The cab dropped me off at the edge of City X just before dawn. The city looked gray and tired under the streetlights—cracked sidewalks, flickering neon signs, the kind of place where no one asked questions. I paid the driver with the last of the cash I’d taken from my apartment and stood there with one suitcase, a backpack, and a body that already felt heavier. I was nineteen, pregnant, disowned, and alone. But I had three tiny heartbeats inside me, and that was enough to keep walking.
I found a cheap room in a boarding house near the industrial district. The walls were thin, the bed sagged, but it was mine for the month. I spent the first weeks in survival mode: doctor visits at free clinics, eating whatever was cheapest, sleeping when the nausea let me. No one knew my name. No one cared
