Chapter 4

Three days. Three days of wandering the streets with nothing but the clothes on my back and the taste of betrayal in my mouth. Three days of sleeping on park benches when my battered body would allow sleep at all. Three days of digging through trash cans for scraps of food, each bite a humiliation that burned worse than the hunger.

I stared at the house that had once been my home, its windows glowing with warm light against the darkening evening sky. My body ached from the beating Edward and his brothers had given me, bruises blooming across my…