Chapter 1

Dr. Phillip Craig looked startled when he saw me laughing and crying at the same time.

All he could do was sigh and try to comfort me. "Don't be too pessimistic. If we can find a suitable bone marrow donor, there's still a chance you could survive another five years."

He moved to the other side, and a sharp sting shot through my hand. "This medication might hurt a little. Try to bear with it."

I looked down without expression.

Did it hurt? I couldn't even tell.

Compared to the torment I'd endured these past five years, with no one to turn to and nowhere to escape, this was nothing.

Dr. Craig asked, "Do you have any family? We could have them tested for a match. Relatives are more likely to..."

"No," I cut him off calmly, though a dull ache spread through my chest. "I don't have any family."

I paused, my voice turning hoarse. "I'm an orphan."

Only then did I finally realize that from beginning to end, I'd lived like an orphan. No one loved me.

Dr. Craig froze. Then he sighed again.

He opened the door, and two correctional officers came in. After hearing what Dr. Craig said, they exchanged a look, both of them clearly uncomfortable, but there was nothing they could do. They had orders from Ms. Beasley, and they had to carry them out.

"Once the IV is finished, you're going back. You still have a month left on your sentence."

By evening, the other inmates were already asleep.

I dragged my exhausted body into the cell and accidentally bumped into the bunk of the cell block's ringleader, Derrick Wiley. It creaked loudly.

"You trying to get yourself killed? Watch where you're going!" Derrick shot upright and kicked me hard in the lower back.

"Five years, Zeke Beasley. You're one tough asshole to kill."

He was serving a life sentence. Seeing someone like me, who had only a month left before regaining his freedom, made him hate me even more.

His fists came down again, one after another.

Too weak to fight back, I curled up on the floor, covered my head with my arms, and silently took the beating.

"What the hell is going on in there?" A correctional officer banged on the door in warning. "Keep it down, or you're all going to solitary!"

Derrick finally stopped and spat at me. "I've still got a whole month to deal with you."

I lay on the floor, completely drained by the medication I'd been given that day.

All I could do was curl into myself like a turtle retreating into its shell, pathetic and absurd.

I stumbled back to my bunk and pulled the blanket over my head.

After a while, quiet sobs slipped out. The pain in my body wasn't even a fraction of the pain in my heart.

Thinking about what the correctional officers had said filled me with bitter sadness. So the five years I'd spent in prison, all the suffering I'd endured, had started with nothing more than one sentence from my sister, Alina Beasley.

"Brett just joined our family, Zeke. You're his older brother. Try to be more understanding."

Six years ago, when Alina first adopted the orphaned Brett, I sincerely treated him like a younger brother.

But over the following year, I realized Alina had changed.

The dinner table was no longer filled with the foods I liked. Instead, meal after meal revolved around Brett's favorite seafood. She had forgotten that I was severely allergic to shellfish, so severely that I'd nearly died from eating it when I was a kid.

I still remembered how frantic she'd been that day, blaming herself over and over.

"I'm sorry, Zeke. I didn't know. I promise I'll remember from now on."

But after Brett came into our lives, all she would say was, "If you're not going to eat, leave the table. Stop being so difficult."

After that, whenever we sat in the living room, I was always off to the side by myself. The two people sitting close together were them.

Alina stopped attending my parent-teacher conferences, yet she would clear her entire schedule to attend Brett's.

Little by little, it felt as though I'd lost Alina, the sister who had once promised she would protect me for the rest of her life...

I eventually cried myself to sleep.

I was awakened by a correctional officer banging on the door. He looked at me.

"1745. Your early-release paperwork was approved. You're getting out today."

I froze. It almost felt absurd.

When I walked through those iron gates and saw a sky that was no longer framed by four walls, it felt like stepping into another lifetime.

"Zeke."

A familiar figure approached. I looked up, my gaze sharpening.

It was Alina.