Rain misted the air, turning the late afternoon haze into something cold and mean. The streetlights hadn't come on yet, but the sky was already sliding into gray, the kind of dim that made everything look like a bad memory.
Ava didn't breathe. Not really. She just stood there, frozen, staring down the alley where the man had vanished — the man who'd just stolen everything.
Gone.
Their whole week's haul. Every bill. Every wallet. Every desperate dollar picked from suits and skirts and distracted phone addicts. All of it — in the hands of someone faster.
Her little sister looked quietly at the direction the theif run to, her face thinned by disbelief.
Ava didn't look at her. She couldn't.
The lump in her throat burned. Not because of the money. Not really. But because she'd seen him — out of the corner of her eye, maybe five seconds too late. Some guy lingering where no one should've been, watching too closely. He'd been casing them, not the crowd. And she'd missed it.
She always told her sister to stay sharp. Stay alert. Watch your six. And she hadn't taken her own advice.
"He took everything," Ana said, finally. "The whole damn roll."
"How did he know where to look? I hid it well. Was he following us?"
Her sister dropped onto the edge of the curb, rain soaking into her too-big hoodie. She hugged her knees to her chest, hiding her face. She didn't cry, not exactly. But her shoulders trembled.
Ava swallowed the frustration clawing up her throat.
They couldn't scream. Couldn't chase the guy through the street yelling stop thief! like some innocent victim. Because they weren't. They were pickpockets. Grifters. Two ghosts slipping through crowds, hunting for loose wallets and rich fingers too lazy to guard their rings.
And now, they had nothing to show for it.
She glanced down at her sister, Tess — a skinny kid with bruised knees and tired eyes. Ten years old, going on thirty. Too smart. Too quiet. A kid who should've been in school, not learning how to lift phones without getting caught.
Marcus wasn't going to take this well.
Ana clenched her fists. The cold stung her fingers, but it was better than the heat curling in her chest — the shame, the helplessness. She hated it. Hated how familiar it was.
I should've seen it. I should've stopped it.
"Don't tell him it was me he stole it from," her sister whispered suddenly. "He'll think it was my fault."
Ana looked down sharply. "It wasn't."
"I know, but… he won't care."
Ava's mouth opened, then closed. There was no point arguing. Her sister was right.
They sat there in silence, watching the puddles ripple with every drop of rain.
There was no way to get the money back.
No way to fix what had happened.
And no way to stop what was coming.
...
Ava didn't remember much about her life before foster care.
No warm kitchen scents. No lullabies. No framed photos of babyhood or birthdays. Just a stretch of unfamiliar homes and stranger's voices saying, "She's a quiet one," and the occasional glance from a caseworker who pretended to care.
As far as she knew, she had no parents. No names. No faces to place them. No certainty about whether they were dead, missing, or just... gone. And even if they were out there, what would she even say to them? Hi, I'm your abandoned child. Hope you're proud of what I've become.
She might've drowned in that loneliness, if not for Tess.
Tess was different. She knew love once. She remembered her parents — their smiles, the warmth in their eyes, the accents in their voices. Three years ago, they came to this country together. New city, new life. But fate had other plans. A car crash, barely an hour after the airport. Tess survived. Her parents didn't.
No records. No extended family. No one to come claim her. So they tossed her into the system like the rest of them.
That's how she and Ava ended up in the same house.
They weren't blood, not even close. But Ava didn't believe in biology anymore. Tess was hers. Her family. Her shadow. Her little storm. And in a world that didn't give a damn about either of them, they clung to each other like shipwreck survivors.
Ava was seventeen now. Almost eighteen. She'd be out soon. Free.
At least, that's what the world would call it.
But freedom didn't mean safety. And it sure as hell didn't mean peace.
Because Ava had no high school diploma — she'd dropped out when Marcus, their foster dad, made it clear that their lives were no longer about education, but survival. She remembered that night like a brand. He'd come home stinking of whiskey and excuses, slammed the kitchen drawer shut, and declared he couldn't afford to "waste money on classrooms." Instead, he sent them to the streets — pickpocketing, pretending, manipulating. He said it was "just until things got better."
Things never got better.
Marcus wasn't a father. He was a wolf who learned to dress in foster-parent paperwork and charm social workers. Broad-chested, tattooed, always with a drink in his hand or anger in his breath. One minute calm, the next a storm. And tonight, Ava could feel it in the air — he'd be the worst kind of storm.
She stared at the sidewalk as she walked beside Tess. Her thoughts were a whirl of fears and what-ifs, the kind that never led anywhere good.
"Ava."
She blinked.
"Ava!" Tess snapped again, louder this time.
Ava turned, startled. "What?"
Tess frowned, a crease in her forehead. "I've been calling your name. Like, a lot. What's going on in that head of yours?"
Ava forced a smile. "Nothing. Just... thinking."
Tess didn't buy it, but she didn't push. She never did.
Ava looked at the sky. It was getting dark fast. "We should head back."
Tess hesitated. "You sure?"
"No," Ava said truthfully. "But we have to."