Chapter 1

My curse has never once been wrong. When I speak misfortune into someone, not even God can stop it.

I was five years old when a trafficker grew tired of my crying and beat me half to death.

I stared up at him through the blood running into my eyes. "You'll be crushed flat by a truck."

The words had barely left my mouth when a runaway semi plowed through the yard and turned him into something that couldn't be pieced back together.

Later, at the group home, the director skimmed the food budget and locked me in a storage closet when I complained.

I told him he'd choke to death on his own greed.

That same afternoon, he died at the lunch table — a chunk of meat lodged in his throat while he was eating the good stuff he'd bought with our money.

After that, I became the monster everyone avoided. I learned to keep my mouth shut.

I kept it shut even after the Holts found me and brought me home.

Dad arranged for me to join the family company.

I'd only made it through one day when I pushed open the front door and found Nora Blake, the girl who'd been living my life for twenty years, sobbing in Nathan Cole's arms.

"Does Rhea hate me?" she whimpered.

"She's been telling people at the office that I slept with Mr. Stratton to land the Westside Project. That I came back with diseases. That I'm—"

Mom crossed the room and slapped me across the face.

"Nora is a decent girl. How dare you drag her name through the mud like this?"

Dad pointed at me, his voice shaking with rage.

"This is what happens when you raise a child in the gutter. Jealousy and filth. Get to your room. You don't come out until I say so."

I pressed my hand to my stinging cheek and looked at the satisfaction glinting in Nora's eyes.

I let out a slow, cold laugh.

Me — spread rumors?

Fine. If I'm carrying the blame either way, you'd better be ready for what happens when I actually open my mouth.

---

"Mom, Dad, Rhea's still smiling," Nora murmured, pressing herself deeper into Nathan's chest, her shoulders trembling. "Look at her."

Mom's face went red. She grabbed a glass of water off the table and threw it in my face.

"You blight on this family! I never should have brought you back!"

"We pulled you out of nothing, gave you everything — and you repay us by destroying your sister's reputation!"

"What kind of person are you?"

I locked my jaw so hard I tasted blood.

Nathan rubbed Nora's back with one hand and looked at me like I was something scraped off the bottom of his shoe.

"Rhea. I've said it before — a girl like you doesn't belong in the Holt family. You sure as hell don't belong on my arm."

"The only reason I ever agreed to this engagement was because Nora kept asking me to give you a chance."

"Get on your knees and apologize to her. Or I end this engagement right now."

I dropped my gaze to the puddle of water spreading across the floor and said nothing.

My curse has never been wrong. Not once.

In the six months since the Holts brought me home, they gave me something I'd never had — the feeling of being wanted.

Mom sat up through the night when I had a fever, pressing a cool cloth to my forehead.

Dad burned three batches of food trying to cook for me, then beamed when he finally managed a decent pork chop and set the first piece on my plate.

My brother Blake, who had sworn he'd never accept me, started quietly tucking snacks into my bag when he thought I wasn't looking.

Mom would cup my face in her hands, eyes wet, and say the last twenty years must have been so hard.

Dad would call for the car and ride with me to the office himself, telling me to build connections, learn the business — that someday all of it would be mine.

I kept my mouth sealed to hold onto even that small, fragile warmth.

I was terrified that if I spoke the wrong words, I'd take them from myself.

But Nora caught the look on my face and cried harder.

"She thinks if she stays quiet, she can just wait it out, doesn't she?"

"She destroyed my reputation. People at the office look at me differently now. How am I supposed to survive in this industry?"

Nathan grabbed the thin silver chain at my throat, the one with the christening charm I'd worn since birth, and ripped it free.

The skin burned. The clasp snapped.

That charm was the reason Mom recognized me.

She'd clasped it around my neck herself the day I was born.

Twenty-something years of hoping I'd come home safe.

"Give it back." I lunged for it.

Nathan shoved me to the ground.

Right there in front of me, he fastened the charm around Nora's neck.

"Something this precious deserves to be worn by someone pure," he said, his eyes sliding over me with contempt.

"A girl like Nora — kind, clean, worth something."

"You?" He let out a short, disgusted laugh. "You're a foul-mouthed nobody. You'd taint it just by touching it."

Blake came thundering down the stairs, his face dark, and grabbed me by the collar before I'd taken another breath.

"I said from day one we never should have brought you here!" he snarled, his grip twisting the fabric at my throat.

"You know who begged me to give you a chance?"

"Nora. She's the one who asked me to treat you like family. She gave up her own bedroom for you, do you understand that?"

"Every good thing in this house — she handed it to you first. Every single time."

His lip curled. "And this is what you are. A damn snake we pulled out of the dirt and warmed up, and you bit us the second you got the chance."

He wrenched his hand away and wheeled toward the door.

"Someone get the house manager up here right now!" he bellowed.

"Lock her up — I don't care how long it takes."

"Nobody brings her so much as a glass of water without mine or my parents' permission. Nobody."

Two guards were on me in seconds, wrenching my arms behind my back, and dragged me up the stairs.