Part l - Pretty Things Break
She had always been a pretty girl.
Even as a toddler, strangers in passing would coo, comment, compliment. Her parents noticed. Not because they loved her. They never had. But because beauty, they realized, could be worth something.
By three, she’d already learned that asking for things—food, warmth, love—made their faces twist. That whining earned a door slammed in her face, or worse. She remembered crouching in the corner of the cracked kitchen tiles, fingers hunting for scraps that had fallen from the counter. Her parents never cleaned, never cared. And when they did remember she existed, it was always through clenched teeth.
“Stop burdening us.”
“Go outside. I’m not dealing with you today.”
She’d stand in the alley with no shoes and a hollow stomach, watching other kids walk home with snacks in their hands, laughter on their breath.
Her name was something they only said when they needed her.
Usually at the club.
Late at night, the calls would come. “Get over here. Wear something nice.” She didn’t know what “nice” meant, not really. But she knew better than to say no. Saying no made things worse. She wasn’t old enough to understand the weight of the looks, but she understood that she’d come home quieter than she left. Always.
She lost something every time.
She was never a daughter. She was debt in a dress.
Pretty enough to fetch a favor. Soft-spoken enough to never tell.
By the time she was sixteen, her parents didn’t even try to hide it. They handed her off like she was nothing at all—no ceremony, no warning, just a nod and a wave. He paid them with a blank check. She never saw a cent.
She wasn’t a girl anymore. She was property.
And now, years later, she stands barefoot in a boutique dressing room—trying on dress after dress, none of them hers. The man outside waits. Smiling like the world is his. Ordering her back into silk again and again, louder each time.
She doesn’t speak.
Because somewhere in her bones, long before she could name it, she learned:
Pretty things aren’t protected. Pretty things are shown. Bought. Broken.
Freedom is an illusion, and those that offer to help won't last long enough to make a difference.
Part II – Too Perfect, Too Quiet
Location: Atrium Balcony, Upper Level | Observation Point Bravo
The mission parameters were clear: track Anton Lavko. Suspected arms broker. Meet scheduled at 19:45 in the jewelry showroom. Confirm the drop. Stay invisible. Do not intervene.
But across the glass railing, something else had caught their attention.
A boutique—top-shelf, gold-brushed, and oozing pretense—where a man in a designer suit leaned lazily in a velvet chair while the girl with him tried on her twelfth dress.
She was stunning. No denying it. Her beauty was the kind that turned heads without trying. But that wasn’t what made them pause.
It was how still she was.
How quiet.
How absent.
Price kept his arms folded, leaning slightly against the marble rail. His eyes tracked the floor below but kept flicking sideways.
“She hasn’t spoken,” he murmured. “Not once.”
Ghost, beside him, didn’t look away either. “She waits until he looks away to pull down her dress."