Penelope Black

When I was little, I was obsessed with fairytales. My dad told me the stories of the stars and white knights who rescue princesses. I’d wear a silver plastic crown and stare at the sky, waiting for the day my knight in shining armor would come....

There comes a time in your life when you’re faced with a choice—one that has the potential to alter the course of your life. That day, I answered my mother’s call, and everything changed. The path I chose was a turnpike masquerading as a meadow, and the tolls I paid have been grave....

I wake with a gasp, surrounded by smoke and flames. Twelve hours earlier, my cousins cut their European vacation short and came home to spend my birthday with me. They promised me a day to remember. No one could have predicted how true that promise would turn out to be....

Fresh off graduation, I had my entire summer planned out: European vacation with my cousins, college courses, and picking up shifts at work. But then my mom calls and drops the bomb: she's getting married to the rumored head of the Irish mafia....

It was supposed to be my happily ever after. For the first time in a long time, there was a promise of peace. So my Italian heirs and I made plans—big, life-changing plans—and tried to move on with our lives. I was naive to think there weren’t snakes lying in the grass....

When I’m on the precipice of an inconceivable loss and a betrayal slices me wide open, I have a decision to make. I can stay the polite, subservient girl—or I can shed my societal restraints and become the person I was destined to be....

When I’m ripped from safety, catapulted into consciousness, and thrown into a nightmare, I come face-to-face with the cruel plot twist fate threw me. My fight-or-flight instinct kicks in, and when every road leads to chaos, there’s only one option....