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ChapterOne
GRACE
Ten years ago, I died, replaced by someone else. Katarina was a distant memory of the past. A girl who laughed and loved life. Someone who didn’t know the real monsters of the world were wealthy men in suits.
“These people know who Ireallyam,” I told my grandfather as the limousine journeyed up the steep hill. “Does that mean I can go back to being Katarina?”
The founders of Devil’s Creek and their children were aware of my situation. They understood why my grandfather changed my name to Grace and sent me to live with Colonel John Hale. I’d been using my new name for ten years. But sometimes, I wanted to return to the girl I was before my life went to shit.
“You’re never to use the name Katarina Adams Romanov,” my grandfather said in a firm tone as we headed down Founders Way. “She’s dead.”
“I don’t want to pretend anymore.”
I knew better than to speak out of turn with my grandfather. So when he slapped me across the face, I expected it.
“Don’t you dare talk back. If not for me, you would have been in the foster care system.”
If only I were that lucky…
I rubbed my sore cheek and sighed.
His jaw clenched as he studied my face. “I showed you mercy by sending you to live with the Colonel.”
My grandfather was the wealthiest man in the world. He owned banks, tech and oil companies, and a list of other businesses he probably strong-armed the owners into selling.
Despite growing up with so much wealth, I never had anything. For the three years that I lived with him, he imprisoned me in his mansion and home-schooled me. I never had friends or left the confines of his house. We lived on the beach, but he never let me go beyond the front gate.
After my mother’s murder, my grandfather sent my father to a prison on the sea. But when I was eleven, he escaped and had been looking for me since. If the rumors were true, my father was an evil man.
A terrorist.
So I became Grace Hale.
With each day I lived with my grandfather, my heart slowly blackened, the anger and rage bubbling inside me. I even wondered if I was like my biological father.
Then, a stranger saved me. The Colonel became my dad.
I had a family again.
So I soaked up my freedom with my adoptive father. He gave me everything I never had with my grandfather. We got to travel the world and live on military bases.
My dad was like a brother to a man named Mark Marshall. He lived in Devil’s Creek, a small town on the coast of Connecticut. The residents were my grandfather’s allies and loyal to him.
We could trust them.
The Colonel was away for the summer on a training mission for the Marine Corps. While he was gone, I would live with Mark Marshall and his family. Only five families lived on Founders Way. They were rich, powerful, and connected, and I feared they would be cruel and hateful like my grandfather.
My heart clambered in my chest as the limousine stopped at the guarded gate. I could see why they called this place Fort Marshall. The estate looked like an old fortress on the sea, with armed men dressed in black camouflage clutching machine guns.
You couldn’t see much beyond the high brick walls. The home was set so far back on the property I could only make out a pointed tower that reminded me of architecture from another century.
We parked in front of the three-story mansion with dozens of windows and painted shutters.
This wasn’t a home.
It was a compound.
Aside from the main house, there were five other buildings on the property that I could see. They had three garages with several exotic cars parked out front.
