Chapter 1: The Messenger of Deceit
“Three years. Three long years without sending a single cent in child support, and when he finally remembers he has a daughter, he sends her this piece of junk?” I shouted, my voice echoing off the sparse walls of my small apartment, my blood boiling with unfiltered rage.
After our messy divorce, Connor had simply vanished off the face of the earth, eventually resurfacing in high society magazines as the husband of Isabella, the heiress to one of the most powerful real estate dynasties in the upscale enclave of Oakhaven.
He had traded his family for unimaginable wealth, private jets, and endless vacations across the Swiss Alps, leaving me to scrape by while he lived in the lap of luxury.
Now, out of the blue, a courier had arrived at my modest front door to deliver a collect package, a final insult to add to the mountain of grievances he had already piled upon my life.
Inside the box lay an old, grimy, and tattered rag doll that looked like it had been salvaged from a dumpster, a blatant mockery of the father-daughter bond he had shattered years ago.
I reached out, grabbing the doll by one of its frayed legs, intending to toss the pathetic thing into the trash, but my five-year-old daughter, Cassidy, launched herself at me with the ferocity of a wild animal protecting its young.
