MY HUSBAND BEAT ME SO VIOLENTLY THAT I WOKE UP IN INTENSIVE CARE STRUGGLING TO BREATHE—AND WHEN I BEGGED MY PARENTS TO GIVE ME A SAFE PLACE TO RECOVER, THEY TOLD ME I HAD MADE MY OWN CHOICE AND NOW HAD TO LIVE WITH IT. THEY HAD NO IDEA THAT, FROM MY HOSPITAL BED, I WAS ABOUT TO PULL THE ONE THREAD HOLDING TOGETHER THE LUXURIOUS LIFE THEY HAD BUILT WITH MY HELP.

PART 1 “Where’s Brynn?” The words escaped my lips before my sister had even finished shutting the front door of my mother’s house. Tabitha entered…

Adeline Cross tore the wedding invitation in half before she could stop herself. For one sharp second, the sound of the paper splitting felt like…

The first time someone tried to buy Abigail Mercer’s inheritance, she was sleeping beneath a highway overpass with seventeen dollars in her pocket. The second…

The blue frosting forming my name was still slipping down the edge of the cake when my mother began laughing. For one moment, I assumed…

The auctioneer laughed when Walter Bell raised his hand. Someone in the back of the courthouse shouted, “Does the mansion come with a broom, Walt?”…

The night Hannah Mercer’s stepfather threw her out, he did not let her pack a coat. He tossed her mother’s old canvas backpack onto the…