I remember the wind biting my skin as I stood on that old wooden bridge, the one that creaked like it knew secrets too heavy to hold. My house was miles behind me, hidden in the woods like a wound no one dared look at—just bruises and broken things and a silence that screamed. The town nearby was small, the kind that blinked and missed you, but everyone whispered about the mansion outside its edge, where some ruthless drug lord lived like a ghost king. I didn’t care. I couldn’t care. The river below thrashed like it was angry too, like it understood what it felt like to be trapped. I climbed the rail, hands shaking—not from the cold, but from finally not feeling numb—and just before I leaned forward, I heard tires on gravel behind me.