Penelope Black

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....

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....

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....

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....