Chapter 1

The first blow cracked a rib. I felt it give way with a wet pop.

The second smashed into my jaw, and the world dissolved into a smear of streetlights and pain. They dragged me from the sidewalk into the alley. The rough brick scraped my back through my thin jacket.

I tried to fight, but there were too many of them. A heavy boot hit my stomach, forcing the air from my lungs in a silent scream. Then they went for my right hand. The one I used to draw, to paint, to shape the future I had worked my entire life for.

I heard the bones snap. One after another. A sickening crunching sound that echoed in the sudden, ringing silence of my mind. The pain was a white-hot fire, consuming everything.

Then a sharper, deeper agony in my side. A cold, precise cut. Something was being taken.

I was fading, the edges of the alley blurring into darkness. Just before I blacked out, I saw car headlights sweep across the entrance of the alley. A door slammed. Footsteps hurried closer.

Family.

My adoptive mother, Eleanor. My sister, Olivia. My fiancée, Sarah.

Their faces floated above me, pale and distorted in the gloom. But there was no panic in their eyes. No terror. Only a strange, tense watchfulness.

I tried to speak, to call out their names, but my mouth was full of blood. A gurgle was all that came out.

Eleanor' s voice cut through the haze. It was steady. Chillingly calm.

"Is it done?"

A man grunted in the shadows. "It's done. His hand is shattered. He won't be painting for a long, long time. And you got what you wanted."

He gestured to a small, insulated cooler one of the thugs was holding. My kidney. My god, my kidney.

The world tilted and spun away.

When I woke up, the first thing I registered was the sterile smell of antiseptic. The second was the dull, throbbing ache that radiated from my hand and my side. I was in a hospital room. White sheets, a beeping monitor, an IV drip in my left arm.

My right hand was a block of white plaster and bandages, a dead weight on the bed.

My eyes were barely open, just slits. The door was ajar, and I could hear voices in the hallway. Familiar voices.

"He's stable for now," Eleanor was saying, her tone low and serious. "The doctor said the damage to his hand is severe. It's unlikely he'll ever regain full function."

There was a pause. I waited for the grief, the outrage. It never came.

Instead, my adoptive sister, Olivia, spoke, her voice laced with a strange sort of relief. "So, he won't be able to go to the art academy?"

"No," Eleanor confirmed. "The scholarship required a portfolio of new work and a practical exam. That's impossible now."

My heart stopped. The scholarship. The one Caleb, my adoptive brother, had also applied for. The one he was desperate to get.

Then I heard Sarah, my fiancée, the woman I was supposed to spend my life with. Her voice was soft, but the words were daggers.

"This is for the best. You know how fragile Caleb is. He couldn't handle the rejection. He was talking about... hurting himself again if Ethan got the scholarship and he didn't."

My blood ran cold. Fragile Caleb. Manipulative Caleb. The brother who had spent years perfecting the art of feigned depression to get whatever he wanted.

"Caleb needs this, Mom," Olivia added, her voice firming up. "He deserves this chance. Ethan... he's always been strong. He'll get over it."

Get over it? Get over having my future destroyed? My body broken? A part of me stolen?

Eleanor sighed, a sound of weary martyrdom. "I know. It's a terrible thing. But my priority has to be Caleb. His mental state is so precarious. We have to protect him. We'll tell everyone Ethan was mugged. It's a tragic accident."

The lie was so simple, so clean. It washed over them, absolving them.

Sarah spoke again, her voice now filled with a sickeningly sweet concern. "How's Caleb doing? Is he still upset? I should go see him. He needs me right now."

She didn't ask about me. She didn't ask about my pain, my fear. Her only concern was for the architect of my suffering.

I closed my eyes, the stark white of the hospital room burning behind my lids. It wasn't just this one act. It was everything.

For the seven years I had lived with the Wilsons, it had always been about Caleb.

The time I won the regional art prize, the prize money was used to buy Caleb a new gaming computer because he was "depressed."

The time I was accepted into a summer program, I had to give it up because Caleb "needed" a family vacation to cheer him up.

Every achievement of mine was a threat to Caleb's fragile ego. Every success was something to be downplayed, or even sacrificed, to keep him stable.

And I had let them. I had believed their narrative. I had believed in Eleanor's love, Olivia's sisterhood, Sarah's devotion. I had believed Caleb was just troubled.

I was a fool.

To them, I wasn't a son, a brother, a fiancé. I was an obstacle. A resource to be drained and discarded. All my talent, all my hard work, meant nothing. They had taken my hand, the source of my art. They had taken a part of my body. They had taken my future and handed it to Caleb on a silver platter.

The absurdity of it was a bitter laugh stuck in my throat.

The door to my room creaked open. Eleanor stepped in, her face arranged in a mask of worried concern.

"Ethan, honey, you're awake," she whispered, rushing to my bedside. "Oh, my poor boy. We were so worried."

Her touch on my good arm felt like a brand. I flinched away.

Her expression faltered for a second, a flicker of something cold and calculating in her eyes, before the mask was back in place. "The doctor said you need to rest. We'll take care of everything."

Then, from the hallway, I heard Caleb's voice, deliberately weak and shaky. "Mom? I don't feel good. My head hurts."

Instantly, Eleanor' s attention shifted. The manufactured concern for me evaporated.

"I'm coming, sweetie," she called out, already turning away from me. "Mommy's coming."

She walked out without a backward glance, leaving me alone in the sterile silence. She left me with the beeping of the monitor, a hollow rhythm counting down the seconds of a life that was no longer mine.

Lying in that bed, broken and betrayed, I felt a profound, chilling clarity. They had left me for dead. They had abandoned me.

But I was not dead.

With my one good hand, I fumbled for the call button. The pain in my side was a roaring fire, but another fire burned hotter inside me. Rage. Resolve.

I wouldn't let them win. I wouldn't just "get over it."

I remembered a faded photograph in my wallet, a picture of a man in a stern military uniform. My biological father. And with it, a phone number. A number my father had given me before he died, for an emergency I never thought I'd face. A number for a man he called my grandfather. A man I had never met.

I pushed the button. A nurse came in.

"I need to make a phone call," I rasped, my voice raw. "It's important."

She looked at me with pity. "Of course, dear."

She helped me with the phone. My fingers were clumsy, shaking, but I managed to dial the number. It rang once. Twice.

A deep, commanding voice answered. "Peterson."

"My name is Ethan Miller," I said, the words tearing at my throat. "My father was Captain David Miller. He told me... he told me to call you if I was ever in trouble."

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Then, the voice came back, softer now, but with an undercurrent of steel.

"I've been waiting for your call, son. Tell me where you are. I'm on my way."

As I gave him the hospital's name, the last thread of hope I had placed in the Wilsons, in Sarah, snapped. I was letting go. I was choosing a new path. A path away from them, forever.