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Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Glory

NO MORE. NO more. No more.

The two words are a silent plea repeating in my mind. My consciousness is splintered, and each touch of his rough hands over my skin wedges it deeper.

No more.

His fingers lift the button of my jeans.

No more.

His hands push them down to expose me.

No more.

He reaches between my legs and caresses my dry flesh with calloused fingers. He groans against my ear and tells me he loves me.

No more!

I scream the words inside my mind, but out loud, my voice falters, whispered and cracking. “Stop…”

He ignores me like he always does.

“I don’t want to.”

“Shh, princess. You know you don’t mean that.”

His fingers stroke and I cringe, fighting to stay present. If I let myself float away from the moment, drift on a black sea inside my mind, he’ll do it as he always does. He’ll fuck me, and I’ll come back into awareness with pain between my legs and a new hole in my heart.

How many holes can he make before my heart disappears altogether, leaving a hollow void inside my ribcage?

The bliss of slipping away calls to me as he strokes, manipulating my body. I close my eyes and see an image of my gray, dying heart full of holes, dry and flaky, floating inside an empty cage of bones. It pumps once, twice, then disintegrates, the ashes drifting away, particles escaping between the bars of bone.

I want to drift away with them.

I want to be free from this.

I thought I’d escaped it when I left for college—coming home for winter break was a mistake, though I didn’t really have a choice. I only have access to my father’s money if I return to him, if I let him hurt me. It took me a year after graduating high school to convince him to let me leave for college, but I’d promised him I’d come home on breaks…not because he’s a loving father who wants to keep up with his daughter.

He wants me home for this.

I’ve been free of him for three and a half months, and naively, I thought it would be different now. I’m nineteen; I’m an adult, a college student. I’d left home, though I could never really leave him.

Our name followed me like a curse—Glory Tolliver, the spoiled heiress of the Tolliver’s Treats empire. My father’s maple confections were loved around the world. He’d built his factory in our small town in Vermont and had made a fortune.

Once upon a time, I was set to inherit it all…that was, until he married my stepmother, Maura, when I was twelve. That was only one year after my mother died. That was the year this started, and no one knows.

No one knows, except for me.

Not even my stepbrother, Huxley, knows, though he knows everything else about me. I refuse to tell him for fear he’ll see the truth about me. The truth is that I’m worthless, nothing more than a spoiled brat with a pretty face and a tight cunt for my father to abuse.

His heavy hands on my hips jerk me back to awareness, away from the image of the pieces of my ashen heart floating away like dust in a window’s sliver of sunlight.

“No,” I try to use my voice but it’s meek, like it always is, “I don’t want this.”

He shushes me, bending me over the island counter, and my palms land on the cold, dark granite. Sickness rolls through my stomach and my non-existent heart tries to pump adrenaline through my veins, but it’s only pulsing weakness.

I’m weak.

I’m weak?

I jolt as he moves against me, preparing to take what he wants from me, and it terrifies me more now than it ever did before. When I was a child, it was simpler somehow. I had no choice then. He was my father, and he was God in this house. But now I have a choice…I have a voice.

But how do I speak when I’ve been silent for so long?

My eyes fall upon the black wooden knife block holding various blades on the island in front of me, and I scan the row of steak knives. I could grab one and threaten him with it, though I know that wouldn’t stop this. He’d laugh at me. Worse, he might take it from me and turn it against me. I swallow hard as a lump of fear rises in my throat.

“I’ve missed you,” he says with such care that it makes me sick.

He doesn’t care.

Nobody cares.

My cell phone rings and my head snaps toward it as he abruptly stills behind me. I left it on the island counter, and I could reach it if I stretch. It buzzes against the granite as the cheerful ringtone plays. I rise onto my tiptoes and reach for it, stretching my arm as far as I can, my fingers splayed and grappling over the speckled countertop. My ass brushes against him as I reach, bending deeper over the counter, and he lets out a disgusting groan as he prepares to enter me.

My fingertips sweep the edge of my cell phone and I strain to grip it. My knuckles bend as I dig my nails into the edge of my floral phone case, and I let out a breath of relief when it slides toward me. I quickly flip it over and see Huxley’s name on the screen—my stepbrother, my constant savior.

“What are you doing?” my father asks me.

I slide my thumb across the green button to answer the call, but as soon as I say, “Hux?” it’s torn from my grip.

