Her father agreed, eventually, to sponsor the boy. Soren.
She had given him her lucky bear. With this, you’ll be as lucky as me.
But he’d refused to stay. When he left, she chased him until she fell, knees bloodied—he never turned back.
---
Years later, her father’s money had made him the new darling of Kingsport. Marriage offers piled at his door, but he courted her obsessively: renting every city billboard for ninety-nine days of proposals, planting a thousand and one roses in Bulgaria, climbing three thousand steps to pray for her safety.
Bleeding from the effort, he had pressed a string of heirloom rosary onto her head.
“Linnea, I love you. I’d die for you.”
She had believed him. Loved him. Married him.
And tonight, he had sold her.
---
After the man was finished, she stumbled to the bathroom, scrubbing at her skin until it burned—but she couldn’t wash the violation away.
Her reflection was a ghost: hollow eyes, wet cheeks, wrists marked with the pale ridges of old suicide attempts.
“Why?” she whispered, voice breaking. “Why?”
She had told him a thousand times she had never harmed his sister. He had never listened.
Through her tears, a brittle laugh tore out of her.