Chapter 1 — Let Go!

Eliana's POV

"Aaaargh … stop, STOP!"

Even with the scream tearing out of my throat, I was dragged and shoved hard against the iron bookshelf lining the school corridor. My back hit it first, and the impact rattled through my entire spine like something had cracked loose inside me.

I hissed through my teeth, squeezing my eyes shut for a second before forcing them back open. I couldn't afford to zone out right now. Not with Sara Owen standing three feet in front of me looking like she'd been planning this moment since she woke up this morning.

Knowing Sara … she probably had.

“You both need to make her feel this pain to the core.” Sara snapped and let out a devilish smirk.

"Can you just stop?" I screamed out helplessly as the two girls on either side of me tightened their grip on Sara’s order, one on each arm, pinning me against the shelf like I was something that needed to be mounted to a wall.

I twisted. Pulled. Yet, it was no use.

This was like the everyday routine for the longest time, as long as I could remember. But today's pain felt different. Like Sara had decided that whatever she usually did wasn't enough anymore and she needed to level up.

That thought alone made my stomach drop.

"Everyone should know the truth," Sara said, her voice low and firm and deliberate … the kind of voice that didn't need to be loud to be deadly. She had that look on her face too. The one she reserved for moments like this, where she wanted you to understand that what was about to happen wasn't personal.

It was just business.

‘My’ business. ’My’ humiliation.

"The Cross heiress has fallen from grace." She tilted her head slightly, and I hated the way her eyes moved over me … slowly, like she was reading a label on something expired. "And now she's nothing but a pathetic, homeless peasant who lives out of her car."

Something cold shot through my chest.

Not because it wasn't true. But because I heard my little secret said out loud, in the middle of this corridor, with people already starting to slow their walk to see what was happening … it hit differently. Like a slap you saw coming and still weren't ready for.

‘Don't react. Don't let her see it land.’

I dug my nails into my palm and held her stare. "You don't know what you're talking about."

Sara smiled. That small, dangerous smile that meant she absolutely did know what she was talking about, and we both knew it.

I tried to struggle again. My shoulder screamed in protest from where one of the girls had it locked back, and I bit down on the inside of my cheek hard enough to taste something metallic. Getting physical with them was pointless as they had me completely pinned — but standing still felt impossible when everything in me was screaming to move, to run, to get out of this corridor before anything else happened.

‘Come on, Eliana. Think.’

And then I saw it.

Sara reached into her blazer pocket and pulled out a marker pen. Black cap, thick tip. She uncovered it with this calm, unbothered energy, like she had all the time in the world. And she was looking directly at my forehead when she did it.

My stomach turned over completely.

‘No. No, no, no…’

I didn't even let myself finish the thought. I threw my weight sideways, twisting my whole body against the grip on my arms, and for a half second I almost got free … almost — before they yanked me back and the shelf rattled against my shoulder blades again.

"Hold her still," Sara said, not even raising her voice.

I had subconsciously closed my eyes and opened them in between because I genuinely didn't know what she was going to achieve with this act. And that not-knowing was somehow worse than anything else. Because this was Sara. And Sara didn't do small things when she could do something that followed you for the rest of the year. With the way this was going, whatever she wrote on my forehead right now would be photographed and shared before I made it to my next class. I knew that without a single doubt.

The marker tip was inches from my face.

Something in me just snapped, abruptly.

I acted on pure defense instinct with a little touch of survival mood being activated, and before I even made a conscious decision to do it over better still, before I even registered what was happening … I opened my mouth and bit down on Sara's left hand.

Real Hard.

"Ahhhhhh!"

She yanked back so fast that she stumbled, and the marker hit the floor with a sharp clatter sound that echoed off the corridor walls. Her two girls immediately rushed toward her, fussing, and their grip on me loosened just enough …

I ran.

I didn't look back. I didn't even think. My feet just moved and I let them, arms pumping, heart slamming against my ribs, and the sound of the marker skittering across the floor tiles still ringing in my ears as I rounded the first corner I could find.

"Get her!"*l

Sara's voice cut through the corridor behind me, sharp and furious, and I felt rather than heard the shift … the second the sound of footsteps went from scattered to ‘purposeful.’

They were coming.

I pushed harder, faster, cutting through the small gaps between students who had no idea what was happening, dodging a group of juniors who barely had time to register that I was there before I was already past them. My lungs were starting to burn big time. Also, my shoulder still ached from the shelf. But none of that mattered right now because if Sara caught me a second time, it wouldn't just be a marker to the forehead.

‘Oh no. This is like my worst nightmare.’

I risked a glance back.

Too close. They were too close already, and the corridor was starting to thin out ahead in less people, less cover — and I could feel the gap between us shrinking with every second.

‘The whole school could find out my secret because of this.’ That thought punched through everything else and sat heavy in my gut even while I was running. Because Sara hadn't just been talking back there. She hadn't been making empty threats to scare me. She'd said it loud and deliberately, with her girls or rather ‘accomplice’ around … ‘homeless peasant, lives out of her car’ — and Sara never wasted words. She said things because she wanted them heard.

Which meant by the time school ended today, everyone would know.

I felt something close to grief move through me, even mid-sprint. That secret was the last thing I had that was still mine. The last wall standing between me and complete, total exposure. And Sara had just taken a sledgehammer to it in the middle of a school corridor with an audience.

‘Keep running. Fall apart later.’

I was already saying my last prayer in my head, calculating the distance to the stairwell at the end of the hall, wondering if I could make it before they closed the gap completely … when I ran directly into someone.

Not someone.

Two people instead.

I hit the space between their shoulders and felt the impact go through me like a collision … broad, solid, unmovable — and I bounced back slightly before a set of hands caught me from either side, steadying me before I could hit the floor.

For a second, I just stood there with my chest heaving, trying to figure out if I had just escaped one bad situation and ran straight into a worse one.

I forced myself to look up.

Two faces. Both were unfamiliar. Both … and I couldn't help noticing this even in the middle of everything as it was not what I was expecting at all. I didn't know either of them. At least, I was certain of that. You didn't forget faces like these. And yet, somewhere in the back of my mind, in a place I couldn't quite reach…

…’I've seen you before.’

The thought was there and gone in the same second, too strange and too distracting to hold onto right now.

What I did notice and what actually registered was the way they had already positioned themselves without saying anything, without looking at each other, without what felt like any deliberate coordination at all. One on my left. One on my right. And somehow, without either of them making a big deal out of it, I was covered.

All of a sudden, the footsteps behind me had stopped.

I turned carefully while still catching my breath, and the corridor behind me was empty. Sara and her girls were gone. Just like that. Like they'd evaporated the second these two appeared, and I hadn't even heard them leave.

I didn't know what had happened. I didn't fully understand what had just shifted in the air in the space of about thirty seconds. But something eventually had.

I turned back to the two of them and exhaled slowly, trying to arrange my face into something that didn't look like I had just been running for my life.

"Thank you guys, um…" I straightened up, stepped back slightly to create a little breathing room between us, and offered what I hoped looked like a normal, composed smile. "I should go now."

I moved to leave.

But then, I felt one palm from each of them landing gently but firmly on each of my shoulders at the exact same time.

Drawing me back.