My father rises and backs away from me, and I spin to see him holding my phone to his ear. “Hux, good to hear from you!”

I can hear Huxley’s voice travel through the line, but I can’t make out what he’s saying.

“She’s here, she’s fine,” my father tells him. “We’re just having a little father-daughter bonding time.”

If I still had a gag reflex, I would vomit.

He reaches out, trying to run his finger through a strand of my bleached blonde hair, but I smack his hand away. His response is a simple tilt of his head. I quickly pull up my underwear and jeans and button them, hoping this is the end of it for tonight.

But I know it won’t be.

He makes small talk with Huxley as he steps forward, plants his palm on the top of my head, and shoves me down until my knees buckle and I drop to the floor in front of him.

No more.

No more!

I put my hands on his thighs and dip my head lower than his hand can reach, pushing away from him with force. I spin away and rush around the massive island, fear gripping me as I see the frustration harden my father’s eyes.

He’s more terrifying now than he ever has been before. Perhaps it’s the time away where I’ve been free of him that makes his presence so frightening now. Regardless of the reason, I’m scared, and for the first time, I feel an urgent pull within me to seek help…to get out of this, to get away from him.

I can’t do this anymore!

I steel myself, take a deep breath, and call out for the only person who’s ever really been there for me. “Hux!”

I don’t say another word beyond the single syllable cry for help—it’s enough to get my stepbrother’s attention, assuming he can hear me through the phone. I stare into Beau Tolliver’s nasty green eyes and breathe deeply as I stand my ground and wait. Hopefully, I’m waiting for help to come and not more violence at my father’s hands.

“She’s fine,” he says into my phone, a look of malice spreading across his salt-and-pepper-bearded cheeks. “You know how she gets…I think being away has been rough on her mental health.” A pause. “Sure. You can come on over, son. How far away are you?” He pauses and listens, then cocks a thick eyebrow at me. “Ten minutes. Sure. We’ll see you then.”

He ends the call and slowly lowers my phone to the counter, setting it facedown on the black, speckled granite, though he doesn’t release me from his gaze.

“Why did you do that?” He speaks to me slowly, as if I’m stupid. “He’s worried about you now. And you’ve left us with only ten minutes because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut. That’s hardly any time for us at all. Come back over here so we can finish what we started before he gets here.”

I straighten my spine, swallowing a painful lump in my throat. “No.” The word feels foreign slipping from between my perfectly painted pink lips…but it also feels powerful.

“Glory, I won’t ask you again.”

My voice is quiet, as it has always been. “And I won’t tell you no again.”

“Good,” he says, bending to pull up his pants, though he doesn’t buckle them. He moves along the edge of the island, and it startles me.

He didn’t understand my words.

“I won’t tell you no because I’m not doing that with you. Never. Not ever again.” I swallow in an attempt to steady my wavering voice.

“If you want that check for next semester, you’ll be my sweet little princess like you’ve always been.”

I shake my head as he rounds the counter, coming closer, and as I move around the short side, I come face to face with the block of knives. There’s an impulse, an instinct, an urgent need that shoots through my arm, making my palm twitch to wrap around the smooth handle of a protective blade.

I blink and when I look down at my hand, I’m holding one—a knife—but not one of the small steak knives. My palm is wrapped around the handle of a massive butcher’s knife, and my hand aches from my tight, twitching grip.

My father raises his palms in surrender, though we both know he’d never do that. “Glory,” he chuckles, “let’s not waste our time playing games. Huxley will be here any minute now.”

“Get back.”

He creeps toward me, and I take a step backward—a mistake. He could see my weakness in that movement. I always show my weakness.

I want to be strong.

I need to be strong.

I move toward him, my pristine, white sneakers creeping forward over the tiled floor.

His eyes widen as he takes a step back, and that single step shifts something. The demon energy that was flowing from him seeps through my pores, wrapping around the ashes of my heart and setting them on fire.

I take another step toward him, and he backs away.

I inhale with the burning rush of power that explodes through every ashen particle, setting off tiny explosions of rage as each speck bursts with its own memory of one of the hundreds of times he’s abused me.

Words whisper from my lips as I move forward without conscious thought. “You’re sick.”

“Glory Ann Tolliver, you put that knife down. Right now!”

I flinch, a natural response to him yelling and the use of my full name. I shake my head as the instinct to obey my father tries to take hold, but then something strange happens. Anger drives down on the part of my mind that splinters, hammering a wedge deeper and deeper into the crevice, until suddenly, it breaks and a filter of crimson slips in front of my eyes.

