PROLOGUE: THE SALE
323 Words
Ten Years Ago
The basement smelled like piss and copper.
Mia didn't understand why the men in expensive suits were looking at her like that. She stood in the center of the concrete room, her pink pajamas—the ones with the unicorns—stained with something dark she didn't want to think about. Her mother was crying, mascara running down her hollow cheeks in black rivers. Her father wouldn't look at her at all.
"She's eight?" The man with the silver rings asked. He didn't look at Mia's face. His eyes traveled elsewhere, and something in her stomach twisted.
"Yeah, yeah, she's eight. Clean. Untouched. Worth way more than what we owe, right? Right?" Her father's voice cracked with desperation. His hands shook. They always shook now.
The man with the rings smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.
"Your debt is fifty thousand. The girl... she'll work it off. Eventually."
Mia didn't understand what that meant. She wanted to go home. She wanted her stuffed rabbit. She wanted her mother to stop crying and her father to look at her, to tell her this was all a mistake, that they were going home.
"Mama?" Her voice was so small.
Her mother sobbed harder.
The man with the rings nodded to someone behind Mia. Hands grabbed her—rough, uncaring hands. She screamed. She kicked. She called for her parents.
Her father finally looked at her then. His eyes were empty, already dead.
"I'm sorry, baby girl," he whispered.
The man with the rings pulled out a gun.
Two shots. Clean. Professional.
Her mother crumpled first, then her father, their bodies hitting the concrete with sounds Mia would hear in her nightmares for the next ten years. Wet. Final.
"Can't have loose ends," the man said, holstering his weapon. "Take her to the facility. Start her training."
Mia screamed until her throat bled.
No one came to help her.
No one ever would.
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