I always knew I was an accident. A fluke. An error. A fender-bender, if you will. That is, if Las Vegas native Lilly Rickett was rear-ended while fornicating.

Bottom line, the world is full of unwanted children, and I was one of them until the day Janet and Billy Wallace walked into my meaningless life.

Whether I was the unfortunate result of a ripped condom or the lack of said condom didn't really matter, because I'd bet my right arm my birth mother had so many drugs in her blood when she conceived me that I came out of her womb high and spinning.

At least, that's what the first three years of my life felt like—a roller coaster that mommy dearest put me on, conveniently forgetting to strap me to my seat. So I just sat there with my arms and legs dangling in the air and my tiny brain spiraling out of control while she trolled the amusement park of life for rich men she called "daddies."

I was too young back then to understand she wasn't actually looking for my father. That didn't dawn on me until I saw my first porno video at the tender age of eleven in which a very pretty large-breasted woman was calling a man twice her age "daddy" while he fucked her on a kitchen table. That short homemade flick that one of my friends was kind enough to share with me was a real eye-opener.

My birth mother had no intention of finding my real father. Ever. She just wanted to find someone who'd be down to fuck her dirty-Hollywood-movie style.

Either way, I couldn't have cared less about her at eleven. By then, she was just a vague memory. A bad blue-eyed, injection-lipped mirage in the Nevada desert, where I'd allegedly come from. That's what my birth certificate indicated, anyway.

As far as I was concerned, Billy and Janet Wallace were my parents. Maybe not by blood, but since when does blood relation equal family? Family is what we make of it, not what some genetic code tells us.

At the age of six, after three years of bouncing from one foster home to another, Lady Luck gave me what every kid in the system dreams of—a real mom and dad who actually gave more than two shits about what I ate, what I wore, and what grades I made.

The day I met the Wallaces, I knew my life was going to change forever. I felt it in every little bone of my malnourished body. No one had ever looked at me the way Janet Wallace did. There was something in her gaze I'd never seen before. Hope and the promise of a better life.

It was like a shot of chocolate straight into my cherry-sized heart.

"What's your name?" As she squatted down in front of me, her rainbow-colored skirt swept across the floor that probably hadn't been mopped in days. The fact that a woman was sacrificing her pretty dress to talk to me was like a sign from above. She was the one.

"Frank," I said, stretching my lips in an attempt to smile. Smiling wasn't something I liked to do, but I'd heard other kids say that adults liked smiley kids more.

"Frank..." The woman, who was small with a loud voice, seemed to think about it for a moment as her bony fingers straightened my shirt. "Such a serious name for such a handsome young man."

I didn't realize it was a compliment. Therefore, I didn't react accordingly. I just stood there and stared at her, wondering if keeping quiet was the best course of action.

"I'm Janet." She finally left my shirt alone. "How would you like to come live with me and my husband for a while?"

At that moment, I knew I was special, because this woman, who could have taken some other kid, someone younger who wouldn't have known the difference between a birth mother and an adoptive one, picked me. I knew I would do something big one day. Something spectacular. Something people would talk about for years to come.

But it wasn't until twelve years later—when I met Dante—that I figured out what exactly I was destined for.

I was destined to be the twenty-first century's King of Hard Rock.