Chapter 2: Secrets That Burn
605 Words
The bruises on her hands were from the fence.
Elena peeled off her gloves in the dark, fingers trembling as dried blood clung to her cuticles. She’d climbed back over the estate wall like a thief, dodging security cams, just like he told her.
Kai Navarro.
The boy in black.
The boy who had no right to look at her the way he did.
But she had gone back to the train yard anyway.
Drawn to him like smoke to fire.
---
“You really shouldn’t be here,” Kai had said the second time she found him—this time without the shaved-head girl, without the watchful eyes of the rebels in hiding.
“I want to understand,” Elena had answered. “What you’re fighting for.”
He had laughed. Not kindly. Not cruelly. Just… tired.
“You think this is a school debate?” he asked, stepping close. “This isn’t a story you walk into and walk out of clean.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. You’re the daughter of the man who built this system. You’ve never seen the bodies it leaves behind.”
She flinched. But didn’t move.
“I didn’t ask to be his daughter.”
Kai looked at her differently then—more like a question than an accusation. His gaze flicked to the ring on her finger. Rodrigo’s crest. A symbol of power.
A brand.
She slid it off slowly and pocketed it.
And for a moment, the space between them narrowed.
---
Back in her bedroom, Elena could still feel the heat of his eyes on her.
She stared at her reflection in the mirror, past the bruises, past the silk blouse her stepmother had pressed on her earlier. None of it felt like her skin anymore.
The person who stood there was unraveling.
She walked to her closet, opened the hidden panel at the back—where she used to keep old journals—and stashed the gloves, the hoodie, and the burner phone Kai had slipped into her pocket when no one was looking.
“You’ll need this,” he’d said. “When the lies start burning too loud.”
---
The lies started the next morning.
Rodrigo’s voice carried down the hallway as she approached the dining room.
“…surveillance flagged motion near the east perimeter again,” he was saying, calm but clipped. “Sweep it tonight. Double the guards.”
Elena paused outside the doorway.
“I don’t want her disturbed,” he added. “She’s… delicate.”
Delicate.
Like glass.
Like a doll.
She stepped into the room, spine straight. “You mean imprisoned.”
Rodrigo didn’t look up from his coffee. “I mean protected.”
“You’re watching me.”
He turned the page of his newspaper slowly. “This city watches everyone.”
That wasn’t an answer.
It was a warning.
---
At school, the silence was different.
Not real silence—there was chatter and footsteps and the buzz of a world that pretended it wasn’t breaking—but inside Elena, something had shifted.
Even her best friend, Isadora, seemed too clean. Too careful. Like part of a set.
“El, are you okay?” she asked, frowning at Elena’s bandaged fingers. “You look… tired.”
“Yeah,” Elena said. “Bad dreams.”
---
That night, the burner phone lit up.
KAI: Still breathing?
ELENA: Barely.
KAI: Meet me. Midnight. Bring nothing that can be traced.
She stared at the message.
She knew this was reckless.
But for once, it didn’t feel like dying.
It felt like waking up.
- Writer
