Chapter 5- A Fair Point

Aria's POV 

The days blurred into a careful rhythm of fear and silence.

I woke before sunrise every morning because the alternative was being late, and being late meant the belt. I cleaned until my hands cracked and bled around the nails. I served breakfast without making a single unnecessary sound. I avoided Sienna’s gaze the way small animals avoid the eyes of predators. I endured Evelyn’s constant stream of criticisms about my posture, my folding, my timing, the way I breathed too loudly when I was nervous. At night I collapsed onto the narrow bed and tried not to dream about my sister’s last breath or the sound of my mother’s funeral—the cheap coffin, the handful of people, the rain that had fallen the entire time as if the sky itself was tired.

Lila became the only unpredictable thing in the entire house. She burned toast on purpose and claimed the toaster was defective. She “forgot” to iron Sienna’s favorite blouse the morning of an important lunch and then stood there with wide, innocent eyes while Sienna raged. She once put a generous amount of salt into the sugar bowl and watched from the doorway with poorly concealed glee as Evelyn took a sip of her morning coffee and nearly choked. The punishment for that particular stunt was three full days of extra work and no meals beyond dry toast, but Lila only laughed about it afterward in the privacy of the laundry room.

“Worth every second,” she told me, eyes bright with the kind of reckless energy that both terrified and fascinated me. “Did you see her face? Pure gold. I live for those moments.”

I didn’t have her courage. I folded myself smaller every single day, trying to become so invisible that even Sienna would eventually get bored and find a new target. It never worked for long.

One afternoon Evelyn called me into her private sitting room. Sienna was already there, curled on the couch with her phone in one hand and a glass of white wine in the other.

“You’re too thin,” Evelyn said, looking me over with the same critical eye she used on the furniture. “It makes the uniform hang wrong. Eat more. I will not have skeletal staff walking through my house looking like something out of a charity advertisement.”

I nodded. “Yes, Mrs. Vance.”

Sienna glanced up from her phone, a slow smile spreading across her face. “Maybe she should earn the food first. She’s still clumsy. Still dropping things. Still making mistakes that cost money.”

Evelyn’s lips curved in agreement. “A fair point.”

That evening the belt came out again, this time framed as a “reminder” rather than a punishment for any specific crime. I counted the strikes while they landed—twelve this time—before she finally stopped and told me to get out of her sight. My back felt like raw meat by the time I reached the kitchen. I cleaned the entire room on my hands and knees afterward because standing upright made the room tilt dangerously around me.

Later, in the dark of my room with the door locked, I pressed my face into the thin pillow and let the tears come silently. I thought about the hospital. About the moment I had stepped forward and offered my blood. About the cold blue eyes that had looked at me like I was a puzzle he couldn’t quite solve.

I wished, with a desperation that left me hollow, that I had simply walked away that day and kept my blood type to myself.

I wished I still believed that people could be saved without someone else paying a terrible price for it.