Chapter 3

**Chapter One: The Cage Before the Storm**

I was never meant to be loved. At least, that's what I've told myself over the years. It's easier that way, to believe it, to tell myself I was just born to be forgotten, abandoned, and left to the mercy of a world that has never cared about me.

My earliest memory is of my mother's voice, slurred and thick with liquor, telling me I was a mistake. A burden. It wasn't the kind of thing you forget. The way her words stung more than any slap or raised fist could ever manage. The kind of words that burrow deep into your soul, making you question whether you're worth anything at all.

She never protected me. She never tried. And my father—well, he never even bothered to show up. He was long gone by the time I was old enough to remember him, leaving only a name that hung in the air like a shadow, always out of reach.

My world, from the beginning, was filled with empty rooms and cold spaces. It wasn't the silence I hated—it was the noise. The shouting, the thumping of fists against walls, the slamming of doors that always sounded like they were closing on something I couldn't reach. Something I didn't deserve.

But it wasn't until I was nine, after my mother disappeared into the haze of another drunk night and never came back, that I truly understood what it meant to be *alone*. It was then I realized there was no one coming to save me. Not from her, not from myself, and certainly not from the emptiness that threatened to swallow me whole.

I spent those years hiding in the corners of our tiny apartment, staring out of cracked windows, wondering why I couldn't feel anything other than fear. And then, there was Uncle Adrian.

Uncle Adrian was the kind of man whose smile never quite reached his eyes. He had a way of looking at you that made you feel like you were nothing more than a pawn on a chessboard. When my mother died—an overdose, they said—I found myself in his care. I didn't know much about him, only that he'd always been around, always had a hand in the dark corners of our lives. And when my mother was gone, he took over.

That's when the first change came.

I remember the first time he touched me. I didn't understand it, not at first. But it felt like a brand, like something that marked me in a way I couldn't undo. And after a while, it wasn't just his touch that hurt—it was the way he looked at me. The way he expected me to obey him without question, without a fight.

I never fought. Not then. I wasn't strong enough to.

It wasn't long before I learned the world wasn't a place for someone like me. I wasn't sure if I was born to be used or if it just happened to me, but I never seemed to have a choice. There was always someone pulling the strings, always someone deciding my fate. It was never mine to choose.

By the time I turned seventeen, I wasn't sure I even had a name anymore. I was just *her*—the girl who was passed around like some kind of prize, some kind of property. Uncle Adrian wasn't the worst of them. No, it was the men who came after him, the ones who saw me as an easy trade. They saw nothing in me but something to possess, something to be used.