Chapter One A Body They Failed to Bury

Pain wakes me before the light does.

It always does.

The first thing I feel is the sting across my back fresh, deliberate, still burning like fire laid beneath my skin. I don’t scream. I learned long ago that screaming only amuses them. Instead, I bite down on the inside of my cheek until I taste blood, until the pain has somewhere else to go.

“Get up.”

The voice belongs to the doorman. It always does. Thick, cruel, soaked in satisfaction. His boots scrape against the concrete floor as he steps closer, the sound slow and intentional, like he enjoys announcing himself.

I push myself upright on shaking arms. Straw and dust cling to my palms. My body feels wrong too light, too weak, like it might split open if I move too fast. The room smells of mold, sweat, and old suffering. This place has never known mercy.

“I said get up,” he repeats.

I do.

Barely.

The whip hangs loose in his hand now, its leather darkened with use. With my blood. With other girls’ blood. He tilts his head, eyes scanning me like he’s inspecting damage done to property he owns.

“I gave you a place to live,” he says. “And this is how you repay me? Little tramp.”

I open my mouth. Close it again. The apology sticks in my throat like a lie I’ve swallowed too many times.

“I’m sorry,” I manage. My lips crack when I speak. “I won’t do it again.”

He laughs. A short, ugly sound.

“You never learn.”

The door creaks open behind him, and cold air rushes in. Night air. Freedom air. It smells like rain and distance and everything I’m not allowed to touch.

“You’re not eating tonight,” he adds casually, like he’s talking about the weather. “You need to learn the rules.”

Then he turns and leaves.

The door slams shut.

Silence returns thick, heavy, suffocating.

I sink back onto the floor, my legs folding beneath me. Hunger claws at my stomach immediately, sharp and familiar. I press a hand there, breathing slowly, counting heartbeats like the nurse once taught me before she disappeared.

I don’t know where she went.

People disappear here.

I close my eyes.

For a moment, I let myself remember my mother.

Her voice was soft. Her hands were warm. She used to hum while brushing my hair, telling me I had my father’s eyes sharp, watchful, impossible to miss. She never spoke about him beyond that. Just smiled, sadly, like the truth was a bruise she didn’t want to press.

Then she got sick.

Then she was gone.

Then I was brought here.

The orphanage.

If that’s what you call a place built to break children instead of raise them.

I stretch out my hands in front of me. They’re scarred now. Small white lines crossing darker ones, old wounds stacked on top of newer ones. Proof that time doesn’t heal everything sometimes it just layers the pain.

My fingers tremble as I reach into the torn hem of my shirt.

The photo is still there.

Wrinkled. Faded. Folded so many times it should’ve disintegrated by now. But it hasn’t. Somehow, neither have I.

I smooth it out carefully, like it’s something holy.

Three men stare back at me.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. Expensively dressed even in the faded image. They’re standing in front of a black car, suits sharp, expressions unreadable. Power radiates from them even through the paper.

My brothers.

I don’t know their names.

I don’t know their voices.

I don’t even know if they remember me.

But I know this my mother hid this photo like it was a sin. And on the night she died, she pressed it into my hand and whispered, “If anything happens… find them.”

I was too young to understand.

Too broken to ask questions later.

Now, staring at their faces, something inside me hardens.

I’m done waiting to die quietly.

I fold the photo and tuck it back into my shirt. My movements are slow, deliberate. Every muscle aches, but beneath the pain, something else is growing.

Resolve.

I push myself up again. My reflection in the cracked mirror startles me swollen face, split lip, dark shadows beneath my eyes. I look like someone already half-dead.

Good.

Dead girls don’t get watched as closely.

I limp toward the window. It’s small, barred, high enough to be useless unless you know where to step. I’ve been watching. Counting. Planning.

Tonight, the guards are distracted. I heard them laughing earlier, talking about a shipment, about money. They always forget about me when there’s money involved.

I grip the wall, ignoring the pain screaming through my ribs.

This is it.

If I fail, I’ll be beaten again. Starved again. Maybe worse.

If I succeed

I swallow.

If I succeed, they’ll learn who they tried to erase.

I take one last look at the room that tried to kill me.

Then I climb.

The window bites into my palms as I pull myself up.

Rust flakes away beneath my fingers, scattering like dead skin. The bars are cold older than me, older than my fear and for a second, my arms tremble so badly I think I’ll fall back into the room that’s already claimed pieces of me.

I freeze.

Listen.

Footsteps echo somewhere down the hall. Laughter. A bottle clinks against the wall. The guards are drunk. Sloppy. Overconfident.

I breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth.

Slow.

Careful.

The outside world presses closer with every inch I climb. Rain drizzles down the wall, slick and merciless, soaking through my thin clothes. The cold cuts sharper than the whip ever did, but I welcome it. Cold means I’m still alive. Cold means I’m moving.

My foot finds the narrow ledge I memorized weeks ago.

Then another.

Pain flares through my ribs, bright and blinding. I choke on a sound but swallow it back, pressing my forehead against the stone until the stars fade from my vision.

Don’t stop.

I learned that lesson young.

Stopping is how they catch you.

I drop to the ground on the other side, landing badly, my ankle screaming in protest. I bite my sleeve to keep from crying out. The taste of dirt fills my mouth. Mud coats my knees, my hands, my skin but for the first time, no one yells at me for it.

I’m outside.

The orphanage looms behind me, dark and hulking, its windows like empty eyes. From here, it looks almost peaceful.

It’s not.

I turn and run.

Each step is agony. My lungs burn, my legs threaten to buckle, but I force myself forward, into the trees, into the night. Branches claw at my face, my hair tangles in thorns, and still I don’t stop.

Because somewhere beyond this pain 

Somewhere beyond this forest 

Three men exist who share my blood.

And whether they want me or not…

I am going to find them.