Chapter One
Sabrina
A beam of sunlight slipped through the gap in the curtains, stretching across the worn wooden floor of my apartment.
Calling it an apartment was generous. It was little more than a single room with faded wallpaper, a kitchenette barely worthy of the name and a bathroom where the pipes complained louder than I ever did. It wasn't much, but it was mine.
More importantly, no one knew I lived here.
As far as everyone else was concerned, I still returned to the orphanage every evening, ate whatever passed for dinner and spent another night squeezed into a room with dozens of other girls.
They were wrong.
I'd been gone for five months.
The floorboards creaked beneath my feet as I climbed out of bed, rubbing the last of the sleep from my eyes. I'd forgotten to close the curtains again. Not that it mattered. There wasn't much worth stealing besides the kettle, and I was fairly certain it had one foot in the grave already.
The shower took its usual thirty seconds to turn ice-cold. I barely noticed anymore.
By the time I stepped back into the room, I was dressed in faded jeans, a black hoodie and my old trainers. I slipped my keys into my pocket and glanced around the tiny space.
I could afford somewhere better. A bigger apartment, a warmer one, maybe even somewhere the shower didn't feel like punishment.
But every spare dollar had a purpose, and none of it involved me.
It belonged to Dario.
Everything I earned, everything I saved and every sacrifice I made was for him.
I never wanted to go back to the orphanage. Not after everything that had happened. But I did.
Every single day.
My whole life was still there.
After my foster parents died, Dario and I ended up in the system. I was already part of it; that's how my foster parents had come into my life in the first place. Dario, however, was their biological son.
My little brother.
My whole world.
When I was kicked out, he stayed behind. As grateful as I was to have escaped that place, leaving him there was something I'd never forgive myself for.
Especially with Margaret running it.
I wouldn't trust that woman with my life, and I certainly didn't trust her with Dario's.
By eight o'clock, I was out of the apartment and walking through the same neighbourhood I'd crossed every morning for the past five months. Broken bottles, crushed beer cans and rubbish littered the streets, none of it ever seeming to disappear.
At the end of the street, the man who lived behind the bright yellow door was screaming at his wife. From the sound of it, he'd caught her cheating.
The irony wasn't lost on me.
He'd done the exact same thing to her.
Hypocrite.
I carried on until Sweet Puffs came into view.
The tiny pastel-coloured bakery, wedged between a pawn shop and a liquor store, had become part of my daily routine.
The elderly couple who owned it were some of the kindest people I'd ever met, and they'd stopped charging me full price once they realised the pastries were for the children at the orphanage.
This morning, they added a few extra pastries to my order, as they often did. I thanked them, balanced the boxes against my hip and continued towards the orphanage.
By the time I reached the building, my arms ached from carrying them, but I didn't complain. I'd carried heavier things in my life.
Some of the heaviest couldn't be seen.
The building loomed in front of me, grey, tired and peeling. It smelled faintly of bleach and disappointment. The kind of place that looked as though hope had visited once, taken one look around and never come back.
I nudged the front gate open with my foot, balancing the boxes against my hip.
Three little faces appeared in the window, their eyes widening the moment they spotted me. A second later, they disappeared, replaced by the thunder of small feet racing down the hallway.
The door flew open.
“She's here!”
“She brought the pastries!”
A swarm of children rushed towards me, stopping just short of knocking me over. Not because they were well behaved, but because they'd all been warned not to make me drop the food.
“Alright, alright,” I laughed, lowering the boxes slightly. “Back up, gremlins. You'll get your pastries if you stop acting like you haven't eaten in a hundred years.”
“But breakfast was boring,” one of them complained.
“Everything's boring to you if it isn't made of sugar,” I muttered, unable to hide my smile.
Then I saw him.
Standing just behind the others, clutching his stuffed dinosaur, curls a mess as always, his eyes lit up the second they met mine.
Dario.
“Hi,” he said quietly, unable to hide the excitement in his voice.
“Hey, little man.” I crouched to meet his eyes. “Ready for your sugar high?”
He nodded, his grin growing wider.
Before I could say anything else, a sharp voice cut through the moment.
“Well, well. Look who finally decided to show up.”
Perfect.
Margaret.
I stood, adjusting the boxes against my hip.
“Morning, Margaret.”
Her eyes flicked towards the pastries before returning to me.
“Where exactly are you getting the money to buy all these every week?”
There it was. The question she'd been dying to ask for months.
I blinked innocently.
“Nonya.”
She frowned. “Nonya what?”
“Nonya business.”
“Don't be ridiculous.”
“Then stop asking questions that aren't your concern.”
I heard Dario trying – and failing – to hide a laugh behind his dinosaur.
Margaret's glare sharpened.
“You must think you're very funny.”
“Occasionally.”
“And stop calling me Margaret. My name is not Margaret.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“If the shoe fits.”
“It does not.”
“Agree to disagree.”
She drew in a slow breath through her nose.
“I'll be reporting this attitude.”
“Feel free.”
I walked past her with Dario close beside me, then glanced over my shoulder.
