Locked Hearts

Prologue

"Mom? I know you're mad about the paint smudges, but Freya and I- "

Her mother didn't open her eyes. Ten year old Aria turned to her Freya with a frown.

"She's asleep, now what do we do?" They were trying to ask permission to go to Felicity Ainsley's eleventh birthday party.

Not that their mother particularly cared, but the girls felt it their duty to ask her - or rather, inform her about their whereabouts like all the other girls.

Her sister wasn't paying her any attention. She looked white, and was shaking like an autumn leaf. "Rey?"

Freya pointed a shaky hand towards the comforters, and let out a muffled yelp.

"What is it?" She finally looked at the bed, and found blood. She also found the gaping hole where she was pretty sure there should've been a heart.

Aria screamed. Freya screamed. They both screamed until their voices were hoarse, until the caretaker came out with a huff to see what her charges where up to now.

She screamed too.

Aria later wondered how she hadn't seen the blood, and how she hadn't noticed the chalky palor of her mother's face. She could never get rid of the image once she'd noticed.

Their caretaker finally called the police, and the next afternoon, the girls met their father and their brother. The ones their mother had sworn were dead and nonexistent.

They were taken away from their old life, stripped of the little cocoon of popularity and grown up life they were so used to living in, and placed in another cocoon. One of innocence and childhood.

And so, the girls elected to dissappear from their mother's spotlight. Their father, who had never known he had daughters, could never bring himself to deny them anything. He definitely had the means to give them everything, so why shouldn't he?

Elijah Montague owned companies all across the world, and was forever travelling from one country to another, sometimes three in a day.

His children were always encouraged to accompany him, and in time, he planned to retire and hand over parts of the business to all three of them. They were certainly capable.

The twins settled into the life almost immediately, and announced they liked it much better than having different fathers every month. They were exceptionally bright at their education, and graduated college when they were only eighteen.

They were also very pleased to know they didn't have another mother. They never seemed to miss their mother all that much, a fact that both relieved and disturbed Elijah.

For the next eight years they travelled as a family, the rumours of their mother and the vestiges of their old life fading over time.

Due to all the travelling, both the girls and Xander, their step brother, studied through tutors and gave private exams. Their life was adventurous and private, just as they loved it.

The only sad thing that happened to them in this period of their lives was Xander going to South Africa for his free clinics project. He visited, of course, but they were sad nonetheless.

The girls led their lives without a thought to their past, enjoying the present and making plans for their carefully thought out future.

But on their eighteenth birthday, everything suddenly came to a halt, and the girls were thrust back into their old life of fake smiles, backstabbers and liars.

All because of one police official who couldn't let a cold case go.