I was truly alone now.
Utterly alone.
I didn't even hear Diego when he walked back toward me. I only felt the weight of his presence as he crouched to my level, his shadow swallowing mine.
"I'll be taking you with me," he said softly.
My eyes lifted, red and glassy. "What?" I mumbled.
"You heard me." His voice wasn't cruel—it was calm. And that made it worse. "Your father's debt didn't disappear just because he chose death. In fact, it made things messier. And someone has to pay."
"No…" I shook my head. "You can't do that. I'm not part of his—"
"You were his everything, weren't you?" Diego's smile was thin, sharp. "His precious little girl. He thought of you in the end… and that's why he mentioned you in the letter."
He stood up slowly, adjusted his cufflinks, and turned to one of his men. "Prepare the car. She'll be coming with us."
One of them nodded and left the room.
I forced myself to my feet, wobbling. "I'm not going anywhere with you."
"You have nowhere else to go," he replied. "No family close by. No money. No protection. And the house?" He looked around like it was already his. "This place is under my name now, as part of your father's settlement. You can stay here if you'd like, but you won't last the week."
I clenched my fists. "I'll find someone. I'll—"
"You'll what?" he interrupted. "Go to the police? They won't believe you. You'll be just another unfortunate girl whose father ran into debt and abandoned her. But with me… at least you'll have a roof over your head."
He walked closer again.
"Of course," he added, his tone darkening, "you'll work for it."
The way he said it… cold, transactional, final.
"You're not adopting me, are you?" I asked, my voice dry.
His smirk widened. "You're not a daughter, Seraphina. You're property. A repayment if you care to know."
I didn't answer. I couldn't. My throat closed, and my body locked.
It felt like I died too… just in a different way.
Minutes later, I was in the backseat of a black car, rain was already falling, tapping gently on the windows, like it pitied me.
I didn't cry.
Not when the gates of my home closed behind me.
Not when Diego gave the driver an address I didn't recognize.
Not even when we pulled into a strange compound with no warmth, no kindness, no promise of mercy.
Because something in me had already shut down.
And the girl who once believed in love, who used to run home excited just to share how her day went—She no longer existed
As they drove, the car was just too quiet.
Sitting silently, my hands clenched in my lap, while staring blankly at the raindrops racing down the window. Every turn the driver made, every soft growl of the engine, reminded me I was being taken—not rescued.
I should have been panicking. Screaming. Fighting. But I wasn't.
Because numbness is louder than fear.
And while Diego sat silently in the front, scrolling through his phone like I was luggage in the back seat, my mind drifted somewhere else.
Somewhere I hadn't visited in a long time.
---
I was seven when I first asked about my mother.
I had seen other children being picked up from school—mothers hugging, fixing hair, handing snacks. I didn't understand why it was always just him.
"Papa," I asked that day, tugging on his hand, "where is my mommy?"
He paused.
Just for a moment.
Then he knelt in front of me, looked me right in the eyes, and said, "She gave me the greatest gift in the world… and then she had to go."
I didn't understand it fully then, but I never forgot the way his voice cracked on that last word.
Later that night, I found a photo—an old one, tucked into the back of a drawer. A beautiful woman, glowing and round-bellied, cradling her stomach with love.
On the back, in faded ink, it said: "For our daughter. Even if I never get to meet you."
That was the day I realized…
She died giving birth to me.
And since then, it had only been him.
My father.
He combed my hair—badly.
He made my lunch—sometimes burnt.
He never learned how to braid or sew or pick out matching socks, but he was there. Always.
When I was bullied in primary school for not having a mother, he showed up at the gates with pink cupcakes he tried baking himself.
When I failed math, he stayed up late trying to figure out the problems just so we could work through them together.
When I cried, he let me. When I broke things, he fixed them. When I dreamed too big, he told me to dream bigger.
He wasn't perfect, but he was mine.
He gave up so much just to raise me.
And now… now he was gone.
Just like that. And never to return.
---
A sharp turn snapped me back to the present.
I blinked.
The rain was still falling.
Diego was still silent.
And the girl in the window reflection didn't look like me anymore.
She looked like someone abandoned.
No, traded.
For debt, for guilt, and for shame.
I rested my head against the cold glass, and for the first time since stepping into that house and seeing those men, I let one tear fall.
Just once...
For him...
For me...
For everything that used to feel like home.