Chapter 4

The cemetery was quiet, the air cool and damp.

I placed a bouquet of fresh lavender on my mother's grave.

The new headstone was simple but elegant, with her name etched in clean, deep lines.

"I miss you, Mom," I whispered, tracing her name with my finger.

"I hope you'd be proud of me."

After a while, I walked to the other side of the cemetery, to the neglected section where the city buried the unclaimed and the indigent.

There it was.

An old, plain stone, barely more than a slab of concrete, with no name.

This was my father's grave.

All the bitterness of my childhood rushed back-the shame, the taunts in the schoolyard, my mother's tired, sad eyes.

I looked at the anonymous stone and felt a familiar surge of resentment.

This was his fault.

All of it.

"Why did you have to ruin everything?" I muttered, kicking at a loose clump of dirt.

A condescending voice sliced through my private grief.

"Talking to ghosts? I heard your criminal father was buried around here. Are you trying to follow in his footsteps?"

I spun around.

It was Emily White.

She stood there in a stylish trench coat, a smug smirk on her face.

What was she doing here?

Visiting David?

It didn't matter.

Her words, so deliberately cruel, lit a fuse inside me.

"You have no right to talk about my father," I snarled.

"Oh, I think I do," she said, taking a step closer.

"David told me all about him. It's a miracle you turned out even remotely normal."

That was it.

The carefully constructed dam of my grief and anger broke.

I didn't think.

I just moved, lunging at her, my hands outstretched.

She shrieked as we tumbled to the damp grass.

It was a messy, pathetic scuffle, fueled by pure rage.

"Sarah, stop it!"

A strong arm wrapped around my waist, pulling me off of her.

It was David.

He had been nearby, visiting his own family's plot.

He hauled me to my feet and then immediately turned his back on me, rushing to Emily's side.

"Emily, are you alright? Did she hurt you?" he asked, his voice filled with a frantic concern he had never once shown me.

He helped her up, brushing the dirt from her expensive coat.

My right hand was scraped raw from the fall, bleeding sluggishly onto the grass.

He didn't even glance at it.

He was completely focused on her, his back a solid wall of rejection between us.

The sight was more painful than any physical blow.

The police academy's physical assessment was a week later.

It was a grueling obstacle course designed to push recruits to their absolute limit.

As I stood at the starting line, my hand bandaged but still aching, I saw him.

David was standing with a group of senior officers, a clipboard in his hand.

He was a guest observer, there to provide his medical expertise on physical endurance.

My heart sank.

I pushed myself hard, ignoring the screaming protest of my muscles and the throbbing in my hand.

I scaled walls, crawled under barbed wire, and dragged a weighted dummy across the muddy field.

I was doing well, driven by a desperate need to prove him wrong.

I could feel his eyes on me, cold and critical.

I heard him say to the officer next to him, just loud enough for me to catch the words, "She's reckless. No control. Not officer material."

The final obstacle was a thirty-foot rope climb.

My body was shaking with exhaustion.

I took a deep breath and started to pull myself up, hand over hand.

I was halfway up when a sharp, searing pain shot through my injured hand.

My grip faltered.

For a split second, my fingers refused to close.

I slipped, my body crashing hard onto the mats below.

A wave of failure and humiliation washed over me.

I had failed.

David walked over, his shadow falling over me as I lay on the ground, gasping for breath.

He looked down at me, his face unreadable.

"I told you," he said, his voice devoid of any sympathy.

"You don't have what it takes."