Anathema Reneau [1]

PROLOGUE

My birth name is Riley. Hate it - my parents named me after my abusive aunt. She would always bring me down because of who I was, of what I had in my blood.

Immortality supposedly runs in our family, but it isn't given to everyone. When my parents found out that I had survived falling from a ledge that should've killed me, they couldn't be happier. But my shapeshifting? That was a new one.

I was cast out, forced to live on my own since nineteen. My family couldn't take care of someone like me, so I became what I am today. Ruthless, destructive to the people who cross me.

By day, I'm a business woman, rich as Tony Stark. I made my fortune by rising to the top of a couple of law firms and them buying them out, forcefully if they didn't cooperate. I don't really care what happens to them now, as long as I'm rolling in money and no one questions my authority.

I thrive on pretending to be people, extorting money, weapons and other things necessary to run my side businesses: clean energy and sometimes moving things into the country that I shouldn't.

Shapeshifting is something I will never get tired of, but sometimes I wonder what it would be like if someone saw what I really looked like.

Not my brown hair that reaches my shoulders. Not my eyes that are the plainest blue.

The navy colour I dyed it long ago with a blunt fringe, my irises as golden as the sun with hints of green. It's been six years since anyone's seen the parts of me I've locked away, the parts that make you vulnerable.

I've been living in a lie for six years, waiting for someone to catch me.