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Prologue. Her Poisoned Heart.
Moving states. Moving to the other side of the globe. Starting fresh and hitting the reset button on life wasn't a job for the weak. Amelia Bloom wiped the sweat trickling from her forehead to her neck, hair sticking to her flushed skin as she hauled the last of the boxes up the staircase to her new bedroom.
She moved those boxes like a madman from the first floor to her new bedroom on the second floor. She couldn't bear to see the room so empty and lifeless. White walls with no color to bring joy to the space.
She had woken up that morning on a deflated air mattress shoved into the corner, back sore and a pain stabbing her neck, her mother clanking pots and pans in the kitchen. She couldn't sleep for one more second.
Her bedroom window had the perfect view of Hawkins, an ideal peek into her new life. Her third new life, after fleeing Russia to California, and now, this godforsaken town in the middle of nowhere.
She felt like a ghost haunting a new house—every creek of the floorboards, every flicker of sunlight through the thin curtains, a reminder of the places she'd left behind.
The room was a blank canvas. Dusty floors, the single window. She needed to fill the space, to drown the echo of her father's presence; he held a controlling grip on her even with an ocean of distance between them while he was at work.
But at least she had places to explore—the hidden corners this town had to have. But it wasn't as fun when an overpowered, self-centered, idiotic monstercontrolled her like a puppeteer as if she were just another puppet on his shelf. Now it just felt like a smaller prison in Indiana.
He and his secret job were to blame for everything that went wrong for Amelia. He knowingly sentenced his daughter to a life of an old junkie living in a dead town with no socialites.
But it had always been like that. Amelia could perfectly picture herself as a drunkard locked up inside his home, unemployed, with eyes glued to a TV screen... except she wasn't familiar with alcohol. Or a drunk man. Being locked up inside, that she knew about.
