The Sweetest Rose Has The Sharpest Thorns (sample prologue)

Prologue

Adryan never understood the finer things in life. His father had killed his mother right before his eyes when he was only eleven. He was put into the foster care system and had never lived anywhere longer than a few months. He stopped caring about the names of faces he passed in the halls of school or the many teachers that taught him the same subjects. Adryan never unpacked all of his suitcases after entering a new house; he knew they would get tired of him soon enough.

    His first foster family hit him for every little thing he did wrong and he soon learned to blame himself for everything that went wrong in his life. After every family, he began to wonder what he did wrong and started to take it out on himself. Every family had abused him in some way.  Some would burn him with cigarettes, some would cut him with a knife if he did something wrong, some would hit him so hard that he would get concussions, and some would break his bones.

After being forced into therapy at fifteen, he was admitted to a mental hospital that was not qualified to deal with his mental health issues. On his first night, he had wondered how long he would stay; on his last, he was grateful for staying in one place for over a year. Staying in the same place for a long time was a blessing to him, no matter the place.
"If one more father tries to fight me, I'm going to kill him," he had said over and over again to whoever his roommate was at the time. He had been working out every day since he was fifteen. He wanted to prepare for what he thought was the inevitable.

Adryan had watched so many horrific things throughout his life and was ready for it all to end. He had tried to end his life countless times, but every attempt had failed. When he was younger, he wanted to be adopted by a nice, rich family that would care for him like their own.

When he was seventeen, he finally got his wish. A family with money and a reputation had accepted to foster him and he showed up on their doorstep ready to cause a scene. Their words were sweet, but he felt their judging stares from the moment they opened the door. Adryan developed a skill after about four or five different families; he could always guess the issues within different families.

With the Jones', it was the alcoholic father; with the Wilson's, it was the mother with the gambling problem; with the West's, it was the parents addicted to various drugs; with the Brown's, it was the cheating and abusive mother; with the Johnson's, it was the abusive father. The list goes on and on.
With the Todd's, it was the father's infidelity, the constant money being spent by the mother and children, and the need to keep up the appearance of a perfect family. James Todd was a very important lawyer with aspirations to run for a higher office. Fostering children seemed like the perfect heartwarming thing to jumpstart his campaign. Elizabeth Todd, his wife, was an English teacher at Grace Academy.

All three of the Todd children attended the private school. Emily was on the soccer team, James Jr. was on the football team, and Hayley was on the academic team. Emily and James Jr. were twins and had just reached sixteen; Hayley was almost fifteen.

Upon entering the house, Adryan saw each little detail that made it look like the perfect place to live, but he could feel the dark secrets lurking at every corner. Three different spots on separate walls showed evidence that someone had punched a hole through the drywall. It was covered neatly, but it was still distinguishable from the rest of the walls. The house was covered in pictures of their family, but anyone who cared to look at them longer than a second could tell the family tension easily. Every photo that hung on the light gray walls displayed very clear body language; the mother always leaned away from the father ever so slightly and the children leaned away from them both. When the mother was forced to be close to her husband, her face made this specific change. Her smile became wider as if she was afraid that it would drop at any second and her eyes became larger.