“Stop overreacting, you’re ruining her day!” my mother hissed, grabbing my hair and pushing me over the balcony railing at my sister’s party. I blacked out. When I woke up, the upscale venue was surrounded by federal agents, and my mother was sobbing on her knees while my sister held a document and begged me…

her surgically perfected nose and declared, loud enough for a table of socialites to hear, “Expensive presents simply do not suit a child with a mother bred in the slums.”

I had found Lucas crying silently in the coatroom. The memory of his small, quivering shoulders still made my blood run hot with a violent, protective rage.

“You don’t have to go,” continue reading …