POV: Nova
The door was already open when I got home.
That was the first wrong thing.
I always locked it when I left. Always. In our neighborhood, an unlocked door was an invitation, and nothing good ever accepted it.
I pushed it open slowly.
Two men sat in our living room like they owned it. Big men. The kind with that faint glow behind their eyes that told you their abilities were running just below the surface, ready. One was eating an orange from our kitchen bowl. The other had his boots on our coffee table.
My father stood by the far wall.
He was not looking at me.
That was the second wrong thing. My father always looked at me when I came in. Always had something to say a complaint, a demand, a reminder of something I had forgotten to do. Dario Reyes was never quiet and never still.
He was both right now.
One of the men stood up. He reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded envelope. He held it out toward my father.
My father took it.
He still would not look at me.
I understood in one cold second. The understanding did not come slowly or in pieces. It landed all at once, like something dropped from a great height, hitting every part of me at the same time.
He sold me.
"No." The word came out of me before I decided to say it. "No. No, no, no "
I moved for the door. The second man was faster. He stepped in front of it, and when I tried to push past him his hand closed around my arm and I felt the low hum of his ability against my skin like static electricity, a warning. He was not hurting me yet. He was just reminding me that he could.
"Dad." My voice broke on the word. I hated that it broke. "Dad, look at me."
He did not look at me.
"You look at me right now!" I was screaming. I could hear myself screaming and I could not stop. I grabbed a cup off the counter and threw it. It shattered against the wall six inches from his head. He flinched but he did not turn around. "How much? What did I cost? Look at me and tell me what I cost!"
The man holding my arm tightened his grip.
From the hallway the small, dark hallway that led to the two bedrooms I heard a sound. Small and confused.
"Nova?"
Reo.
My little brother was twelve years old and he was standing in the hallway doorway in his school shirt with his backpack still on, and his face was doing something I had never seen it do before. Like he was watching something happen that his brain could not process into a real thing.
"Reo, go back to your room." My voice changed completely when I saw him. Flat. Controlled. "Go back and close the door."
"What's happening? Nova, what "
"Close the door, Reo."
The man started moving me toward the front entrance. I dug my heels in. I grabbed the door frame with my free hand and held on. He peeled my fingers away one by one with a patience that was somehow worse than anger.
I looked back over my shoulder at my father.
He had opened the envelope. He was looking at what was inside.
He was counting the bills.
Something in me went very quiet. Not peaceful. The kind of quiet that comes right before something breaks permanently.
They got me out the door. Down the three steps. Toward the black van parked at the curb with the engine running. I stopped fighting with my body and started using my eyes instead street name, van plate, which direction, how many men, where the nearest intersection was. If I was going to get out of whatever came next I needed information, not bruises.
The side door of the van slid open.
I looked back one last time.
My father was standing in the doorway of our building now. The envelope was in his hand. He was watching them load me into the van the way you watch something on a screen, like it was happening at a distance, like it was not fully real.
He did not move.
He did not call out.
He watched.
I stopped looking at him. I was done looking at him.
The door slammed.
Inside the van it was dark and it smelled like metal and old cigarettes. I pressed myself into the corner and breathed slowly through my nose. In. Out. I could not afford to fall apart right now. Falling apart was a luxury. I would do it later, when I was alone, when being apart was safe.
The van started moving.
I heard it before I saw it through the small smeared window above my head.
Sneakers. Slapping against pavement. Fast.
I pressed my face to the glass.
Reo.
He was running after the van. Full sprint, backpack bouncing, his mouth open and his face completely broken open with something no twelve-year-old should have to feel. He was screaming my name. I could not hear it through the glass and the engine but I could read it on his lips, over and over, the same two syllables.
Nova. Nova. Nova.
The van accelerated.
He got smaller.
He kept running.
I pressed my hand flat against the cold glass and I kept my eyes on him until the van turned a corner and the street disappeared and there was nothing left to see. Just dark. Just the road. Just the sound of the engine carrying me somewhere I had not chosen, into a life I had not agreed to, decided by a man who could not even look at me while he did it.
My hand was still pressed against the window.
I made myself a promise in that dark van, quiet and simple and completely serious.
I was coming back for Reo.
I did not know how yet.
I did not know when.
But I was going to burn down every single thing that stood between me and that kid.
Every. Single. Thing.
I lowered my hand from the glass. I turned to face the front of the van. I straightened my back.
And I started planning.
The van slowed twenty minutes later and stopped somewhere that smelled like concrete and chemicals. The door opened. One of the men looked in at me and for just a second, something shifted on his face. Surprise, maybe. Or unease.
"She is not scared," he said quietly to the other one.
The other man looked in at me too. A longer look.
"She should be," he said.