Then… I’m empty.
Iwaketovoices.Distant. Muffled. As if I’m underwater. There’s pressure behind my eyes, as though I cried in my sleep. My mouth tastes of ash.
The floor beneath me is cold. My limbs ache. Not from sleep, but from rage. My palms sting, tiny glass slivers biting into my skin. Every nerve ending feels seared raw.
Then I hear it. His voice. My father’s.
“She’s asleep in the hallway. She found out I took money from her,” he says, voice sharp and low. “You need to get up there now before she wakes up.”
What?My blood runs cold.
“Alright. Here’s five grand now. We’ll give you twenty percent once she’s sold.”
Sold?
The word pierces through the haze, sharp as a blade. My stomach lurches, bile rising fast.
I hold my breath, pressing against the wall as footsteps shift below. One of them laughs, the sound cruel and slick. He’s got an accent—indiscernible, but wrong. The kind of voice that leaves bruises behind.
“Will anyone miss her?”
“I’ll just tell people she finally left town.”
That one cuts. It sinks deep. The final line of a song that was never meant to end this way. Is that really all I am to him now? Something to be explained away? A burden to unload? After everything?
I inch down the stairs, weight on the balls of my feet, every step rehearsed in my mind as if it were a kata I’ve trained for my whole life. Quiet. Efficient. Focused. The bat might be gone, but I am not.
Coach Tompkins used to say, “Predict. Then strike.”
I peek around the corner and see them. Two men. One built as solid as a fucking wall. The other, leaner but mean-looking,pacing with a cigarette between his lips. Smoke coils around him, a threat in motion.
My breath turns razor-sharp, slicing in and out of my lungs as I press against the wall, waiting. I count the seconds between footsteps, gauging weight and stride. The heavy bastard’s coming up alone.Mistake number one.
He hits the landing.Now.
I pivot out from the corner in a tight, clean motion—one I’ve drilled into my body a thousand times—and strike before he can register I’m there. My front hand slices through the air and drives into his throat with a textbook ridge-hand strike. The impact lands with a sickening crunch. He chokes, clutching at his neck, eyes bulging.
I follow up without hesitation. My back leg pivots smoothly, core twisting as I plant and launch a snapping side kick into his knee. I feel the joint bend where it shouldn’t. He crumples forward with a wheeze. I seize the moment—my heel slams up into his nose with brutal precision.
Cartilage gives way beneath the strike. Blood erupts in a sudden gush. The sound of the break echoes through the hallway, a cymbal crash. Sharp. Final. He howls and stumbles back, arms flailing, crashing into the hallway wall with a thud.
“Motherfu—!”
The second man lunges up the stairs, but I’m already moving. I plant my feet, shift my weight, and grab the bigger guy by the shoulders. With a controlled twist of my hips, I redirect his momentum, hurling his off-balance body directly into his partner. The two of them collapse in a mess of limbs and curses.
I bolt for the front door, every step powered by sheer adrenaline. My lungs burn. My muscles scream. The hallway blurs. Locked. Fucking course it is.
Before I can spin back, a white-hot explosion of pain slams into the back of my skull. My vision flashes white. I pitchforward, catching myself on the doorframe as the world tilts violently sideways.
“Fuck! She broke my fucking nose!” the bigger one wails behind me.
Footsteps thunder. Arms clamp around me from behind, locking mine to my sides in a crushing bear-hug. His sweat slicks my skin, sour and burning.
Too slow.
I drop my weight instantly, shifting my center of gravity and widening my stance. He wasn’t expecting a trained counter.
Then I snap my head back. My skull collides with his chin, jarring him just long enough.
