Summary: The family from hell that Casey ran from shows up, in need of legal help. She and the detectives get sucked into her estranged families case of rape, incest and greed.

Disclaimer: If I owned them, would I be writing these stories here?

Novak. In upstate New York this name means money, esteem and sprawling manors. It means wealth, power at strong breeding, at least to others.

To me it means being shipped off to four different boarding schools between the ages of eight and sixteen. To me it means three perfect younger brothers. It also means a shy, clumsy, redheaded tomboy with skinned knees and black eyes.

Black eyes make me shudder. And they make me think about things I wanted to forget. Things like a drunken, absent mother. A mother who stood to one side and did nothing as my minor disagreements with my alcoholic father reduced to one-sided fisticuffs. A mother who stood by, calmly sipping her vodka, with my father's bourbon glass in her hand, waiting for him to finish. After he was done mauling me, she would hand his glass back to him and look upon me with disdain as I dragged my frail, broken form from the room.

As the oldest, I'm a disappointment. I wasn't born male. In my family's archaic mindset, I was a curse. I couldn't carry on the family name. That's why he could never hurt my brothers; they would carry on his terrible legacy.

So on my holiday visits, he down a glass of whatever, kick the shit out of me and then send me back to the boarding school I was currently attending. I'd make excuses about my appearance to my classmates and teachers. I'd say I fell off my horse, or my brothers and I had been sledding and our toboggan had overturned. When people began to get suspicious, I was sent to another school.

I took things into my own hands when I was sixteen. I withdrew all the savings my grandmother had left me and moved into an apartment two hours from Prestcott's Academy for Girls. On weekends and holidays I'd retreat to the apartment. I never returned to my home.

I eventually managed to get a scholarship to NYU. Without any help from my family, I put myself through college. I earned my degree in law and got a decent job defending white-collar criminals. I was proud of all my achievements, but I always felt that I could be doing more, maybe even helping victims of abuse like myself.

Then one day every headline on every New York based paper screamed one thing: A.D.A Alexandra Cabot was dead. The D.A.'s Wonderwoman was gone. I had known of her and knew about all the things she had managed in that office. So, I couldn't begin to fathom why I was asked to take her place. I thought I could never live up to her standards.

I was terrified at this new path my river was carving for me, but I held my breath and took that plunge. I came up winded, but still intact. I'll always bear the scars of my childhood. The physical ones, and the mental ones that bring me out of slumber shaking and sweating. But I feel good. I'm helping people, even children that are experiencing what I had. I have fantastic friends, but none of them know about my past. Someday, I'll tell Olivia because she'd understand more than anyone. But despite this cross I'm bearing things are going great. . .

Or they were, until the last phone call I took.