When Judge first told me I was to resume my piano practice, I was ready to hurl the music sheets right at his head. I hadn’t played since my father and brother died in the explosion that rocked our family to its core. That event was the result of the Moreno family’s scheming, an event Santiago swore we would avenge when he married Ivy Moreno. But instead of the revenge I was promised, I was given a front row seat to my brother’s infatuation with the woman he vowed he would destroy. He seems to have forgotten all about how our father and brother died, and the grief that stole our mother shortly after. Almost overnight, our lives changed drastically. For so long, I felt like I was drowning in that grief because it was the right thing to do. And for Leandro and my mother, that was true. But there was another part of me. The one that felt… slightly relieved when my father was gone.

It’s a messy type of love when you still care about the person who hurt you the most. Biologically, we’re programmed to love our parents. We depend on them to nurture us, but when that system fails, it doesn’t alter the needs you have as a child. You still crave their protection. Their love. Even when they are the ones to harm you.

My father was the one who insisted I play the piano every day. For hours upon hours, he was merciless in his directives that I perfect this skill. It was the one talent I seemed to possess naturally, and he homed in on it, deciding this would be the thing that made me stand out from all the other Society daughters. I was only a child when he treated it as if it were a full-time job. He would force me to play until my fingers blistered and bled. And if I ever dared to resist, I was whipped, paddled, or caned. Beatings weren’t uncommon in the De La Rosa manor, and sometimes, it felt as if there didn’t need to be a reason to justify them. It was simply that children needed to be put in their place.

Leandro and Santiago tried to protect me as often as they could. But, like me, their schedules were busy. Sometimes, they were away at school, and I was left alone to fend for myself. It was during one of these times that I worked up the courage to tell my father I no longer wished to play the piano at all. What a foolish notion that was. My ten-year-old brain was too immature to understand the consequences of such bravado. Yet I went to him, prepared to plead my case and stand my ground, the way I had seen my brothers often do.