Lahat ng Kabanata ng Owned By The King Of Blackwood (De Luca Series): Kabanata 1 - Kabanata 3

The rain at Blackwood University didn’t wash things clean; it just made the rot smell like wet stone.I pulled the collar of my thrifted coat tighter around my neck, ducking my head as I hurried across the cobblestone quad. Thunder rattled the stained-glass windows of the library.Keep your head down. Don’t make eye contact. You are invisible.That was the mantra, It was the only reason I was still breathing.To the registrar and the student body, I was Elena Vance, a boring transfer student from Ohio on a hardship scholarship. I was a nobody, a ghost.But to the people my father had betrayed, I was Elena Rossi, the daughter of the "The Rat." The man who had embezzled five million dollars from the De Luca crime family and vanished, leaving his nineteen-year-old daughter to fend for herself.I adjusted the strap of my bag, my knuckles turning white. I had 1 year left. One year to get my law degree, pass the bar, and disappear to a country without an extradition treaty.Blackwood was th

I stared at the closet door for a full minute before I gathered the courage to touch the handle. My hand hovered, trembling, the brass knob cool against my clammy skin.Don’t make me come get you.I recalled.I pulled the door open.I expected it to be empty, or perhaps filled with my own pathetic, thrift-store wardrobe that the movers had packed. But my boxes were still taped shut on the floor behind me.The closet was full.Rows of hangers stretched across the cedar-lined space. Coats, blouses, skirts. All of them high-end. All of them in a palette of blacks, grays, and deep blood reds.And hanging in the center, displayed like a museum piece, was a dress.It was black silk, suspended on straps no thicker than fishing line. It was the kind of dress that looked like it would pool on the floor like ink if you dropped it. No zippers, no buttons. Just a slip of fabric designed to cling to every insecurity I had.I reached out and touched the hem. It was soft, and looks obscenely expensi