Page 1 of Desperate Desires

Prologue 1-Shelly

Holidays with my adoptive family were always a blast.

I’d always wanted a big, robust, loving family of my own, and I was eternally grateful for the day when I first bumped into Michaela Volkov at the snotty little prep school my aunt sent me to after she became my guardian.

No, I didn’t like to think about the turbulent time after my parents’ deaths when I first learned that the world wasn’t all sunshine and roses.

I’d lived a pretty good life until that fateful day. Average, but good.

My parents, Grace and Marion Davis, were as loving and doting a couple as any parents could be.

But they were taken from me way too soon, and Aunt Agnes was a poor substitute. Thank fuck for her deep pockets, though.

My father’s older sister remained cold and distant with me, and that was fine. It hurt at first. But I learned to deal with it.

Besides, what Aunt Agnes lacked in warmth, she’d made up for in money. I know that sounded cold, but what I meant was she’d paid for my education whilst I was in high school and college.

She’d wanted to send me to a finishing school—yes, they still had those. It had been her plan to marry me off to some dignitary, her own husband had been a diplomat from some country I’d never heard of in the Middle East. He’d died before I came to live with her, but she still had connections there.

Aunt Agnes thought an American virgin would be worth her weight in gold to some of the people from her deceased husband’s part of the world.

Lucky for me, I popped that particular cherry in eleventh grade, to which my aunt had had an unholy fit.

Too bad, so sad.

It didn’t matter if she punished me or yelled. I told her I had no plan to attend a school where I was finished before I’d even started, and I would never let her sell me to some man I didn’t know for a marriage I didn’t want.

“What do you think you’re going to do instead?” she hissed.

“I’m going to help people. I’m going to be a doctor,” I told her.

“Fine. If you want to go to med school, do it on your dime, child. If you can even get accepted into a program that’s worth it,” she’d said, only proving how little she’d paid attention to my report cards.

I graduated prep school with a GPA of 4.7, got a scholarship and earned a bachelor’s degree with a premed concentration from NYU.

Of course, I got into med school. I paid for it with loans that yes, I’d still be paying off until I was forty, but it was worth it.

School was never a problem for me. Just another aspect of my life I was lucky in. Friends and academics.

Family and love? I was not so lucky with.

Even though I had hated it at the time, that snobby Manhattan school, Holston Prep, was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I will never forget the first day Michaela, whom I lovingly called Micky, bumped into me in the hall, scattering my books and dumping her iced mocha latte all over both of our plaid skirts, part of the hideous uniform we had to wear.

She’d apologized profusely and dragged me to the girls’ locker room where we waited until Clementine, her younger cousin, came with a fresh set of skirts for us.

Just like that, we became best friends. Micky was more than that, of course. She was the sister of my heart.

Afterwards, we were inseparable, and I got to know the whole family, her cousins and little sister, too.

Her parents, Adrik and Sofia Volkov, were incredible. So were her aunts and uncles.

Not all of whom were blood relatives, and that right there was what changed my life.

These people were movers and shakers with more money, power and influence than I had ever been privy to. It was likely the reason my aunt allowed the friendship.

Agnes Davis Randall was a social climber, and I was afraid of what she would do when she found out who my friends were.

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