Chapter One – Star

If I had simply walked away from that door, none of this is able to have occurred.

I had been making my method from my room right down to the kitchen of the large mansion that my household known as dwelling – planning to sneak a couple of extra chips earlier than mattress, despite the fact that I knew my mother would have warned me they’d make me fats. The digital camera added ten kilos, she all the time informed me, and, with my father’s new marketing campaign developing, I didn’t wish to look chubby within the footage, proper?

On the way in which right down to the kitchen, I’d heard my title from my father’s workplace. It wasn’t as if he may have been speaking about anybody else – who else was known as Star? I paused as quickly as I caught wind of the very fact he was speaking about me, shifting my weight so I didn’t creak the outdated floorboard beneath me, and pressed my ear to the door.

Too nosy for my very own good, that was my drawback. I may by no means simply let issues lie.

“You assume she’d conform to it?” My mom requested. My father set free a sigh.

“It doesn’t matter whether or not she’d conform to it or not,” he replied. “It’s not a matter of affection. It’s a matter of politics. After we clarify that to her, she’ll perceive how necessary that is for my profession.”

Love? I froze to the spot. What have been they speaking about love for? Not to mention my love life – or lack thereof. My complete life, I had been avoided getting concerned with something critical. There had been a couple of dalliances with boys in highschool, however that was years in the past now – and, ever since, my father had saved me locked up, hidden away from the remainder of the world, ensuring I wasn’t going to get caught up in something he didn’t utterly approve of.

I chewed my lip. I didn’t just like the sound of this. I shifted a little bit nearer and listened to what they have been saying about me.

“Sure, however a person of that age?” my mom shot again. “There’s no method she’ll go together with it. And no method she gained’t put up a combat. Getting her down the aisle for a person like Viktor Lombardi…”

My coronary heart all however stopped in my chest after I heard that title. Lombardi? It rang a bell without delay. How may it not? I had met the Lombardi household a couple of occasions on the fundraisers my father held for his metropolis councilor campaigns – they may have been on the darker facet of this metropolis, however they’d cash and affect, and my father was by no means one to show his again on the possibility to make a little bit extra. He’d been in politics his complete life, and he knew you couldn’t get choosy about who your mates have been. Just like the saying goes, “Hold your mates shut and your enemies nearer.” That’s what he all the time informed me, anyway, as a strategy to clarify why he saved a person like Lombardi round.

Lombardi was not only a felony, however one of many largest names on this metropolis. At practically fifty, he was greater than twice my age, however past that, he was a psycho. I had seen that look in his eyes when he glanced across the room on the folks supporting my father’s marketing campaign like he was silently determining precisely how he may take all of them out if he wanted to. My father might need trusted him, however I hated being round him.

And now…and now, I used to be discovering out that they have been going to…what, marry me off to him? There was no method I may have been listening to that proper, no method in hell. I should have been misreading the state of affairs indirectly. I refused to imagine that my dad would do one thing like that. He might need been power-hungry, however he would by no means use me, his solely daughter, to consolidate that…

Would he?

Chilly dread washed by way of my physique. I didn’t wish to imagine it, after all I didn’t, however I knew my father too effectively to rule it out of the equation. He would have completed something to ensure he obtained what he needed. Marrying me off to somebody like Lombardi, although…

“Why do you assume we’ve been protecting her right here all this time?” he continued, clearly impatient with how my mom was reacting to this. “We’ve been saving her. And now, Lombardi desires a spouse. And a mom for his kids.”

I sucked in a pointy breath. A mom to his kids? No, I couldn’t have heard that proper. I couldn’t. However, deep down, I knew there was no method out of it. Lombardi wasn’t going to accept some chaste little spouse he may showcase at public occasions. He needed…he would need extra. I’d heard his popularity with girls, whispers of it, how he handled them, and the considered being on the opposite finish of that was sufficient to make my abdomen curdle in a sickly mess.

“There should be another strategy to maintain his assist,” my mom advised. I heard my father rise from his seat and start to tempo.

“If there was, I might have completed it already,” he replied. “We want his cash to proceed the marketing campaign. It is a small value to pay to maintain him on our facet. The very last thing I need is for him to flip on us and throw his assist behind another person – somebody who’s in a position to get him what he desires.”

I pressed my hand in opposition to the wall subsequent to me, making an attempt to maintain my legs from giving out beneath me. I couldn’t imagine what I used to be listening to. I couldn’t take it in. It felt like a nightmare like I would blink, and snap awake in my mattress, in that princess cover that I’d had since I used to be six – the sunshine filtering by way of the window because it had each morning for the final twenty-two years.

However it didn’t. I stood there, exterior my father’s workplace, and listened to him discuss handing me off to this man, and I knew, deep down in my soul, that he wouldn’t again down.

“We at the very least want to speak to her about it,” my mom conceded. She knew in addition to I did that there can be no strategy to change my father’s thoughts as soon as it was made up. However did she assume there was a way she may spin this to me that I might conform to it? A way that I might simply…simply nod and go together with it? I’d completed rather a lot to assist my father’s marketing campaign, don’t get me fallacious – I used to be effectively conscious that the comfy life my brothers and I had lived was as a result of energy he had accrued over the course of his political profession, and it was my job to assist him preserve that – however this? This was too far.

However there was no method I may change his thoughts now. No method I might be capable to get out of this.

I turned on my heel and raced again to my room, pulling the door shut behind me as my thoughts reeled with the brand new info I used to be making an attempt to absorb. What did I do? What the hell did I do? And extra importantly, what within the hell am I going to do?

I paced forwards and backwards in my room, my head spinning. My mom would come discuss to me quickly, and I knew simply how she would attempt to spin this to me. She would inform me this was a good suggestion, that it was higher for me to only go together with it and settle for that this was the very best factor for me – that my father can be eternally grateful, and didn’t I wish to assist the household? That Lombardi wasn’t all that unhealthy, and after I obtained to know him, I might really feel in a different way about this…

And the worst half was, I knew I might begin to imagine her. I might begin to belief that she knew what she was speaking about. And I knew I couldn’t let that occur, I couldn’t threat that, not in one million years. I couldn’t let go of this sense, this certainty in my chest –the sureness that I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t marry that man. I couldn’t let my first time, the primary time I actually gave myself to somebody, be with somebody like Lombardi…

I sprang to my toes. I had a couple of minutes earlier than my mother got here to speak to me. I needed to be passed by then.

I needed to get out.

I moved on autopilot round my room, digging out my old fashioned backpack and cramming it with a handful of garments and toiletries – I didn’t have a lot in the way in which of cash, however possibly I may promote a few of my stuff to make ends’ meet. I didn’t know what I used to be going to do, I hadn’t provide you with a plan but, however I knew I wanted to get out. I wanted to place as a lot distance between myself and this place as potential, earlier than…

Earlier than my mother and father offered me off to some psycho simply so my father’s marketing campaign didn’t crumble.

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