore Academy. Sounds scary, right?

Yeah, I know.

Don't ask me why they made a school with that name. I tried googling up the school name and found jack shit. Nothing at all. They have nothing, no information, no pictures.

Nothing.

If I had grown up in a better life than I was, I would be terrified and plain afraid, but I'm not. I'm me, I'm Lexi, and I have spent my life being abused at home. That left scars on me, and I mean literal scars.

One of my foster mothers thought it was okay to whip me with a belt on my back when she thought I was “acting” out.

The bitch.

We have been driving for hours, 4 to be precise, and I can't help but let my mind swirl with curiosity about my birth mother. She contacted me two months ago, thanks to the money provided by her new husband.

She hired a private investigator, and he found me one month later. It makes me wonder how hard did she try to find me before.

I remember little about my real father. I just know he was a nice man who died when I was five years old. They forced me into the foster care system because I had no one to take guardianship of me.

My mother left my dad and me when I was less than a year old.

She claimed she wasn't ready to be a parent, and my dad had pressed her to have me. She wished for an abortion. Well, that's what I was told by my dad one day when I had asked about my mom.

He would get sad, and it made me feel like a horrible daughter for making my dad unhappy, so I stopped asking.

At first, I wanted nothing to do with the woman who gave birth to me and then ditched me less than a year later, but I would not want to regret not getting to know her.

I need to learn why she left her child like that. I understand she wasn't ready, but she didn't even send me birthday cards on my birthday.

Nothing.

I have not heard a single word, nor have I received so much as a card in the mail from my mom in seventeen years. I went through all the usual, normal emotions when she first contacted me.

Anger.

Betrayal.

Sadness.

But likewise curious.

I was curious to know more about the woman who gave birth to me. I have not even met her yet. We have only talked over the phone a handful of times. My stepfather took my mom to Spain for their honeymoon, and they won't be back home for a month.

It was also during those phone calls that my mom told me my stepfather is a wealthy man, a billionaire. Alex Blackmore owns the best private school in the country, known as Blackmore Academy.

My mother also informed me that my stepfather enrolled me to join my new step-brother, Zane Blackmore, at Blackmore Academy.

For someone like me who grew up with nothing but terrible memories, abusive foster families, and not even having clothes that fit me, this opportunity was something I was not willing to pass up.

My stepfather paid for the airplane that took me from the only town I knew. Good riddance, if you ask me. He also paid for my hotel stay and arranged a ride to pick me up.

I know I called it a taxi, but in reality it's a car with a driver.

Fancy much?

I fight the need to roll my eyes, but I can't complain too much. Without my stepfather and my mother helping me in my situation, I wouldn't have been able to afford the travel expenses to bring me to Blackmore Academy.

I wasn't offered any scholarships from other schools, which I found very weird because I was a good student. Just because I grew up in a rough neighborhood doesn't mean I was making unpleasant grades.

Every month I'd be on the A and B honor roll.

My grades were way beyond the needed requirement for any scholarship, but sadly, no other school offered anything, which I guess I understand.

Trailer trash.

I even spent a few nights in jail when I stabbed one of my foster fathers friends in the dick for daring to touch me.

Sick bastard.

My social worker Margaret got those charges dropped. Maybe they will follow me for the rest of my life. I'm not a killer or anything, I'm just a girl who's been through enough shit.

Even though the state paid my adopted family to take care of me, they didn't at all. I had to prepare my meal in most of the households.

Margaret had done the best she could to find reliable and healthy foster families for me to live with, but they would save their true intentions for when the paperwork was finished and filed. She is a really sweet woman that has always treated me with kindness and respect. Sometimes It felt like she was more of a mother figure towards me than anyone else has ever been. It's stupid to say, and I know she was just clearly doing her job, but as a child, I really needed and appreciated her kindness and warm hugs.

I remember when I was little, I would go to bed hungry because my foster parents had forgotten to feed me.

One foster family, I had several, would make me do house chores for food vouchers. I couldn't eat or drink anything without earning and handing over one of those stupid little pieces of paper.

I have done held down so many jobs it's unreal. Every time I had found someone willing to hire me, one of my foster parents would come, drugged up and begging for cash.

They would end up causing a scene when I didn't have money to give them, and my bosses would all tell me the same thing. They couldn't have that in their store. The only reason I stayed around with my last foster family was to protect my little foster brother.

If it wasn't for him, I would have run away and took myself out of that messed-up system. He isn't my brother by blood, but he is by heart, and I couldn't leave him until he became older.

I saved enough money for a phone, and I was proud of myself. I found it in a phone store. Don't even ask me the name right now, but they had used phones. It's nothing overly fancy, just an old as shit Samsung, but yeah, I'm not complaining.

I have a phone close to everyone else my age.

I get to play games, search around on the web, and all that good stuff, not like I have any friends I want to talk with.

Nobody wanted to be friends with the trailer trash girl with druggie foster parents, but it is what it freaking is.

A few miles later, we are driving down what looks to be a long driveway, tress with black roses line the road on both sides, and I won't lie. It's beautiful.

I was never one to be found of flowers, but those black roses do look beautiful along the white gravel road.

I see a massive frame coming up in front of us, and when I mean massive, I mean enormous. Think of the queen of England's castle, and then you will know exactly what I mean when I say enormous.

The building is made of black stone, with windows everywhere.

Those windows at least give the school a little light with the white shutters.

In the middle as we drive closer, I saw the big statue of a rose sitting right in the middle in front of the building and when the driver pulls up to it, I saw that the rose sculpture had thorns.

I quickly pick up my school map and flip it open. I scan the pages and see that this is the primary house.

That's crazy.

The main house has the classrooms, teachers' housing, and the cafeteria, but along the property holds more buildings, one labeled Girls dorm and the other labeled Boys dorm.

Well, I'm glad to see they keep us housed separately, that at least eases my mind a little bit, not much, though.

I read some horror stories. Yeah, I did some digging. I needed to learn what I was walking myself into, and students that go to schools like this one don't like when kids like me come around.

They think we are less than they are, just because they were fed with gold-plated spoons and spoiled by their parents for their entire life.

I may have gotten here thanks to my new stepfather owning the school, but I also know my grades will be good enough for me to be proud of.

I wish my mother would have wanted to meet me before I arrived here. I wish she would be here to show me around. She told me that a girl named Shelby, who got accepted for the one scholarship the school gives out a year, will show me around.

I don't even know what my new step-brother looks like. My mom told me he doesn't like her yet. When he comes home from school on the weekends, he basically ignores her.

He started crying when she explained to me that he would talk over her and not talk back to her when she would try to engage him in conversations.

He lost his mom two years ago due to a drunk driver and thinks his father marrying my mom was too soon. I can't agree or disagree. It's not up to me to tell someone how to deal with losing a parent.

I am hoping that he and I can get along or at least coexist in peace while I get to know my birth mom. I don't want anything else from him or his dad. I only need to be able to complete my schooling and to get the answers I need from my mom.