Bloody Heart (Brutal Birthright #4) - Sophie Lark Page 0,48

just one of the hundreds of models flown in for Fashion Week. I strutted up and down like a walking coat-hanger for hours at a time, cycling through dozens of outfits. Then I started booking commercial work, too. Just small campaigns for shampoo and nylon brands at first, getting paid a couple hundred dollars a pop.

A year later I got my first big job—the cover of Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Edition. Technically I wasn’t wearing a swimsuit at all—just a lot of strategically-placed body paint, in the shape of a cheetah-print bikini. After that they started calling me The Body.

I suppose I have Henry to thank for that nickname. My figure never quite went back to the way it was after he was born. I got slim again, but my breasts and hips were fuller than before. And that coincided with the end of an era in modeling. Heroin chic was out, the J.Lo butt came in. Everybody wanted curves, curves, curves. And that was me—I was part of the new wave of sexy supermodels. Kate Upton, Charlotte McKinney, Chrissy Teigan, Emily Ratajkowski, and Simone Solomon . . . plus a Kardashian or two.

Everybody wanted that exotic, ethnically-ambiguous look, and that “real woman” hourglass figure. I don’t know how “real” any of us were, but the money we made was solid enough.

The work flowed in fast. More jobs than I could handle. I flew to every corner of the globe.

It helped keep me busy and keep my mind off how fucking miserable I was.

I tried not to think about Dante—how I’d left, and how I’d lied to him. Lied by omission. The biggest fucking omission there is.

But I didn’t forget about my son.

Between each job, I flew back to London to see him. I let Serwa raise Henry—but he was still mine, in my heart. I held him, I played with him, I fed him. And my heart bled all over again every time I handed him back to my sister.

Serwa loved him, too—I could see that. She centered her world around him. Quit her job at Barclays, spent all day long taking him to the park, the river, the Eye.

My parents were funding it. They were fine paying for her to raise the baby, but not me.

I was bitter. So fucking bitter.

I saved every penny I made from modeling. I planned to take Henry back, when I had enough.

But Serwa was so attached to him, too.

And she was sick. After a year or two of recovery, she started to get weaker again. I thought if I took my son away from her, it would kill her.

So we shared him. She took care of him while I was working, and he was mine when I came home. He called us both Mama when he started to speak.

It wasn’t a terrible system. In fact, it worked surprisingly well. I missed them both so badly when I was gone. But modeling years are short—it’s an industry of youth. I had to work while I could. And I saved, saved, saved the money.

Serwa and I were closer than ever. I didn’t speak to my parents at all. I cut them off when they took my baby away without even asking. I told Serwa to make sure they never visited when I was home. She was careful to keep that promise—to keep them separate from me.

I did let them visit Henry when I wasn’t home. He had so little family, I didn’t want to deny him his grandparents. When I’d come home, he’d tell me all about how Grandma taught him to make crepes, and Grandpa gave him a Rubik’s cube.

My parents tried to make amends many times. I wouldn’t answer their calls or their letters.

Until Serwa died. She passed away three years ago. She was only thirty-four.

We were all there at the hospital together. It was the first time I’d seen my parents in years. My mother looked older. My father looked almost exactly the same—just a few threads of silver in his close-cropped hair.

I looked at them both, and I felt this hatred well up inside of me. I was so, so angry at them. The anger hadn’t faded at all. If anything, it was stronger. I saw them standing there with my son between them, and I wanted to tear Henry away from them, like they tried to tear him away from me, and never let them see him again.

But I swallowed it down, because we were there for Serwa, not for