Prologue
Five years after I cut ties with my family, hauling bodies for a living finally earned me enough for a down payment on a place of my own.
I was waiting to pick up my paycheck when I ran straight into my brother.
He was there to pick out a burial plot — for the fake heiress's dog.
Our eyes met. Without a word, we both looked away at the same time.
It stayed like that until my boss handed me my pay. Three thousand dollars in cash.
That's when Morgan let out a dry laugh.
"Didn't expect you'd be doing this well after five years on your own."
I glanced at the black card in his hand.
"I'm getting by. Still not as well as Fern Linden's dog, though."
A quarter-million-dollar burial plot, and he hadn't even blinked.
Meanwhile, the apartment I was buying? Eighty-five grand, total.
His voice went stiff, like the words cost him something to say.
"I know you were never cut out for a hard life."
"Just apologize. And I'll let you come home."
I shook my head and tucked the money carefully into my pocket.
I'd already called my real estate agent.
Soon, I'd have a home of my own.
Chapter 1
I left the funeral home.
On my way to meet Skye Delaney, my real estate agent, I stopped and picked up a little cake.
She was a good person. I'd dragged her through years of house-hunting by now.
Every time, something fell through for one reason or another. But I'd finally locked one down. The cake was my way of celebrating with her.
I'd barely made it a block from the bakery.
A hand clamped around my wrist from behind.
I flinched. The cake slipped out of my grip and shattered on the pavement.
I spun around, furious.
And slammed straight into my brother's dark eyes.
I froze. His voice was cold and hard.
"You don't think you owe me an explanation?"
Irritation surged through me instantly. I yanked my hand free. "An explanation for what?"
His lips pressed into a thin line as he looked me up and down. "You're a Sinclair. How could you work at a funeral home?"
"I don't care if it's bad luck — I care about you bringing that bad luck home to me and Mom."
I crouched down to pick up the ruined cake. "Then stay away from me if you're so worried."
"I earn an honest living. There's nothing shameful about it."
He grabbed my wrist again and hauled me to my feet.
"Selene, do you have to talk to me like this?"
"You're the one who chose to leave five years ago. It's been this long — are you really still not over it?"
My patience ran out. I shook him off. "The one who's not over it is *you*."
"Morgan, we cut ties. Can you stop bothering me?"
His face went completely dark. "Mom is sick. She misses you. She's always missed you."
"How can you be this heartless? How is that fair to her?"
So I was the heartless one. Again.
Five years ago, Fern Linden sicced her dog on my cat. Killed her.
All I did was hit the dog once.
And Morgan slapped me across the face.
Back then, he'd said the same kind of thing: "Lucky's just a dog. He doesn't know any better. How can you be so cruel?"
I sobbed until I couldn't breathe. Covered my face and went to my mother, begging her to take my side.
She threw ice water on me instead.
"That cat was just some stray you brought back from the countryside. It scratched up all the furniture."
"A cat like that — so it's dead. What's there to cry about?"
Those two sentences. That was all it took. I lost every last shred of hope in them and asked to cut ties with the family.
Morgan's face went black. "Over something this small? Seriously?"
Small?
My eyes burned red. Tears fell without a sound.
The cat was just the fuse.
She was the last straw.
From the moment I came back to that house, Fern Linden made my life hell. And my own mother. My own brother. Not once did they take my side.
Fern said I stole her money. So they searched me. Searched my room. Even when they found nothing — not a single thing — they still wouldn't make her apologize.
I'd spent twenty years in the countryside. My hands were covered in chilblains. My face flushed red in the cold. So she took photos of me and posted them in the class group chat, leading the charge to humiliate me.
I was twenty. I still had pride.
I hid my cracked, swollen hands behind my back.
And kicked her square in the chest.
That was the only time I ever laid a hand on Fern Linden.
That night, my mother made me kneel in the snow. I wrote "I'm sorry" a hundred times.
Whatever love I had for them — it started burning the day I walked back into that house. Three years, and it finally burned to ash.
Sweetpea's death made up my mind.
I dropped out of prep school without looking back and went out on my own.
When I left, Morgan's face was white with rage. "Think about what you're doing. You walk out that door, you're nothing."
"One word from me, and you won't find a job anywhere."
I didn't say a thing. I took the two sets of clothes I'd brought with me from the countryside. That was it.
After that, the long road of job-hunting began. With Morgan pulling strings behind the scenes, I hit a wall everywhere I went. No matter what the job was, I'd get fired within two months. Always a different reason.
But it only took me a year to figure a way out.
The funeral home. Carrying bodies. A hundred and forty dollars a body.
There were plenty of taboos and rules, but I was good at it.
Four years. After living expenses, I'd saved up over forty thousand dollars.
