Page 1 of Colton
Chapter 1
Luella
The evening glow slips easily through the curtains, interrupting the quiet room. I sit in silence at my mother’s old dresser, gently running my thumb over the worn wood. This room had always been my happy place before it had framed the worst of all my memories—the nights where my sister, Sophia, would come to me, bruised and trembling, after another encounter withhim.
My skin crawls at the thought of him, of his cruel face and glare.
Sophia had been bright. She was the kind of person whose laughter could fill a room in seconds, but no amount of light was enough to save her when he came into our lives.
Xavier Blackwood.
The man who wrecked us.
I gently rearrange the few things still left here: an old perfume bottle, a cracked picture frame, and that familiar drawing of Sophia, her smile frozen in charcoal strokes. She might have healed on the outside, but the internal scars never did—and neither did mine.
It’s her smile that haunts me. It’s her smile I will never see again because of the one man who’d ruined everything. Xavier Blackwood had taken all that was good in our world and left behind only wreckage...broken souls and fragmented memories filled with nightmares.
And now, as I play with the locket that I wear around my neck—inside it, Sophia’s photograph—I can’t stop the image ofhimfrom crawling back into my thoughts.
The hatred I have for him fucks with me in ways I can never put into words. He took my sister’s life, and for that, I will takehisin the most horrific way possible. His blood will cleanse the dirt he’d rubbed into her skin; I’ll wear it as a cloak against the darkness that spills from his body.
Xavier Blackwood will pay for what he did.I repeat this mantra in my head as the sharp scissors slice through my thick chestnut hair. It falls to the floor in clumps, but somehow, it’s liberating. I’m shedding my hair, my identity. More importantly, I don’t want to hide all this hair beneath a wig. When my hair is short enough, I reach for the bleach. My eyes look wild in the reflection of the mirror, and I take a deep breath.
“For you, Sophia.”
Two hours later, I stand and check my reflection in the small mirror; the face that stares back seems foreign to me. My hair is ice white thanks to the toner, and even though I did it myself, it doesn’t look too bad in the bob I carved out. Carefully rehearsing a smile, I mutter, “Mary,” testing out the echo of my new name on my lips. It sounds hollow.
“Mary,” I say again softly, playing the part that will eventually lead me to my revenge.
The jobat the manor came up six weeks ago, and it felt like fate itself was calling me into battle. Xavier Blackwood needs a maid.
Of course, he does.
I don’t even want to think about what happened to his last maid. My gut twists.
The man doesn’t even sweep the dust from his soul, let alone his house. I know the estate is a giant, sprawling monstrosity—an old-world relic of his family’s wealth, kept secluded behind gates that reached towards the sky like iron guardians.
A perfect place to bury a secret. A perfect place to get away with murder.
I arriveat the gates with nothing more than a bag in hand and a false set of references crumpled in my pocket. The house looms in the distance, its dark, gothic towers standing in silhouette against the afternoon sky. I’ve imagined this moment a hundred times, but now that I’m standing here, about to embark on my journey of revenge, something gnaws at my insides. Something is telling me it’s dangerous here—fuck, as if I didn’t already know this. But I know what lies ahead, I know what that bastard is capable of.
My hands tremble with a rage I can’t disguise, but I force the smile back on my face, my cheeks aching.
Revenge isn’t something I can taste yet. It’s still a whisper, a dusty concept floating at the back of my mind. But I’ve gotpatience and determination. That’s what will get me through this. I have to play my partperfectly.
But I can’t shake it. The years of evolution are screaming at me to run and hide because here might just be where I meet my demise.
Something feels...wrong.
I adjust the strap of my simple cotton dress. My skin is cold under the glare of the towering estate as if it has eyes that see through me and straight into my soul.
But I won’t leave until he is dead. Buried or burned, I don’t care. I want to taste the air without his existence tainting it.
A chill crawls up my spine as I grip the iron gate and make my way up the long cobblestone path leading to the wretched house. The sound of my shoes echo in the air, each step reminding me that I am no longer who I was yesterday. Yesterday, I was angry and fueled with desire to seek my revenge.
Today’s girl will kill for the right reasons.
The mustard-coloreddoor creaks open as I approach, revealing a middle-aged woman with severe eyes and high cheekbones. She looks like someone who’s lived her life in the service of people who didn’t deserve it.
