Chapter 1 The Fear of a Daughter

"Do you think your tears are important to me?"

His voice snapped like a whip. Sharp. Icy. A cruel echo off the concrete walls.

My knees scraped raw against the cold basement floor, the sting sharp as glass. I didn't look up. I couldn't. The silence I clung to was brittle, threatening to shatter under the weight of my breath.

But he didn't want silence.

"Answer me!"

A fist twisted into my hair, yanking my head up so fast I barely had time to gasp. My scalp burned. My throat closed. I choked on the cry clawing its way up.

His breath slammed into my face cheap whiskey and rotting anger. "Useless girl. Just like your mother."

That name. That curse. It landed harder than his grip.

My mother had vanished when I was five, slipping away like smoke in the night. I had spent years wondering if she ran... or if she was thrown away like trash. Either way, she was gone and I had been left behind.

He flung me back, the force of it making my spine crack against the stone. I caught myself on trembling elbows, lips bleeding where I'd bitten them.

"I do everything for you," he spat, pacing now, boots thudding like war drums. "And what do you give me? Trouble. Debt. Shame."

My throat ached with the scream I kept buried.

"You sit here like a damn stray, soaking up my food, my air, and for what?" His hands clenched at his sides. "You think you're above this? You think you deserve better?"

No.

Yes.

"I....." My voice wavered.

Wrong move.

He spun, faster than I could flinch, and slapped the words out of my mouth. My head jerked to the side, the metallic taste of blood blooming instantly on my tongue. The room tilted.

"You'll fix this," he said, quieter now. The kind of quiet that froze your bones. "You hear me, Dysis?"

He used my name like it tasted bitter. Like it wasn't mine anymore.

I blinked through the haze in my vision. "Fix what?" My voice barely crawled past my lips.

He grinned.

That grin turned my stomach to stone.

"Do you have any idea how deep I'm in? Huh?" He crouched, so close I could see the burst blood vessels in his eyes. "You did this to me. You were a mistake from the start, and now you're gonna fix it."

The walls felt like they were pressing in, squeezing the air from my lungs.

"I don't understand-"

"You will," he said, rising. "Soon."

"What did you do?"

That grin grew wider, stretched too thin. "I sold you."

The words hit harder than any blow he'd ever delivered.

The air disappeared.

"You-what?"

"You heard me." He pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his pocket, tapped one out with steady fingers, lit it. "Guy's coming tonight."

The match hissed. The smoke curled. My world caved in.

"You're lying."

He laughed, loud and sharp, like the crack of thunder before a storm. "I don't lie about money, sweetheart. You're the last thing I have left to sell."

"No. No, I won't go."

"You think this is a choice?" He stepped over me, kicked the edge of my thigh, not hard but hard enough. "You'll go. You'll smile. And you'll keep that mouth shut unless he asks you to open it."

My skin crawled. The bile rose.

"Please don't-"

"Please?" His voice curled around the word like a sneer. "Now you beg? Now, when is it too late?"

I curled in on myself, shaking. He towered above me, a looming shadow that had darkened my life since I was a child. But this... this was something else.

A final betrayal.

"You should be grateful," he muttered. "He's not just anybody. He's powerful. Dangerous. Maybe he'll even like you."

I flinched.

His smirk sharpened. "Go get cleaned up. Don't embarrass me."

When I didn't move, he grabbed a handful of my shirt and dragged me up, shoving me toward the rusted basement door. My legs stumbled beneath me, barely holding.

"Go!"

I ran. Limping, dazed. Up the stairs. Down the filthy hallway. Into the tiny bathroom with its cracked mirror and rust-stained sink.

I stared at the reflection. My face, hollow-eyed and bruised. Hair a tangled mess. Shirt torn at the collar. Blood on my bottom lip.

This girl didn't look like someone about to be saved. She looked like someone being handed off to the devil.

I turned on the faucet. Water sputtered, then ran cold. I scrubbed my face until my skin burned, tied my hair back with trembling fingers, changed into the only decent dress I owned-a pale blue thing my mother had sewn when I was seven and I'd stretched into over the years.

I didn't look good. I looked like bait.

The moment the door creaked open wider and the unknown man stepped through, the air shifted. Thick. Sharp. Like the scent of storm-drenched concrete. The chill that had already settled in my bones turned icy.

He didn't look at me. Not at first.

He moved like a shadow that had learned how to wear skin. Confidence. Controlled. Silent in black Italian leather shoes that echoed faintly against the concrete floor. His suit was pitch black, tailored within an inch of his life, hugging broad shoulders and tapering to a sharp waist. A matte-black watch glinted under his cuff, cold and expensive. His presence swallowed the room whole, and even my father stopped pacing like a mad dog and straightened slightly.

But still, the man didn't look at me.

A lock of hair, dark as ink and slicked back with precision, glistened under the overhead light. His jaw was carved like something out of old marble, stubbled, like he hadn't bothered shaving this morning. Or maybe he never bothered at all. His skin was pale, but not sickly smooth and unforgiving. The kind of face you didn't forget even when you tried.

And then his eyes flicked toward me.

I froze.

They were blue. No, not just blue-icy, like the heart of a glacier that had never known sunlight. They cut right through me, not searching for anything, just confirming what he already owned. His gaze held no curiosity. No warmth. Just calculation.

He said nothing. Not to me.

He turned his attention to my father like I didn't exist. Like I was already his. Like the deal was done, and I was a checkmark on a list he didn't care to read again.

His gloved hand slipped into his coat pocket slowly, deliberately and he passed a folded piece of paper to my father. Money? Instructions? A contract?

I didn't know.

He didn't spare me even a glance as he murmured something too low for me to hear. My father grunted in response, a sick, satisfied sound, and stepped back.

And just like that, Alexander Levi turned away. Dismissed me without words.

But in that silence, I understood something deeper than any insult my father had ever spit at me:

To this man, I wasn't even worth the cruelty.

I was a transaction.

And transactions don't speak.