Chapter 2

Before I went to prison, I had shown them the prosthetic, just like I did today.

They hadn't believed me then either.

"You're a dancer. If you were really an amputee, you'd have nothing to live for — you'd be better off dead. You don't have the guts for that. It's fake."

To get back at Yvonne, Ethan pulled strings and deliberately arranged for me to share a cell with a convicted killer.

The woman didn't dare take my life inside those walls, but she found every other way to make me suffer.

A dislocated jaw. A broken nose. Patches of scalp torn away. That was just a normal week for me.

Doctors would treat my wounds and keep me alive.

Then they'd send me right back. The cycle never stopped.

But the official report always read the same: Inmate #44 — status: satisfactory.

The fact that I made it out of there breathing was nothing short of a miracle.

Sebastian grabbed me by the hair — right at the spot where my scalp had never fully healed. The pain was blinding. Tears burst from my eyes before I could stop them.

He startled and quickly let go, but a second later his brow furrowed again.

"What, do you think you're royalty? I barely touched your hair. Don't be so dramatic."

I could feel the scalp slowly seeping blood, the pain settling into a deep, numbing ache.

I didn't want to waste another second on them. I just wanted to find a clinic, get the wound treated, and then do what the system had set out for me — leave this world behind.

I'm a traveler. I move between parallel worlds, completing missions.

And these three — Ethan, Sebastian, and Caleb — were the strangest targets I'd ever been assigned.

I didn't have to chase them down or strategize. The moment they met me, they flipped the script and came after me instead.

Thinking back on those absurd, almost comical memories, I let out a dry, self-mocking laugh.

I'd traveled through so many worlds. I'd met men far better than these three.

So how on earth did I end up getting burned by them?

But clearly, the three of them had no intention of letting me walk away.

Caleb grabbed my wrist, his eyes flat and cold. "Yvonne knows you're out today and she's not doing well. Come with us to apologize to her. Get down on your knees and make it right."

A sharp crack cut through the air.

My wrist had just fractured.

Ethan looked mildly confused. "Why didn't you hold back?"

Caleb pulled his hand away in a panic, his expression equally baffled as he stared at me. "I barely used any force."

He really hadn't.

The problem was that the killer in my cell had already snapped that wrist once before. Even after it healed, it never fully recovered. One wrong move and it broke all over again.

"It's just a fracture. It'll heal." Ethan waved it off like it was nothing. "Let's take her to Yvonne first."

At that point, Sebastian reached over and snatched up the three letters.

He skimmed them quickly, exchanged a glance with the other two, then dropped all three into the trash.

The love letters they had written to me with their own hands — apparently the sight of them made these men sick.

"If I could do it over, I wouldn't waste a single second on you. Only Yvonne deserves that."

My scalp was still bleeding. My thoughts were starting to blur at the edges, and my vision wasn't far behind.

Caleb was the first to notice something was wrong. "Why is there blood on her forehead?"

Blood from my scalp was trickling down my face in a slow, steady stream, dripping onto the floor — each drop hitting the concrete and blooming into a small, dark flower.

My body swayed.

I was relieved they'd finally noticed. Maybe now they'd take me to a clinic first.

But instead, Ethan let out a cold laugh. His voice dripped with contempt.

"That trick's already been used once. We're not falling for it again."

"Kayla, you're not the same person you were at twenty."

"All these years, under our protection — and instead of staying the person we knew, you just got crueler with every passing year."