All Chapters of RUINED BY DADDY: defiled by my stepdad.: Chapter 1 - Chapter 5

ARIAMoving back in with my mother was already humiliating enoughAdd her rich, terrifyingly attractive husband into the equation and what you get is me, standing outside a mansion in Minnesota at four in the afternoon, suitcase in hand, seriously reconsidering every life choice that led to this moment.I should have stayed broke in Boston.I really, truly should have.Mrs. Dalton opened the door before I could even knock , sweet woman, soft voice, immediately took my bag and told me dinner was at seven and Mr. Voss was working from home today.Mr. Voss.Oh God.My mother materialized from upstairs in a waft of Chanel and maternal guilt, pulled me into a hug that nearly cracked a rib and started talking immediately. The room, the gala next weekend, the stone work in the back garden, something about travertine. I smiled and nodded and said mm-hm in the right places and was doing a genuinely impressive job of being a normal, well-adjusted daughter.And then I heard footsteps.Slow ones.

AriaI typed back immediately. Like an idiot.That’s creepy. That’s actually creepy and you know it.Then Is it.Not a question. A statement. The kind that sits in your chest and makes you feel things you shouldn’t.I locked my phone and threw it onto the cushion beside me and pressed my face into my hands and just sat there for a while doing absolutely nothing constructive. Outside the birds were doing their morning thing, completely unbothered, living their best uncomplicated lives. Must be nice. Must be genuinely lovely to be a bird right now.I picked my phone back up.Stop texting me.You texted me first.You started it.Careful, Aria. You sound like a child.I nearly launched the phone across the room.I spent the rest of the morning doing everything I could to stop thinking about him. I went for a run three miles through the neighborhood with my headphones in and my playlist on full volume, pounding the pavement like it had personally offended me. I showered. I reorganized my

CadenI’ve destroyed men for less.Built empires from nothing, buried competitors without blinking, sat across boardroom tables from men twice my age and made them sweat through their suits just by staying quiet. I have never in forty-two years of living lost control of myself. Not once. Not over anything.And then Aria came home.Three weeks. That’s all it took. Twenty-one days of her padding around my house in oversized shirts and bare feet and that laugh she had the one that came out surprised, like she hadn’t meant to find things funny and everything I’d spent a lifetime building around myself developed a crack I couldn’t locate and couldn’t fix.I noticed her the first day.I hated myself for it the same night.The morning after the bathroom I was up at five.I ran six miles in the dark because I needed to do something with what was living inside my chest and the alternative options were all significantly worse. Cold shower after. Coffee. Suit. The whole armor of routine I’d buil