A Hurt So Sweet - Isabella Starling Page 0,2

phone for a quick call.”

She pales. I can tell she’s trapped between my father’s strict rules and the fact that she’s a maid here. Whose orders will she follow?

“I just want to call home,” I say, putting on my most innocent face.

“Oh, but Miss Lily Anna…” She takes my hand in hers, her fingers hard and cold. “This is your home, always has been.”

I’ve lost. She smiles brightly, knowing it as well as I do.

“Now if that’s everything, I do need to get on,” Belle says.

“Fine,” I grit out. “See you.”

She curtsies. Actually fucking curtsies. And then she’s gone, closing the door firmly on her way out.

A moment later, I hear a key turning in the lock. Furrowing my brows, I head on over there and try the door handle.

It’s locked.

My mouth forms a thin line as I try the handle again and again, but it doesn’t budge. I’m locked in here with no way out. I want to scream.

When I turn around, I’m already seething, and half-expecting to find iron rods barring the windows. But there’s none of that here, though I can’t quite get out through the window, either. There’s nothing outside to help me climb out. So, unless I want to climb up to the roof, there’s no use thinking about escaping through the window.

I examine the room further. It’s stylish, expensively furnished, and doesn’t feel like me at all. I’m hoping my new family will allow me to add some personal touches to the space, because right now, it reminds me of a hotel bedroom.

A thick notebook lies on my bed. I’m assuming it’s the manual my father talked about. Who the hell needs a manual on a friggin’ town, anyway?

There’s only one thing that makes the bedroom more personal – a black and white photograph in a silver frame resting by the ornate bed.

I pick up the heavy object and examine the photo closely.

Shivers go down my spine as I realize who’s in the shot.

A beautiful, painfully thin girl has her arm around a brutally handsome boy. They’re both wearing navy school uniforms. The girl is staring into the camera stoically, her expression not giving away a thing. She’s so pretty it makes me feel wildly inadequate as I reach to my lanky hair. Hers falls down her shoulders in sun-kissed, glossy waves. Mine kind of just hangs there.

Her beauty isn’t what hurts the most.

It’s the fact that she looks just like Andromeda, my sister.

I focus on the boy next. He’s looking at her in the photo, eyes full of love for this girl I could never live up to. He has dark hair, stormy eyes, and a jaw that looks like it could cut glass. And he looks smitten for her.

The old Lily Anna.

The girl who jumped to her death from the cliffs of Oakes Estate after realizing she wasn’t Emilian Oakes’ real daughter. They kept me a secret from her for years. But she found out a year before my return. She knew she’d have to return to her real family – the people who raised me, and my little sister, Andromeda. But Lily Anna couldn’t handle the thought. She chose death over being separated from her fiancé, the handsome boy in the photo next to her.

My fiancé now.

The thought makes my breath catch in my throat and I wonder when I’ll get to meet him.

My father has already explained the hierarchy here in Eden Falls. The town was built from nothing by the six founding families, who are now middle-aged, but still running the place. The new generation will ascend the throne after them. Only the first children of the founding fathers will have a right to the most influential role in Eden Falls. Only they will become the leaders of this picturesque, filthy rich town that is home to the elite.

And I am one of them now.

Since I am Emilian Oakes’ Firstborn – my siblings are younger than me – I stand to inherit not only Oakes Estate, but also the position of power my father has in this town. My brother and sister will never want for anything in their life, but they are a league below me.

But he isn’t.

Dexter Booth, my handsome and mysterious fiancé. The boy who was set to marry Lily Anna but will have to make do with me now that she’s gone.

I press a fingertip to the glass covering the black and white photo, touching the face of the boy I’ll one day marry. My