Prologue

The tiny droplets fell on the ground and splattered all around. The rain poured down incessantly, without mercy like its punishing the habitants of the world. It's turning into a bully. The rain is a bully. Black sky sprawls across the sky like it's in bed and the stillness blankets over the mansion.

"Another one!" WHIP

That was the tenth one she got. 10 whipping. Instructed by her stepmother while her younger siblings had to watch from the inside. They all stand inside except for the head maid but she protects herself from the lashing rain with an umbrella. 

Claire kneels on the ground as the whip slashes across her back. Marking her. Telling her she did bad. Reminding her she is a disgrace. It cuts through her skin and the other unhealed once. The extra pain added from the water that is pouring down, the water on her back and the whip has her knees buckling and fall down to the ground. 

The darkness and quietness around the mansion increases as her stepmother instructed the head maid to whip Claire 15 more times and leave her under the cold water bucketing down onto earth. 

This is how it has always been since she was 7 years old and Claire's mother died and her father brought another women – Sylvie - into their life. Sylvie hated children her husband already had with another women and did her best to send them far away when they were old enough. 

Claire was different. Claire was an exact copy of her mother and every time Sylvie looked at her, her eyes were filled with fury and vengeance. So, Sylvie did everything she could to make Claire's life miserable and hateful. 

The torture began at the young and innocent age of 7 and 13 years later it still continued. The only positive being that her father – the one who brought this women into her life – was six feet underground, rotting in the depths of hell. Claire wished her mother would pay him a visit and make him pay for everything before and after she was here.

The news of the eldest daughter of the Stokenholme household being mistreated is known but ignored. After all these years, there was not a single person that lended her a hand to help her up, not even her siblings. She couldn't blame them, the consequences are not pretty. 

"Send her to the dungeon and do not give her any food or water for the next 2 days."

She knew what the dungeon is and it is not just any dungeon. It's a human cage. Men, women and children and captured every hour and sold. Before they are sold, they are "checked". 

When Claire was 10, she was forced to watch a 6-year-old get violated by one of the wrinkly men. She was pushed to the brink of death and left there to die.

It was a wonder how the culprit was not found yet. Sylvie is a social queen. Young women follow her or plead to follow her like she is the omniscient one. There is not much who dislike her, the ones who does are the social outcast. 

                                      ~~~