𝐊𝐈𝐍𝐆: 𝐛𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐈

*Bonus Chapter-Aria's POV*

-"They are disgusted by my blood but they love to watch me bleed."-

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When she was fourteen...

Aria Haven King's POV

Their moms guided and cherished them. Their dads protected and treasured them. They Loved their children.

Their parents were parents.

Mine wasn't. Mine didn't come close to the title of parent.

Had I done something in my past life to deserve this? Earn their hatred? What did I do?

God, tell me. Tell me what I did. Tell me so I can make it better...like I always do. Just please tell me.

I can't live like this anymore.

"Aria, who do you want to go with?" the judge asked me.

"My grandmother," I responded, too fast. No hesitation, not even a blink.

But I was too fast.

"Kaia forced her to say that. She doesn't mean it. She wants to stay with us. Her parents," Vera, my mother, shot back. My mother never called her own mother "mom". Her eyes were glossed with unshed tears. Fake, big tears that she had gotten unbelievably good at fabricating.

No, no, no.

Don't believe her. Please don't believe her.

"Bullshit-" my grandmother stood up from the table, hands slamming down on the table. Her thick-framed glasses protected her violet eyes but I could tell she was glaring at my mother and the judge.

I always thought Grandma Kaia was the prettiest woman I've ever seen and I was glad her genes were strong and got passed down to me. Her white hair, pale skin, and purple eyes. She was truly one of a kind, someone so unique and unlike everyone else. People thought she was strange for being born with Albinism, but they couldn't deny that she was unbelievably beautiful.

My mother is beautiful too. I saw some of her old pictures and I knew she had to have been the talk of our small town back in the day. But the drugs had aged her. She was thirty but she looked almost fifty.

She still was pretty though. That's what my dad had said on one of his drunk confessions. He said that the only reason he was still with her was that she was more than easy on the eyes.

I hated him. If I ever make it out of this town alive and if I ever -ever- find love...I hope that man would be nothing like my father.

My grandfather stood up with my grandmother, equally -if not more so- angry as his wife. His marigold brown eyes burning, eyes almost identical to mine. The judge hit his gable on the wooden stump, the sound echoing in the room.

"Watch your tongue in my court," the judge seethed at my grandmother. All she did was glare back at him, jaw clenched tight as one of her hands wrapped around the handle of the gun that was placed under the table. The judge couldn't see, but I could.

I knew what my grandparents did for a living. Everyone did.

That's why the courts didn't give custody over to her. Kaia and Adrian King were labeled as "dangerous". Even though the mafia owned half of Europe, the courts still had control over my brothers and me because they thought they were keeping us safe from the mafia.

We were safer with the mafia than we were with our parents.

But the judge had a certain distaste toward my grandmother.