The filter clouds my mind and silences the world around me. It moves my feet beneath me; it grips the handle of the blade tighter…It thrusts my arm forward.

My arm twists.

My father falls.

The blade slices and slips and stabs.

I feel trapped inside myself, lost to some strange possession that controls my actions. It’s calming, in an odd sort of way. My mind feels free of the shame that comes with allowing my father to abuse me when I’m old enough to stay away.

I let out a heavy sigh and let the filter shield me from what I’m really doing, from the screaming and bleeding and sounds of slicing flesh as my body takes control, finally allowing me to protect myself.

The filter frees me, and the only color I see is red.

THREE WORDS ECHOinside my mind, bouncing past misfiring synapses and failing to make understanding as my body moves without conscious thought.

No more. Run.

No more. Run!

My lungs ache, my cheeks burn from the cold, and my feet are snow-soaked. The red-hued filter is lifting, and I’m coming back into awareness. The sensations of the world around me are painful and warning as they creep into being.

“Glory!” I hear Huxley call my name and I slam to a stop.

I blink once, then again, gradually bringing myself back to reality. I’m no longer in the mansion, no longer in the kitchen, no longer with my disgusting father. Somehow, I’m outside, surrounded by trees and darkness.

Sugar Wood Forest.

I’ve awakened from a violent daze to find my physical being clustered among the tree trunks from which our family business taps its maple. I whirl around, guessing at the direction from which I came, thankful to see that I haven’t gotten far. I can still see the floodlights shining down on our back patio and Huxley’s shadow as he runs past them.

I look down and red flashes across my vision once again, though this time, it isn’t the filter.

It’s blood…the blood of my father.

There’s a trail of red sneaker prints stamped in the snow, revealing my path from the mansion.

“Glory!” I hear Huxley yell again.

I watch his shadowed form and see him running toward me, following the trail of bloody footprints across the snow.

What do I do?

I lift my palms to see that they’re coated in thick crimson and it feels like fire on my skin. Everything within me burns, but I’m fixed on the spot, wondering if I’m hidden among the trees and as still as their trunks that rise high and dark around me.

My voice is a whisper again, barely audible. “Hux…”

I’ve slipped so easily back into the weak shell of the girl I was before. But for a moment, I was strong…a moment that I had no control over made me strong. Though now the drop-off from the adrenaline rush washes my strength away, wiping me clean of the demonic energy that had set off explosions of violent power inside me.

I fall to my knees, sinking into inches of snow, and I start to cry. My pathetic sobs echo through the trees, speaking louder than I ever could with my own words.

“Glory.” His voice is so close now.

I lift my head slowly and see him approach. My bloody palms are turned up as if I’m holding something.

He stops just in front of me, his eyes scanning me and registering the reality of my appearance. “Glory? Shit, what happened?” He lowers to his knees in front of me and I feel softer in his presence.

“Is he dead?”

“I don’t know…” His tone wavers with worry, or maybe it’s just from the cold, winter air. “I think he must be. I saw him and went frantic looking for you, so I didn’t check. Who did this? Was someone in the house?” His head whips from side to side, scanning the woods beyond us for a potential threat. “Shit, Glory.” He grabs my arm and tugs it toward him, twisting it and inspecting it for injuries before doing the same with the other. “You’re hurt?”

I shake my head slowly. “No…no one was here. Hux, I…” I can’t say it.

“Who did this?” he demands an answer.

It’s because of his insistence that my troubled mind compels me to respond immediately—I’m groomed to respond to men and their orders. “I killed him. I did it.”

“No, you didn’t. You wouldn’t do that. Someone must have been here.”

“My father tried to—” I swallow hard. “He tried to hurt me and I snapped. I stabbed him. I killed him. He’s dead.”

There’s such relief in those words.

I killed him.

He’s dead.

How can there be such relief in murder?

“What do you mean, he tried to hurt you? What did he do?”

I meet Huxley’s deep brown eyes, always so kind and caring toward me. “He did what he’s always done to me.”

The silence around us is deafening. I feel like it should be louder, as though there should be sirens and shouting, gunfire and the whipping blades of a helicopter searching for me above the trees.

I killed my father…I murdered Beau Tolliver.

