Free Sinclair (Acquisition Series) by Celia Aaron

 
     
    CHAPTER ONE
     
     
    Past
     
    B LOOD STREAKED MY MOTHER’S face and dripped down the front of her yellow sun dress. Screams ricocheted through the night, and flames leapt into the sky from the neighboring property.
    The house was eerily quiet. Mom and I were the only ones inside. I blinked hard, trying to erase the horrors I’d seen from my vision. But when I opened my eyes, Mom was still there, still staring down at me.
    “Why are you crying?” She grabbed my wrist and yanked me toward the wide front doors.
    I wiped my tears with my free hand as she lifted the bar from the doors and tossed it onto the floor, marring the wooden planks. She wrenched the door inward. The screams were no longer muffled. Agonized cries rose from the fields of sugar cane that stretched as far as I could see in the pale moonlight. The neighboring fields were on fire, the acrid smoke making my eyes water even more.
    She ripped me down the front steps. I yelled as my ankle turned on the last stair, but she only pulled me harder toward the fields.
    “Mom, please!” I tried to dig my heels into the hardened dirt.
    She whirled and stabbed her index finger into my chest. “Don’t you ever beg anyone ! You hear me? You’re a Vinemont. You don’t cry. You don’t beg. You do what you have to do to keep this family on top. Do you understand me?”
    My chest ached where she’d poked me, and her harsh words only made me cry harder. “I-I’m sorry, Mom. Let’s go back.”
    The blood around her mouth had crusted a deep brown, but the streaks along her cheeks glimmered like fresh paint. She bent down and wiped a tear from my face with her thumb.
    “There is no going back.” She stared into my eyes, a cruel smirk on her face. My mother, but I didn’t recognize her. Something had happened to her during the last year. Something bad. “No going back. Never. Never again.”
    “Mom.” I took her hand. “Let’s just go. Let’s go. Please!”
    Her stinging slap rocked me back on my heels. “Not yet.”
    I clutched my cheek. She’d never hit me before. I couldn’t hold back the sob that shot from my lungs. I wanted to wake up. It had to be a nightmare.
    She dashed to the edge of the sugar cane field and yanked down a stalk. She pulled off a set of green leaves and turned back to me as her foreman sauntered around the side of the house. Two men behind him dragged a third.
    “Señora Vinemont!”
    She grinned and took my hand, pulling me back toward the house. The man lifted his head, a bloody gash running along his bald pate.
    “Rebecca?” He blinked, his eyes teary from the heavy smoke, or perhaps from something else.
    “That’s Sovereign, to you.” Her voice was hard, like stone grinding against stone, but she curtsied like a little girl. “Edward Rose. So nice to see you again.” To the foreman, she said, “Take him inside.”
    The men dragged Mr. Rose up the front steps as we followed behind, my hand clamped firmly in my mother’s strong grip. A cold tingle ran down my spine. Instead of going inside, I wanted to escape. But the screams in the fields at my back kept me hemmed in. There was nowhere to run. And my mother was gone, though she looked the same, had the same voice.
    Once we were all inside, the foreman barred the heavy front doors again. The men set Mr. Rose on his feet. Mother circled around him, her skirt swaying as she perused him with eyes that were foreign to me. Gone was the mother who used to read to me, hold me in her lap, and chase me around the house when I rode my bike indoors. This woman—the one with the cold blue eyes and the blood-streaked face—was a stranger.
    She circled Mr. Rose one more time as he finally stood on his own. His eyes remained downcast.
    “Sovereign, I-I—”
    “Shh.” She stood in front of him as the other men smirked and backed away. Mr. Rose swayed, but stayed on his feet. Then she held out her right hand, her fair skin still delicate even though it was tinged with