Chapter 1

The interrogation room lights were harsh and blinding.

I sat on a metal chair, my hands cuffed behind the backrest.

Tony Buckley sat across from me, chewing on a piece of candy.

It was obvious he was trying to quit smoking.

He stared at me for five full minutes.

I held his gaze and kept smiling.

I knew that smile got under his skin.

"Lois, the security footage showed you didn't fight back when that group took you." He slammed the case file onto the table. The sound echoed in the room.

"You had plenty of chances to run over those three months. You went out to buy cigarettes and groceries. Why didn't you run?" he asked.

I looked straight into his eyes and kept smiling. "It was nice there."

"Nice?" Tony let out a short, cold laugh. He looked at me like I'd lost my mind. "That place was a pyramid scheme. They had you writing scripts to brainwash elderly people and take their life savings."

I nodded. "I wrote them well. Roger even said I had talent."

Tony frowned. "Why?"

"Because Roger and the others didn't make me fake a smile," I said quietly.

Tony froze. The young officer behind him stopped writing. "What did you just say?"

I said, "At the organization, if I couldn't finish a script, Roger would yell at me. He'd send me to wash dishes or take away a meal. But I didn't have to practice smiling there."

Tony leaned forward. "What do you mean?"

"When I was at home, I had to practice smiling every day," I said.

"What's wrong with smiling?" he asked.

"What if smiling is the only thing you're allowed to do?" I asked. "Even when you're sad, you have to smile. Even when you're in pain, you have to smile. I'm a person. I should be allowed to feel angry. I should be allowed to feel sad."

"But they held you there against your will," he said.

"It was my choice," I said. "I'd rather stay there than go home."

Tony's jaw tightened. He stood up, paced once around the room, then sat back down. "Tell me about the hideout."

He flipped to a blank page and picked up his pen. "Did Roger ever hit you?"

"No." I shook my head.

"Did he force you into prostitution or hurt you physically in any other way?" he asked.

"No. I just wrote scripts," I said.

Tony stopped writing and looked up at me. "Lois, you're a student at a top university. The things you wrote got people killed. An old man who invested everything he had killed himself at home the day before yesterday."

I felt something spread through my chest. It was sadness. But I didn't move, and my smile didn't change.

"I know," I said. "That script was about giving up wealth to find completion. It was based on what my mother taught me.

"She said material things were a burden. The more you let go, the lighter your soul becomes."

Tony clenched his teeth. The muscles in his cheeks twitched. "How did Roger treat you?"

I said, "He yelled at me. He used filthy language. One time, when I was too slow with a script, he dumped a bowl of leftovers all over my dress.

"He pointed at my face and said I was acting superior. He mocked me because I could still smile while people were yelling at me. He said my fake face made him sick.

"He tried to force me to cry. If I couldn't cry, he made me scrub toilets."

"And then?" Tony pressed.

"Then I scrubbed the toilets," I said softly. "I cried while I was doing it. His words hurt, but I felt relieved. It was the first time I felt like a real person. I could finally let something out."

Tony stared at me. Something flickered in his eyes, something I couldn't read. "What were the living conditions like?"

I replied, "It smelled awful. The attic leaked when it rained. There were cockroaches everywhere. Everyone slept on the same platform.

"At night, I could hear snoring from all directions. Some people talked in their sleep. Some cried for their mothers. Some shouted, asking for their money back."

I thought of Baldwin Andrus, the scammer who cried the loudest at night. "There was a man named Baldwin. He stole his sister's emergency medical fund.

"That night, he got drunk. He slapped himself over and over. He stuffed moldy meat into his mouth. He kept hitting himself until his face was covered in blood. Then he asked me if he was a beast."

"What did you say?" Tony asked.

"I smiled at him," I said. "I told him the universe was helping him clear out negative energy."

Tony shot to his feet. His chair scraped loudly across the floor. "You were destroying him."

I nodded. "Yes. But at the time, I thought I was comforting him. That's how my mother treated me.

"The day my father left, I cried until I couldn't breathe. My mother touched my head and smiled. She said he was chasing a higher kind of freedom, and we should be happy for him."

Tony fixed his eyes on me again.

This time, there was something deeper in his eyes. It wasn't just suspicion anymore. It looked like pity.

"Is this your way of getting revenge?" he asked.