But there is no sound other than the echo of the snowflakes landing on the ground. Somehow, I can hear every single one of them crashing to the earth.

“What did he do?”

I can’t say the words. I won’t say the words. I can’t tell Huxley what’s been happening to me for years—the things I’ve let my father do because I was too afraid to speak, too scared I’d lose my inheritance.

I don’t even care about the inheritance anymore, not since I moved out and found out what it felt like to be free. I only needed enough money to pay for my classes so I could finish my degree, then I could become self-sufficient and leave him forever.

That’s what I told myself anyway, when the nagging feeling to take next semester’s tuition and room and board checks and run overcame me. Maybe that’s what should have happened. I should have let him have his way with me tonight, write me the check, and run away to find somewhere to hide away in the world where he could never find me.

But I killed him instead.

“Glory, tell me…what did he do to you?”

My voice is soft. “I can’t tell you. I can never tell you. No one can know.” My hands are shaking, though I don’t know whether it’s from the cold or my nerves. I drop my head, unable to look into his eyes.

Arms close around me and he draws me into his embrace, wrapping me in warmth and protective calm. “It’s okay.” His palm cradles the back of my head, a shielding hold that encourages me to lay my head on his shoulder and bury my face in his neck.

I breathe in and his familiar scent calms me. He always smells like vanilla-flavored coffee, sweet and bitter all at once—just like him. I let myself sink into his hold. I let him hug me, caress my hair, whisper that everything’s going to be okay.

“Are they going to arrest me? Am I going to jail?” Tears tumble from my eyes, and I cry into his bomber jacket.

He grabs my shoulders and pushes me back, his hands slipping up to hold my cheeks. “No, Glory. No one’s going to arrest you. I won’t let that happen.”

“I killed him!” I scream, my voice echoing loudly through the silent forest.

The powerful sound of my typically meager voice blends with the night, fading gradually before disappearing among the trees, as if the branches themselves could carry it deeper into the woods, so deep that no one could ever find it.

“You said he tried to hurt you,” Huxley reasons. “Self-defense, right?”

I swallow as flashes of red come to mind, showing me faded and blurred images of the knife slicing into my father’s flesh repeatedly. I cut him, stabbed him, too many times to argue anything but overkill, and that alone makes me guilty.

I shake my head. “I don’t know how many times I stabbed him…more than I had to. They’ll think I did it for the money. They’ll think I killed him for the inheritance.”

I watch his expression, my gaze skimming up along the line of his cheekbones, pronounced in the way his jaw is set with tension. I glance across his furrowed brow where a stray strand of his natural, golden blond hair has fallen despite his careful styling. My eyes draw a line down his symmetrical nose to his soft lips, noting the day-old scruff that’s peeking in around them.

Slowly, his appearance shifts from gentle savior to plotting determination. I watch as his brown eyes flicker; the wheels turning in his mind, working through the reality of this situation.

He was always so thoughtful. He never made a decision without completely thinking it through. He’s helped me out of trouble more times than I can count. I know I haven’t been the easiest stepsister to have. I know I’ve never been worthy of the care he shows me, but he’s always come to my rescue.

He’s in his last year at Princeton, and I couldn’t be prouder of him—but he almost didn’t go because of me. The six-hour drive between us almost kept him from following his dreams—graduating from an Ivy League college before going on to law school.

I’m so damn lucky he’s here right now. I didn’t know he was coming home for winter break, and neither did my father. Sometimes I wonder if Huxley can feel my pain from afar, as if he somehow knows when I’m about to be hurt and comes to save me before I can even call for him.

He’s saved me so many times before, and he doesn’t even know how much it means to me…how much he means to me.

When his head begins to bob slowly in a nod, I know he’s got a plan. He’s figured something out, some way to help me out of this nightmare.

“Okay,” he says. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna clean up, wash away all the blood, and get rid of the evidence. We’re gonna bury him here in the forest, and then we’re leaving. We’re driving back to Princeton tonight, and as far as anyone knows, you’ve been visiting me all break, staying at my apartment. Okay? If we go deep enough into the forest, we can bury him and no one will ever find him.”

I don’t argue with him, I don’t question him, I don’t ask for clarification. I nod and agree to do what he says because I trust him. I trust Huxley with my life because he’s never let me down before.

He’s the only person I can count on, so I give him my faith, relieved that even in this living nightmare, I’m not alone.

I have Huxley.

He’s going to fix this.

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