Page 1 of Savage Heart

CHAPTER ONE

Sienna

The last hours of my life in college are ticking away, and I feel like there’s not enough time to get everything done. In two years, I’ve succeeded in becoming the person I always knew I could be, but now school is coming to an end, and all I can think is I wanted to do so much more.

Here, I’m Sabrina Marshall, art history major with a minor in French and a position lined up as a translator for a Fortune 500 company after graduation. I’m successful, at the top of my class, and the girl who always has a smile for everyone.

Not Sienna Rossetti, daughter of a father who hated her so much he put a hit out on her. Sister of four stepbrothers who never cared for me either. Stepdaughter to a kept woman who never liked me because I’m the evidence of my father’s interest in a better woman.

I’ve thought a lot about my mother in the past two years here at Yale. Every so often, I search her name online to see how she’s doing. Being the wife of a president suits her, if the pictures I’ve seen are any indication. She’s as beautiful as ever with her long, dark hair without a hint of gray to be found and those stunning deep brown eyes made even more gorgeous by makeup. I wish I could tell her I’m alive and doing well here, but I can’t risk it.

For now, I have to remain what I hope is a loving memory that makes her smile when she thinks of me.

I searched for my father too. The one and only time I did, my stomach twisted into a tight knot that threatened to make me vomit as the thought of him wanting me dead filled me again. I pushed that terrible memory aside and scrolled through the news reports from home that detailed how he was killed only a week after he betrayed me. I know who did that.

Alaric.

Every night for the first few months here, I waited for him to appear at my door. He must know where I live. It’s his family who pays for this apartment and my school. Then for the next few months, I told myself it’s better that he doesn’t come here. He’s a part of my life I should forget.

But I’ve never been able to forget Alaric.

After a while, I convinced myself that Helix never told him where I live or who I am now. That would explain why in two years Alaric has never come to see me.

Sometimes I think I’ve sensed him nearby watching out for me to make sure I’m safe. That’s probably not true, though. Why would he? We only spent a couple days together. He’s likely forgotten them and me.

If only I could say the same.

His family checks on me from time to time, like some distant relation they aren’t sure how to approach but feel some responsibility toward even they don’t understand. His uncle Nick drops by to tell me if I need anything he’s the one to call, but I require nothing that money can buy. Helix took care of that. My school is paid for, along with this apartment, and that day he left me at the airport in Hartford, he handed me a wad of cash and a checkbook for an account that always has more than enough money in it.

What I need doesn’t seem to need or want me anymore.

I shake my head to dispel that thought from my mind or I’ll start crying, and that’s not what I want to do tonight. This night is for celebration with my friends I’ve made here at school.

I’ve had to lie to nearly every person I’ve met since coming here, not to hurt them but to keep me safe. With my father’s death right after I left Italy, my brother Matteo took charge of our family. Of the family business. He’s never tried to contact me, but I know deep in my bones that the day is coming when he’ll appear to take me back to the family.

Even though that’s the last thing I want.

“Hey, girl! Did you hear what I said?”

I turn to look at Natasha in my doorway and shake my head as she stares at me with beautiful blue eyes that never fail to look completely sincere. “I’m sorry. I got lost in my head there for a minute. What’s up?”

She smiles and rolls her eyes. “You’ve been doing that a lot lately. Feeling sentimental about leaving good old Yale? I don’t know why you would be. You’ve got a great job lined up, unlike me with my million and a half resumes out in the wilderness doing nothing but growing dust on people’s desks.”

I smile and can’t help but tease her. “Does anyone actually print resumes out anymore? I thought we’d left that behind in the last century.”

Natasha has always seemed like an old soul, and her choice of pursuing journalism as a major fits right in with her feeling like she’s from another time and place. Not that people don’t write pieces for newspapers and magazines, but I thought they had all gone online years ago. She loves to correct me with exactly what comes out of her mouth right now.

“Physical resumes, like print, are not dead, contrary to the reports of their demise.”

Only she could sound cute and say things our seventy-five-year-old American Literature professor might say.

“Well, I doubt they’re getting dusty anywhere. Before you know it, you’re going to be at the New York Times, and where will I be? Interpreter for a Fortune 500 company and wondering if I should have majored in something other than art history,” I say, not afraid to show her how utterly terrified I am that I wasted the past two years of my life at one of the best universities in the world pursuing a passion instead of a subject that leads to a nice paycheck.

She waves away my concerns. “You worry too much. You’re fluent in three languages, Sabrina. Three! I only know one, so where’s that leave me? And you already have a job waiting for you right after graduation. I wish I could say that.”

Sabrina. It’s been two years since Helix Rule handed me all the papers that say I’m Sabrina Marshall, and still to this day I have to remind myself not to look around when someone says that name. I swear if someone yelled Sienna right now, I’d spin my head like some kind of possessed doll.

It happened once in class last semester. Someone called out for some girl named Sienna at the back of the classroom, and I spun around like he was talking to me.

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