Chapter 3

Not long ago, I was a girl with a happy home. My dad ran a successful tech startup.

But for some reason, he got hooked on gambling. Overnight, he lost everything.

Our house and cars were foreclosed, and he owed an unimaginable amount of money to dangerous people.

At seven years old, I didn't understand what bankruptcy meant. I just watched our live-in nanny pack her bags and leave in the middle of the night.

In the blink of an eye, my dad and I became homeless.

He dragged me from one neighborhood to another, carrying different pieces of cardboard with fabricated stories written on them.

Sometimes the cardboard said I was terminally ill. Sometimes it said my mother was dying. Sometimes it was about him.

But the truth was, I didn't even have a mother. I had never met her.

He forced me to cry while begging, telling me that tears were the only way to get people to open their wallets.

Some days we got enough money for a decent meal.

Other days, we got absolutely nothing, and he would drag me to the dumpsters behind supermarkets to look for expired food.

My young mind couldn't comprehend how long this nightmare would last.

Whenever I cried at night, begging him to take me home, he would always whisper, "Soon, sweetie, very soon."

Until that fateful night. A group of terrifying, muscular men cornered us in an abandoned warehouse.

My dad fell to his knees, trembling and begging them to let me go.

"Mr. Hayes, did you really think you could hide from us forever? A debt is a debt. You can't run."

Right before my eyes, they cut off one of my dad's fingers. His agonizing screams pierced the night.

I screamed and cried until my voice went hoarse, but no one came to save us. Eventually, I fainted from hyperventilating.

When I woke up in the middle of the night, the warehouse was dead silent. The guards were gone.

I looked at my unconscious father. I felt no lingering attachment, only pure survival instinct. I crawled out through a loose metal sheet at the bottom of the wall.

I ran as fast as my legs could carry me. I heard dogs barking in the distance, and saw headlights scanning the dark hills.

I didn't look back. I knew this was my only chance to live.