Baby Bones

"He thought she was a pretty cage. She was the lock, the key, and the woman who'd burned the whole prison down."

My husband finally thinks about me three years after my death. The reason? His childhood sweetheart's leukemia has relapsed, and she needs another bone marrow transplant. He comes to my place, wanting to make me sign a donor agreement. However, he finds that the place has long been vacated. He asks a neighbor about it. "Are you talking about Kristen? She's long dead! I heard it was because someone dragged her away for a bone marrow donation when she was already sick. She died a few days after returning home." My husband refuses to believe that. He thinks my neighbor and I have conspired to lie to him. He says impatiently, "If you see her, tell her I won't pay the medical bills for that child she's been raising if she doesn't come to see me in three days." My neighbor shakes her head when she sees how stubborn my husband is. She mutters, "The poor child has already starved to death, though…"

Julian Ashford, the golden boy of the city's elite, had his left leg broken by his father with a golf club -- all because of me, a scholarship student. He was stripped of his billion-dollar inheritance and cast out of the family. For three years, he dragged that ruined leg around an auto repair shop, doing backbreaking labor just to scrape together enough for my college tuition. Everyone said I was the luckiest girl alive -- that I'd brought the untouchable heir of a financial empire to his knees, made him willing to live on scraps in the worst part of town. Today was our three-year anniversary. I was carrying the freshly signed Holloway Group inheritance confirmation documents, ready to finally tell him my real identity and pull him out of this misery. I walked down the corridor of The Grand Pavilion, holding a box of vanilla shortbread -- his favorite. Through the half-open door of a private suite, Julian Ashford stood tall on two perfectly healthy legs, dressed in an immaculate tailored suit, sliding a rare pink diamond ring onto the finger of Victoria Sterling -- the city's most celebrated socialite. "Victoria, I used that scholarship girl as a shield to survive three years of my old man's relentless arranged marriage schemes. My body's completely untouched. You've always been the one I was going to marry." I looked down at my own hands, cracked and raw from the cold, and tore the inheritance documents to shreds.

My mother was the most renowned forensic artist, yet she refused to acknowledge me as her daughter. On my eighteenth birthday, I was kidnapped and called her for help. However, my mother replied impatiently, "Today is Angelina's birthday. Just die if you want attention that badly." Later, all the bones in my body were shattered and scattered everywhere. When my mother reconstructed my face from the bones, she lost her mind.

Jenny Rome's life has never been calm with the attitude of Alexander Rome - her Dad, which according to her has crossed the line of reasonableness. She didn't know what it all meant, even Alex often sneaked into Jenny's room and did things he shouldn't, forbade her to get close to any man, couldn't go alone, and always forced Jenny to follow him, all his words. Then, what will happen next? Will Jenny be able to escape all the treatment from Alexander Rome, who incidentally is her Dad?

19-year-old Dolores Kirby is the typical broke college student, although she never imagined having to struggle like this; working odd jobs, classes and noisy roommates that partied every night. She dreams of the day when she will be able to afford a better life. A new opportunity arrives, to babysit a rich man's house and do some errands for a lot of money, more than she ever made by covering turns or working all weekend. Just a few rules to follow, like; don't go into the second floor, don't enter the study and don't be around when the owner is home. The easiest one and her world flips upside down, Liam H. Westbrook, her boss, suddenly turns up at his home and one look at him and Dolores is hooked, shot by cupids an arrow. He is older and so out of her league. But what Dolores doesn't know is that the attraction is mutual.