"It was a mistake..." She told her mother, folding her hands into each other. "Marrying him..." Her mother said nothing, she simply sat there as her only daughter stood across from her, on the verge of collapsing from bruised ribs and cracked shins.
"Mom." She wanted to reach out, softly tap her aging mother. Though that was the restriction of her life. The binding stereotype that she was gentle and slow to anger. In reality, what wanted to explode from her ribs was a scream of an animal, and the tears of repressed rage and fear. She wanted to throw her body onto the floor, but the thought made her damaged body ache more. There was no response from her mother. The deafening silence reminded her of her own quietness as her husband shouted at her, his fists bloody. He told her that she was only a tool for his amusement and a money-whore for her indigent family.
She was nothing else but a tool for both parties.
And she was starting to believe him.
---------------------
Sarah Johnsen's life spirals from the normal gritty resilient fight to a serene wonderland. On the outside, she's married to a kind family with untold riches, but on the inside, her husband is the devil himself. Forcefully married at 18, Sarah was forced to kill her own dreams of becoming a doctor in order to bind her poor family to the rich bastards of Glendale by marrying their youngest; Oliver Grean.
Their arrangement had the ability to brew the largest timespan of misery any of them has ever known. From lost toddlers to paid staged kidnappings, the binding of the two families, the Johnsen's and the Grean's created a mixture of chaos, confusion, sorrow, fear, grief, and dangerous rage.
And there seems to be no haven to escape to.
Or is there?
(TW: Rape, molestation, abuse, kidnapping, abandonment, swearing, murder, drug use, suicide attempts/thoughts, necrophilia, fire; READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!)
!-A series of lore for the Stratford Series (first installment is "Casanova")-!
[Final Version]
Alexandra Queen, she has never had a normal childhood. Her and her mother were abused by her father and his friend, John. Day in and day out. Their joy was her pain and suffering.
No one knew of Alexandra's life at home. She was so good at hiding it, that even her own best friends didn't know what was going on. Alexandra eventually became a natural at hiding her pain from everyone.
But one day her father stopped coming home. The abuse towards her and her mother stopped. No more drunken father or John beating and yelling at them. They were left alone. Free from them.
They lived in peace for years. They were afraid of him coming back at first but when he didn't, they started their lives again. Willing themselves to push past their past. They began to rebuild themselves.
But all that changed senior year.
It seemed all fine at first. She made new friends and school was going great. She was ready to graduate. Then everything began to go downhill fast. Old friendships came back to haunt her. Secrets come to light and worst of all, they come back.
Alexandra didn't think it could get worst then how she lived her childhood. But how very wrong she was. She then learns what it really meant to get the raw end of life.
Follow as Alexandra deals with more then she thought she could handle. Alexandra might be strong willed but nothing could possibly prepare for what was to come.
[Please keep in mind that this story is a very fast paced story. It does have around 40 chapters so it might not seem like it. But trust me that it is.]
||Full Disclosure|| I started the book in the end of 8th grade so it needs MAJOR editing. It also does have Sexual Chapters, as well as people of the same sex being together, murder, brutally torture talk of rape and sexual harassment. So if you do not wish to read things like that then this unfortunately isn't the book for you. ||You Have Been Warned||
First book in the Heart series.
•Do Not Copy This Book In Anyway•