Chapter 3

Her freshly done rhinestone nails raked across my face and opened a cut. Blood welled up.

The slap caught me completely off guard.

I turned my head back toward her, slowly, and regretted my own stupidity from all those years ago for the third time.

Seven years ago, Gwyneth wasn't a Cooley. Her name was different then.

Thrown out by her own father, drifting on the streets, until I found her and brought her home.

My mother had planned to hand them a little money and send the two of them on their way. But that woman knelt down and begged to be taken in, swearing she'd work like a servant, whatever it took.

I couldn't bear it. I asked my mother to keep them.

Later, that woman crawled into my father's bed, made sure my mother caught them in the act, and in the fight that followed my mother fell down the stairs and died.

Later, my father married Diane Abbott as his second wife. Once she was the second wife, her true nature came out.

"Belinda, remember this."

"Whatever else she is, my mother is your mother too. You don't have to acknowledge her, but you don't get to humiliate her."

I caught her wrist just as she raised her hand to hit me again.

"Mother? Is that a joke?"

"A woman who threw away every shred of decency to climb into her benefactor's husband's bed. She's not fit to be my mother."

"If you won't acknowledge her, then we're done. No more father and daughter."

My father came over with his arm around Diane, who was sobbing.

"Belinda, how could you call the police on your own mother?"

"You've gone too far."

Everyone else raised their hands and pointed at me too, looking me up and down, picking me apart.

The wound on my face and Albert's cold indifference made me look wretched beyond words.

I swallowed the ache down hard. I would not show them a single crack.

"Why shouldn't I call the police on them? My door was locked. They got someone to force it open. Taking what isn't yours without asking is stealing."

"I didn't. We really didn't take anything of yours."

"I only went in to be kind, to tidy your room. You'd said you didn't want those pieces, and it seemed such a waste to throw them out like junk, so I kept them to wear." When Diane finished, gasps ran through the crowd. "No way! She's the lady of the Cooley house!" "And she'd stoop to wearing the castoffs somebody else threw away."

Listening to it, the fury on my father's face only grew.

"Freeze this animal's card for me—"

"Dad, don't get worked up."

"I froze her card long ago."

"If she isn't taught a lesson, she'll never learn how to respect people."

Diane and Gwyneth traded a quick glance, the nasty little smiles hard to hide at the corners of their mouths.

But to protect the good-woman image she'd built, she turned to my father with a guilty tone and begged him to go easy on me.

"Honey, don't be like this, either of you."

"Can't we just go home and raise our child properly? Why criticize her in front of all these outsiders?"

"I may be the second wife, but I've thought of her as my own daughter for a long time."

Hearing that, my father tightened his grip on her hand, pleased and aching for her all at once.

Gwyneth shouted at me: "Sis, aren't you coming over to apologize to Mom?"

Albert pressed me the same way, as if I'd be shipped off to prison the moment I refused to apologize.

Thinking back, he hadn't seemed to like Diane and her daughter before.

Every time my father cursed me because of those two, Albert would win it back for me.

Because he treated me so well, I went to my grandpa and asked him to quietly throw his full weight behind the Farleys.

That was how the Farleys shot up to become the richest family in New York.

Because my grandpa believed only a strong Farley family could protect his granddaughter.

When Albert said my life, my death, whether I sank or survived, all rested on the Farleys, I truly felt nothing but contempt.

Facing the scorn coming at me from every side, I decided I was done with Albert.

"Belinda, are you deaf?"

"Get over here and apologize to your mother, now."