Chapter 2

My mother shot to her feet.

"Now that you have her, you won't protect Nina!"

"Today it was one false accusation. What about later? How much more is my daughter supposed to suffer?"

"How am I making her suffer?"

The veins stood out on my father's forehead, and he ground the words out through his teeth.

"If she doesn't stay with me, she stays with you? So you can drain her luck dry too?"

My mother tilted her head, looking at the man she'd loved with her whole life as if she no longer knew him.

"If it weren't for you, I never would have gone bankrupt in the first place!"

"You like being toyed with by men anyway. I should never have thrown the whole company away to save you!"

A crack of thunder split the air.

Outside the window, lightning came without warning.

My mother lowered her head and laughed, but her face was full of pain.

"So it turns out..."

"This whole time, this is what you've thought of me..."

My father's throat bobbed, and he looked away from her, agitated.

The rain outside came down harder and harder, beating against the glass, just like that endless nightmare of a rainy night.

I was only five then.

My father's company had just gone public, and he was flush with pride at the party.

My mother stood beside him in a white dress, and everyone praised what a perfect match they made.

She took me to the restroom to change out of my stained dress, and on the way out we ran straight into a drunk fat man.

Steve Lambert.

He'd been staring at my mother the whole time with those sickening eyes.

Drunk and emboldened, Steve lunged at her, his pig-fat hands gripping her waist.

"Samantha Henson, right? That poor kid Giles Gilbert isn't good enough for you. Come with me. I know how to treat a woman better than he does..."

My mother screamed in terror and shoved at him with everything she had.

I threw myself at Steve, biting and kicking.

"Get off her! You little brat!"

Steve kicked me away, and my head slammed hard against the edge of the sink.

To save her, I gritted my teeth, dragged myself up, and stumbled back to the ballroom to find my father.

By the time he got there, Steve had my mother pinned to the wall, tearing at her clothes.

My father went mad in an instant, grabbing Steve's head and smashing it against the wall, again and again, until Steve ended up in the ICU.

To stay out of prison, my father paid out everything the family had.

In the end, the company went bankrupt.

For a while, we were so poor we could barely put food on the table.

My father went out driving a cab, and my mother stayed up nights doing piecework.

We were poor, but the three of us together were happy.

"Dad! The bathroom light's out! Come fix it!"

"Honey, we're out of salt. When you take out the trash later, remember to buy some."

"Nina! How did you do so badly on this one again? Your old man can't help you this time, so pray for yourself."

...

I always thought that simple, ordinary happiness would go on forever.

Until that night.

My mother spiked a high fever, and my father scooped her up and rushed her into a cab through the pouring rain.

In the car, delirious with fever, my mother murmured to herself.

"Giles, I'm sorry."

"I lied to you..."

My father lost focus for a second and nearly hit the car beside us.

Rain sheeted down the windshield.

The car was very quiet.

The wipers ticked out their steady rhythm.

"The truth is... I don't belong to this world. The system told me that as long as I finish my death-substitution tasks."

"I... can go home..."

In the rearview mirror, I saw the complicated look in my father's eyes, his breathing growing heavier and heavier.

I didn't understand any of it back then. I just bowed my head and held my mother's cold hand.

But some part of me felt, faintly, that something had changed.

Later he brought a blind fortune-teller to the house.

The man pointed at my mother and said,

"Mr. Gilbert, your wife's birth chart is drinking your blood. If you want to get rich, you'll have to send her out to the balcony to live with the animals, walk the animals' path!"