Chapter 1

On the very first day my parents paid to bring me back from the broker ring, the credit card went missing.

My mother tore the entire master bedroom apart, finally pulling it out from underneath my pillow.

Not a single dollar of the five-thousand-dollar balance was gone.

Yet, the way she looked at me was like looking at a common thief.

"Rain, tell me the truth. Did you take it?"

Before I could even shake my head, our housekeeper, Martha, poked her head through the doorway, giving me a hesitant, loaded look.

"Ma'am... when I was cleaning this morning, I saw her lingering around that drawer for a really long time."

My mother's face instantly darkened.

My father stepped out of his home office, his brows tightly furrowed. He looked at me, then let out a heavy sigh.

"Forget it. She just got back, she doesn't know any better. We'll teach her slowly."

Those words - she doesn't know any better - stung worse than a slap in the face.

I desperately wanted to explain, but after seven whole years locked away by that broker ring, handed between households that kept me as an unpaid worker and enduring daily beatings and verbal abuse, I had long forgotten how to speak like a normal person.

I opened my mouth, but the sound lodged in my throat, refusing to come out.

Seeing my silence, my mother's eyes rimmed with red. She slammed the card down onto the table.

"Your father and I scraped together everything we had, going into massive debt just to pay to get you back! And what do you do? You steal from us the very day you step foot in this house?!"

The cold truth washed over me like a bucket of ice water. In that single moment, I finally understood where I stood.

I hadn't been rescued. I had been paid for.

"Ma'am, please don't be upset," Martha quickly chimed in, rushing over to hand her a tissue while patting her back soothingly.

"The girl is young, and she suffered so much out there. It's only natural her mind got a little twisted. With time, she can be taught."

A twisted mind.

Just like that, I learned another label to describe myself.

That night, they put me in a tiny utility room on the ground floor.

No windows. Just a cot and a thin, worn blanket.

Right next door was Martha's break room. Through the thin drywall, I could hear her on the phone.

"...I know, right? You can tell something's off about that kid just by looking at her. That dark, creepy glare - it's terrifying."

"Your mother still talks about raising her like a real daughter. If you ask me, disaster's bound to strike sooner or later..."

"Lily is coming back for the weekend soon. I'm honestly terrified that feral brat might do something to her..."

"I watched Lily grow up. She's nothing like that wild stray..."

I pressed my hands over my ears and buried my face into the flat pillow.

Tears instantly soaked the fabric.

I was only five years old when Martha took me away seven years ago. My only memory of my real mother was her scent - warm and comforting, like clean laundry dried under the afternoon sun.

Countless times in my nightmares, I had run back toward that warm embrace, only to wake up shivering in the brokers' dark cellars, staring blankly at rats scurrying across the dirt floor.

Now, I was back. But my mother's scent was different.

It was no longer the warmth of the sun; it was harsh antiseptic and suffocating, expensive perfume.

I heard that while I was gone, they had adopted a little girl with a congenital heart defect.

They chose her simply because her eyes and brows resembled mine.

Early the next morning, voices arguing in the living room woke me up.

It was my mother and Martha.

"Ma'am, I heard from the police report that the brokers moved her between three different households. She even lived with an old man for a while..."

Martha's voice dropped low, but my hearing, honed by years in dark cellars, was unnervingly sharp.

"Do you think... she's already been... you know..."

My mother said nothing.

Martha let out a heavy, theatrical sigh. "I'm just worried about your safety, and Lily's. Kids from that kind of background... who knows what darkness is lurking in their heads?"

Standing by the doorframe of my tiny room, my knuckles turned white as I gripped the wood.

I wanted to burst out and scream that it wasn't true.

The first year they took me, they sent me to work for a family in an isolated mountain town. The man of the house would beat me whenever he got drunk, and his wife, resenting every bite of food I ate, locked me in a shed.

Later, when they had a biological son of their own, they considered me a nuisance and sent me back to the brokers.

The brokers called me damaged goods, saying no family would take me off their hands, so they kept me around to do hard labor.

I never lived with an old man.

I was never violated.

I had just been beaten so many times that I forgot how to talk, forgot how to smile, and learned to look at everyone with guarded suspicion.

Yet, I couldn't get a single word out.

Because then, I heard my mother speak.

"I understand, Martha. Just keep a close eye on her for now."

Not: She isn't like that.

Not: She is my daughter, and I trust her.

Just: Keep a close eye on her.