Chapter 5

Three days of heavy labor and barely enough food sent my health into a rapid decline. On the fourth afternoon, I collapsed without warning while feeding the pigs.

Blood poured from my nose onto the filthy ground.

Clive came over and kicked me in the side.

"Quit playing dead! Get back to work!"

I looked up at him and managed a whisper. "I'm sick... Please... take me to a hospital..."

Martha leaned in, took one look at me, and curled her lip.

"A hospital? You think that doesn't cost money? Your fancy city father said we were supposed to toughen you up and teach you what hardship feels like. Stop pretending you're sick!"

They dragged me back to the shed and locked it from the outside.

In the darkness, I fumbled my cracked phone out of my pocket. Its weak light illuminated my bloodstained hands. I opened my contacts and dialed Mom.

It was the last time I would ask that family for help.

Not because I still believed they would save me. I wanted to know just how heartless they could be.

The phone rang for a long time before she answered.

"Hello?" Annoyance sharpened her voice. In the background, I could hear Nolan's piano.

"Mom..." My voice broke. Tears slipped down my cheeks before I could stop them. "It hurts so much. I'm bleeding... They hit me. They won't give me anything to eat... Mom, please, bring me ho--"

"That's enough, Miles!" she snapped. "How much longer are you going to keep up this act? I told you we sent you there to build character, not to put on some pathetic show so we'd feel sorry for you. Nolan is at a crucial point in his piano practice. Stop calling and upsetting him. When you're ready to drop the theatrics and the manipulation, maybe I'll consider picking you up."

The line went dead.

I listened to the empty tone and felt a bitter smile spread across my face.

Build character.

Two harmless words. An elegant excuse for sentencing me to death.

I closed my eyes and tossed the phone into a corner.

"Fine. I'm done pretending."

* * *

In the dark shed, the wind moaned through the cracks in the wall. My temperature climbed until I could barely keep track of where I was.

As I slipped in and out of consciousness, all the grievances I'd forced myself to swallow for years came rushing back with terrible clarity.

I was ten again, running home with a certificate that said I'd finished at the top of my class. I'd held it up, desperate for Dad to look at it. He hadn't even glanced at the award before sweeping it into the trash.

"What good are your grades when you're an outsider? Think that means you'll inherit the Voss company? Go help Nolan practice his sheet music."

Then I was fifteen, doubled over on my bed with appendicitis. Mom had been furious that my cries were keeping Nolan awake. She'd locked me in the basement. It wasn't until the housekeeper found me unconscious the next day that anyone took me to a hospital.

Back then, I'd assumed they favored Nolan because I wasn't their biological son.

Only now, with death approaching, did I understand how little blood ties mattered once someone had decided you were less deserving of love.

The bleeding from my nose had dried against my face. Each breath grew thinner, and every one felt like swallowing broken glass. My chest rasped like a broken bellows.

Suddenly, someone kicked the shed door open.

Clive entered holding a heavy wooden stick, with Martha right behind him. They'd come to punish me for not getting up to make dinner.