From Workhorse To Queen: My Reign

A BRU

calating fury. "Tyler? What in God's name are you talking about?" she spat, her voice no

ied, my voice steady, betraying none of the tremor in my hands. "A mistake, it seems. Perhaps if

thing? You're still just... her! The pathetic little shadow he kept hidden!" She turned to her bodyguards,

ace myself, but there were too many. A fist connected with my jaw, sending a shockwave of pain throug

er, stronger, and there was a primal fury in their eyes, fueled by Kassandra' s command. One of them twisted my arm,

dripping with contempt. "So much for your grand reveal, huh? Just a broken little girl, exactly where you belong." She raised her

' t just physical pain; it was the humiliation, the sheer brutality of her attack, that twisted something

defiant. My eyes, brimming with tears of pain and fury, locked onto he

wait. That's right. Mommy's not here, is she?" She raised her foot, her stiletto heel hovering menacin

my outstretched hand. A small, leather-bound journal. My mother' s journal. The one she had written in every day until

iary? Oh, how quaint. Still writing down your little fantasies about Josh, are we?" She flipped it open, her gaze scanning the elegant

bling now, not from pain, but from a despera

cling to, everything that makes you weak. Your past, your sentimentality." She held it up, then, with a contemptuous flick of her wrist, s

inst the bodyguards, a raw, anim

ecious words of my mother falling like confetti around me. "See, Aurora?" she said, her voice a cr

wn onto the remaining pages, grinding them into the marble floor. The sou

ars on my cheeks dried, leaving behind a cold, crusty trail of blood. The anger, the hum

about profound, unforgivable desecration. My mother's memory, her love, her v

smirk on her face, I looked at the scattered fragments of my mother's journal. And in

een with nothing left to lose, and

very air around us. "You just made the biggest mistake of your life, Kassandra Dixon. You didn't jus