Chapter 1 PROLOGUE
The car was upside down, or she was. Serena couldn’t tell anymore.
Rain came through the shattered windshield in needles, splattering on her wounded body, making her shiver uncontrollably with the cold.
She was crushed in the driver’s seat, and the airbag which had exploded only minutes earlier after the crash, was probably why she was still conscious.
Although, she wished she wasn’t.
Her entire body racked with serious pains, both from the previous beating and from the accident. Given everything that she’d went through in the past few days, it just seemed cruel that this would happen to her now.
Serena would have cursed and shaken her fists at the sky but she’d long given up on her fate changing for her good.
Her breathing was faint and laborious now.
This was due to the dashboard crushing against her chest, as well as the pungent fumes of gasoline filling the air.
Apart from the physical pain however, Serena wished she was unconscious to take her mind off the severe aching in her heart.
Tears rolled down her face as her thoughts went back to the words she’d heard eight days ago.
“I am already doing her a favor as my wife. What’s wrong with raising your son as hers?” Her husband had comforted his mistress before her, “She should be grateful that she can even help Theo with her lowly child. That’s why she’s here, and that’s the only thing she’s useful for.“
Tears pooled in Serena’s eyes, trickling down to mix with the blood and dirt on her cheeks. She was breathing harshly, the smell of gasoline polluting whatever clean oxygen was left in the wreck.
She tried to move her body again and something in her chest answered with a white, blinding refusal.
Nine years.
She had given them nine years of her life, her name, her career, her everything and she had thought…
God, she had actually thought that loyalty like that earned you something.
A place. A future. A son who was, at the very least, actually hers.
“Liars.”
Her fingers curled into tight trembling balls of fury
They were all liars.
For nine years, they had watched her and used her, dressing a stranger’s child in her love and calling it motherhood.
And all this while…
Serena whimpered, a helpless little sound wrenching itself from her lips.
She didn’t know his face.
That was the thought that came for her hardest, harder than the pain, harder than the rain, harder than the growing quiet where the sound of her own heartbeat should have been.
Seven years old, and she didn’t know if he had her hair, her mother’s stubborn chin, anyone’s laugh at all.
“I would have come for you,” she choked painfully, though she wasn’t certain anymore if her lips were moving. “I didn’t know, my child. I swear to whatever’s left of God, that I didn’t know.”
Suddenly, the interior of the wrecked car was filled with white blinding lights.
Headlights, probably.
Outside the car, a few feet away, Serena heard a small thud.
Like the sound of a door closing in the distance, and the sound of a car driving away.
Probably her pursuers. They were probably leaving to report to the Voss family about the success of their mission.
A numb feeling came over Serena as her eyes slowly drifted shut.
Finally, the dark void flooded her mind, and Serena’s last thoughts were,
“I don’t even know your name.”
And then, nothing at all.
Fifteen minutes later, the ground shook as the wreckage exploded, the spilled gasoline finally erupting in blazes.
The flames rose up into the sky, its orange light shimmering against the clear drops of the falling rain.
