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CHAPTER ONE
ATHENACOULDN’TREMEMBERlife before the compound.
On the Black Sea, in Russia, with high walls and heavy security, it was nearly a fortress. It dominated her memories.
She knew she must have had a life before the compound, she just didn’t remember. She had been eight years old and she had been brought there. That’s what she remembered. Being eight and standing before a sad, beautiful woman. She’d had tears on her cheeks and she had smiled when she had looked down at Athena. “My daughter,” she’d said.
And that was who she had become that day. Their daughter.
A doll for her mother to play with, and never let out. The outlet for so many of her fears...
Her disappointments.
Athena knew enough to know her life was not terribly normal. She was never allowed out of the compound for a start.
And her only friend was a girl named Rose, who served as a maid.
Athena often wondered why Rose was a maid, and Athena was treated as their daughter. She couldn’t fathom it.
She had far too much time to wonder about things. Especially after her friend Rose left. After that, she was alone. Lonely.
And then her father—the man who had always acted as her father. The man sherememberedas her father, had told her that she would be leaving too. That it was high time she got married.
Athena was twenty-eight, though in many ways, younger. She had no practical life experience, so she knew enough to know that she couldn’t compare herself to a twenty-eight-year-old woman who hadn’t just taken her first plane ride.
She had been surprised when her father had told her of the marriage bargain, because she hadn’t truly thought that her mother would ever let her go. For as long as she could remember, she’d known the name Naya. Naya had been her mother’s first daughter. Her perfect, treasured daughter. Athena had been adopted to replace her.
She could only assume that she had been an orphan. That her being taken in was an act of charity. She was grateful. She had never truly thought that she would have a life outside the compound. Marriage. She had wondered at first if that might be exciting. No, she did not know the man that her father was giving her to, but... She did not know anyone. So what did it matter. Perhaps it would be wonderful. Perhaps it would be exciting. A chance to live a different life.
To see something. To be someone new.
Romance had always been a distant fantasy for her. She had not ever truly thought that she could have it.
And so, she had decided to see what might happen. And then she had met him. An older man, with a deadly energy. Her mother had wept.“Don’t give her to him.”
But he was intent.
“You indulge her,” her father said, as though Athena wasn’t in the room. “You have indulged yourself most of all. She has been your doll to dress up and play pretend with, but now she will be of use to me. She will marry Mattias, there is no other option. We had debts and they must be paid.”
“Surely when Ares bought Rose, we were able to settle those debts.”
“I will not go to Ares again. And it was not enough.”
A doll.
The words had jarred her, and yet she’d known they were true. She had been a stand-in for her mother’s beautiful only child who had died as a young woman after she’d left the compound and gotten married. Athena had been her replacement and her mother had both depended on her, and resented her.
Athena understood. She’d always been aware of Naya’s place in her mother’s heart. And the ways in which she’d been different.
But she’d been loved, she’d thought, even if it wasn’t always easy, it was the only love she’d known. She’d been a daughter, or she’d thought she had been.
Rose had been the maid, Athena the daughter.
In the end, both would be sold to pay her father’s debts.
She must not have been a good enough daughter in the end. For what good daughter would be sent to such a fate?
Mattias scared her. He looked at her as though he had plans for her. She did not wish to know what those plans were. She could see it in his eyes. He was a man who enjoyed hurting others.
