Betrayal Read Online Free PDF

soldiers along the corridor, assuring that I did as I was told. They didn’t need rifles upon their shoulders. The glass doorknobs that glistened from the crystal lighting were their weapons, locked portals to destitute lands.
    Before the loss of innocence, I pretended that Montague Manor was truly a castle and I was the princess. It was the name my mother said my father called me, his princess. But the princess I imagined was more like the one from storybooks I was read as a child, trapped in a tower.
    A memory hit, stilling my steps. I hadn’t thought of it in years, but it was as vivid as if it were happening.
    I was ten years old, and I’d embarrassed my mother by refusing to let a stylist cut my hair. It was the princess thing. I believed that if it grew long enough I could escape my room high in the sky. The second floor wasn’t that high, but it was to a ten-year-old.
    Every time she’d talk about having my hair trimmed I’d cry and stomp. Thinking she could lull me into it, she made reservations for us at an upscale spa. We had pedicures and manicures. However, it was as they moved me to a stylist’s chair that I figured out their devious plan. I screamed at the stylist and my mother as I ran to the car.
    Even now I remembered her ashen expression of disappointment and embarrassment. Per her usual response, I was sent to my room. It was all right: my hair would eventually get me to freedom.
    That evening after Alton came home, I was summoned to the grand hall. When I arrived there was a chair. I didn’t understand at first and asked where my mother was. He said she was resting, too upset over my behavior to leave her room. Then he told me to sit in the chair. One by one the entire Montague Manor staff materialized around me until the hall was full of eyes.
    That was when I learned about the staff’s ability to see and yet not see. That was my first lesson. He told me matter-of-factly that neither a Montague nor a Fitzgerald behaved in the manner I had. I reminded him I wasn’t a Montague or a Fitzgerald. I was a Collins.
    He said that my behavior was unacceptable in public or in private, and if I wanted to behave like a common street urchin, then I could look the part. It wasn’t until he stood back and a man I recognized as one of the gardeners came forward with large shears that I understood what he was saying.
    Alton wasn’t the one who cut my hair, and the cut wasn’t a trim. He and the rest of the staff watched as two other members of the grounds crew held me down and the other man cut. By the time he was done, my tears and fright had faded to whimpers and the room of eyes had disappeared, evaporated away. I was left alone with my stepfather in the grand hall in a chair surrounded by chunks of red hair.
    “You will not tell your mother about this.” It was the first time he told me that, but not the last.
    I wondered how he thought she wouldn’t know. After all, the entire staff had witnessed what had happened and with one glance she’d see that my once-long hair had been butchered. But my lesson in Fitzgerald / Montague living wasn’t complete.
    After Alton made me sweep the lengths of hair from the floor, he handed me off to Jane, both my nanny and friend. She was the one who read me my bedtime stories when I was little and tucked me into bed. As I aged, her role in the household morphed. Her responsibilities grew, but always she was there for me.
    That evening, as she held me, she promised to make it better. She wouldn’t let me look in the mirror, but I could feel it. It was almost my bedtime when Jane brought a woman to my room and explained that the woman would do the best she could to make my hair pretty. I was only ten, but I was certain that pretty wasn’t possible.
    With delicate scissors, the woman snipped and clipped. When she was done, it was the smile on Jane’s face that gave me the courage to look at myself in the mirror. The cut was even and maybe even stylish, but it was