Marinette Dupain-Cheng, the only daughter of the wealthy mayor, is merely a young woman who wants to live life one adventure at a time. But when a man dressed in all black actually grants her that wish, she's torn on whether to explore the world wit...
"It was impossible to explain how she felt in that moment. For in that second their eyes met, it was hard to think she could ever feel fondness for a murderer."
— Forbidden Fruits
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CHAPTER ONE
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Marinette Dupain-Cheng often considered herself to be a woman who was greatly unfortunate to be born into the wrong time of history. In fact, she sometimes wondered if perhaps she was, and often thought of what life would be like if everyone simply had the same idealism as hers—a logical and fair mentality, of course.
These troublesome and controversial thoughts began to heavily plague her mind as early as twelve years old. At that age, her father told her that she was no longer allowed to play outside with her brothers because she'd been blessed with starting her woman's cycle—a sign that she was no longer considered a child, but a young woman who was beginning the first stages of adulthood. Because of this, she would need to begin her training to become a proper lady, and since she had to diligently prepare for this role, her father insisted that she had no time to waste acting like a child with her brothers.
At first, she thought he was telling the truth (she had no reason not to trust her father's word), until she realized that her brothers didn't have to follow those same rules. Her brothers continued to age, and they never lost their freedom to roll around in the mud whenever they wanted.
When she realized these things, it was rather simple to lose faith in what her father considered just. When she started to ask questions about this unfairness, her father would brush off her curiosities with a wave of his hand. He wasn't interested in explaining that unfairness to her, or perhaps he just didn't have a valid explanation to defend his strange idealism. Either way, she wasn't given many options except to question it... because it was all she ever knew. Her only other option was to stare out of her bedroom window with a sense of longing as she watched her older brothers freely live out their childhood.
Marinette had four older brothers—a fairly large family for the mayor, most believed. The eldest was called Jesse, her father's favorite amongst them all. He grew to be the tallest, his curly, auburn hair messy and unkept, though it didn't make him look unprofessional at all. He looked mysterious and roguish, and all of the ladies seemed to like those qualities about him. He was destined to be a ladies' man, that's for sure.
The second eldest was Elias. He was more laid back than his older brother, only two years younger than Jesse. His hair was darker, black in color, similar to hers and their mother's whom they'd taken after. He was more interested in learning how to hunt animals than he did hunting for women. He strived to become the greatest huntsman their town had ever seen.
The third was named Jasper. He was three years younger than his second eldest brother. His shoulder length hair was a mixture between black and brown, so it was hard to really say what color it was. For some reason, he was the only one out of them all who preferred his hair to be longer than average. Thankfully he was allowed to do so without their father throwing a fuss, and Marinette had to say, he did pull off the look rather well. As he grew, his interests switched from rolling around in the mud with his brothers to preferring to stick to his studies. Jasper enjoyed school the most, had the best marks out of them all, and preferred to read in the solitude of his bedroom than he did tending to the fields.
