Chapter 2

Ten years ago, my mother disappeared.

She had gone to pick up the birthday gift she'd ordered for me — a gift I had begged and pleaded for — and she never came home.

Father searched for her like a man possessed. He turned the territory upside down. He found nothing.

I cried for her every day.

Mom had raised me like a little queen. All my life, one cry from me had been enough to make the world bend in my direction.

One afternoon, the nanny couldn't settle me down and brought me to Father as a last resort.

He stared at me for a long moment with something cold and dark in his eyes.

Then he kicked me away.

"Get out of my sight."

"How dare you cry. How dare you."

"If you hadn't thrown your tantrum about that birthday gift, your mother would never have gone out. This is your fault."

"Don't let me see your face again. Go."

From that day on, the little princess who had been cradled in her mother's arms became a burden no one wanted.

Whether I ate depended on the nanny's mood.

And then Father brought home a girl from the orphanage. A girl who looked like Mom.

He gave her my bedroom. He gave her my princess dresses. He gave her my birthday. He gave her my identity.

While he filmed a family reality show with her at age six, I was back at the manor being mistreated by the nanny, eating soured leftovers.

The day he publicly announced that Vivienne Hartwell was his only daughter, I understood: I had lost my father.

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