Her father had been the first.
She was three when she lost him.
Too small to see through the prison window without a stool, too young to understand that the world didn’t care about fairness.
She had been talking to him—rambling about the stars overhead—when the door slammed open.
Guards.
Shouting.
Then a thud.
She couldn’t see.
She scrambled for the stool, dragged it closer, climbed up—just in time.
Just in time to see him fight.
They had weapons.
He had nothing.
Nothing but a bolted-down sink, a rusted toilet, a tattered mattress in the corner.
Still, he fought.
He tore one to the ground, swung hard enough to send another stumbling back.
But there were too many.
A baton cracked against his ribs.
A boot to his knee.
He staggered.
He kept swinging.
Then came the first knife.
Then the second.
She screamed for help.
No one came.
She watched him fall.
Thirty-two stab wounds.
The guards did nothing.
Her mother died two years later.
She had never been much of a parent, but she was all she had left.
So she clung to her.
Even when she was drunk.
Even when she was high.
Even when her latest mistake—a violent drug dealer—turned his rage on her instead.
He noticed her.
Watched her.
Used her.
She learned how to take the beatings without making a sound.
She learned how to stay silent when the pain twisted through her ribs.
She learned how to endure.
But her mother stole from him.
And the men came.
Not for money.
For blood.
Her mother begged. Screamed.
It didn’t matter.
She died slowly.
Tortured.
Shattered.
Then the drug dealer fell next.
And when it was over—when she sat there, shaking, barely able to breathe—they left her alive.
"We’re gangsters, not monsters."
She wished they had killed her too.
The foster system was supposed to be better.
It wasn’t.
Her first foster mother was kind.
She let herself hope.
Then one night, she heard the screaming.
The crash.
The fists against flesh.
She saw the blood.
She saw the way her foster father swung again and again and again—until she wasn’t moving anymore.
Until she was just another name on the list.
She was six.
She didn’t cry.
She just sat there.
Cold.
Waiting for someone to tell her this wasn’t real.
But no one did.
Her third foster father had been kind too.
Took her out for ice cream that night.
Vanilla.
Then a mugging.
One second, they were walking home.
The next, a gunshot.
She stared at the ice cream in her hand.
Watched it melt down her fingers, dripping onto pavement.
She never touched vanilla again.
Calix had been her first real friend.
She learned to survive with him, learned what trust was supposed to feel like.
Then, he got sick.
She watched him die.
Tried to save him.
Failed.
Held his hand long after he was gone.
Matteo lasted one more year.
She had started to believe they would make it.
That they would get out.
That they would survive.
He stole from the wrong people.
Paid the price for it.
She watched him die.
Felt his hands gripping hers, blood pooling beneath them, his voice struggling through the agony.
"I’m sorry. I should have never let you stay."
She had wanted to tell him it wasn’t his fault.
She never got the chance.
Now, there was TF141.
The last people she should ever let herself care about.
They weren’t supposed to be kind.
They weren’t supposed to treat her like she mattered.
They weren’t supposed to make her feel safe.
But they did.
And that meant only one thing.
They were going to die.
Just like all the others.
She knew it.
So she did what she had to do.
She pushed them away.
Because if she didn’t, they were next.