Renna Rose Lancaster is the girl people stare at like she belongs in a glass case, a life airbrushed into unattainable perfection.
But Renna knows her life is nothing but a golden prison coated in pretty lies that keep her muted and small.
Her day...
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I leaned back against the grotesquely expensive marble slab that stood like some over-glorified art piece in the foyer. Some goddess statue, broken nose, broken dignity, tits hanging out like she was bored of eternity.
Athena? Aphrodite?
Could've been Shrek's cousin for all I cared.
What I did care about was the fact that the ice-cold bastard was stabbing straight into my shoulder blades. Another five minutes and I'd have given in, slid to the floor, spread-eagle like some casualty of too much wealth.
Renna stood a few feet away from me, facing the double doors, her back straight like she'd been carved by the same damn sculptor who made this overpriced rock I was resting against. Hands clasped in front of her like some royal statue, unmoving, stiff as glass.
Why is she still standing like that?The guy's basically gone. Almost. One foot out the door.
I followed her gaze and down the spiral cut of the staircase, I saw daddy dearest buttoning up the collar of his painfully tailored coat, ready to go wage financial warfare on some poor bastard across the world.
His security detail swarmed him—black suits, dead eyes, earpieces. Bentleys humming outside like panthers waiting to pounce.
God forbid this guy walks out without a full-on Avengers line-up.
Ava was kissing him goodbye now, with her arms wrapped around his neck, like she was trying to stitch some emotion into him with her eyes. His mind was already gone. Probably having dinner with oil tycoons in a Swiss bunker in his head.
I hated the man. Not the casual "you're a dick" kind of hate. The deep kind. The kind you feel in your teeth. The "you suck the soul out of your own daughter" kind of way.
I hated the way he looked at her. The expectation. The pressure. The authority. Like she was a doll in a box meant to smile and be still. Like he couldn't see how her eyes dimmed around him.
Rascal.
But then the last tail light blinked out through the gates. And she... breathed.
Her shoulders dropped, and the porcelain stiffness cracked just a little. Her entire body just came alive.
It was like watching a flower slowly uncurl after hours under a glass dome.