“And while you're at it, you can tell them you kicked a minor out of the orphanage.”
She said nothing.
For once.
We headed into the kitchen, leaving Margaret to stew in her own misery. The moment the door swung open, warm chatter and the smell of stale toast washed over me.
I set the boxes on the counter, and the kids crowded around as though it were Christmas morning. They tore into the pastries, laughing as they traded their favourites.
I found myself glancing towards the hallway where Margaret had disappeared.
If she ever found out the truth...
Every doughnut, every croissant, every pastry had been paid for with the two thousand dollars deducted from her pay cheque every month.
Yeah.
That would be the sweetest treat of all.
Once the pastries had been handed out and the sugar-fuelled chaos began, I slipped away with Dario.
He took my hand as we made our way towards the bedrooms, holding it quietly and carefully, as though he was afraid that if he held on too tightly, I'd disappear.
The building hummed around us – children laughing in the dining room, Margaret shouting at someone for what was probably breathing too loudly, and the constant clatter of too many kids living under one roof.
Dario's “room” was one of the large dormitories.
Beds lined the walls in neat rows, each with a thin mattress and a blanket scratchy enough to be considered a crime.
Some of the children had decorated their spaces with drawings and battered toys.
Others had left theirs completely bare, as though they were afraid to get attached.
I hated this place a little more every time I walked into it.
Dario climbed onto his bed and patted the space beside him.
“Sit! Sit!”
I set his dinosaur down beside him before lowering myself onto the mattress. It squeaked beneath my weight.
Of course it did.
The second I sat down, he launched into one of his stories.
“And then yesterday Tommy said he could jump from the second step, but he fell and scraped his knee, and he didn't even cry. He just went like this–”
He screwed up his face into the fiercest expression a four-year-old could manage.
“Ooh!”
“And I made a new drawing! Wanna see?”
The words came so quickly I wasn't entirely convinced he'd remembered to breathe.
I leaned back on my hands and let him talk, committing every second to memory.
His voice was small, bright and wonderfully innocent.
Everything this place tried to take away.
His smile faded slightly.
“Are you staying long today?”
The question landed harder than it should have.
I reached over and tucked a curl behind his ear.
“As long as I can, little man.”
He nodded, accepting the answer even though it wasn't the one he wanted.
“Can you tell me a story?” he asked. “The one about the girl with the sword?”
I smiled.
“The one who definitely wasn't based on me?”
“Yes!” His face lit up. “That one!”
I laughed softly and took a breath.
Dario sat cross-legged beside me, hugging his dinosaur to his chest, his eyes fixed on me. I could have told him a story about a rock, and he'd still have listened as though it were the greatest story ever told.
“So,” I began, lowering my voice as though I were about to reveal the world's greatest secret, “once upon a time, there was a girl–”
“The one with the sword!” Dario interrupted.
“The very same.”
I smiled.
“Her sword was made from the last fallen star. Everyone underestimated her because she was young, small and smarter than all of them combined.”
“Like you,” Dario said with a grin.
I laughed softly.
“Maybe.”
For the next hour, I let the story carry us somewhere else. Somewhere there weren't peeling walls, crowded dormitories or people like Margaret.
Somewhere a brave little girl with a sword always won.
By the time I finished, Dario was practically bouncing on the bed.
“Again!” he begged.
I nudged his shoulder.
“Maybe next time.”
He pretended to pout, but the smile tugging at the corners of his mouth gave him away.
By the time I left the orphanage, the sky had already begun bruising into evening. I'd spent far longer there than I'd intended, but time always slipped away when I was with Dario.
Leaving him never got easier.
Every visit ended the same way. He'd hug me so tightly it was as though he thought letting go meant losing me all over again.
Months ago, Margaret had finally found an excuse to throw me out for good.
Apparently, disappearing for days at a time wasn't acceptable.
I'd tried telling her the truth. I'd told her exactly where I'd been.
She'd laughed in my face.
Called me a liar. Attention-seeking. Dramatic.
Then she threw me out anyway.
That night, Dario clung to me until he fell asleep against my chest. Margaret wanted me gone immediately, but I refused to leave until he woke up. Short of prying his fingers from my shirt in front of everyone, there was nothing she could do.
After that, I never stayed at the orphanage again.
Not officially.
On the nights I wasn't working, I'd climb through the back window, slip into the dormitory and sleep beside Dario until dawn. I'd leave before anyone else woke up.
Except him.
He always knew.
I smiled to myself as I walked home through streets I knew by heart.
One day, I wouldn't have to leave him behind. One day, I'd walk into that orphanage for the last time, and we'd never look back.
By the time I reached my neighbourhood, the streetlights had begun flickering to life, washing the cracked pavements in pools of amber light. After five months of walking these streets, every broken fence and uneven pavement had become familiar.
Right on cue, the old man across the street spotted me.
“Hey, sweetheart,” he called, his voice rough from cigarettes and too many bad decisions. “Looking good today.”
I didn't slow down.
“Come keep me company.”
I glanced at the empty glass bottle in my hand before looking back at him.
Without breaking stride, I tossed it.
It sailed past him and smashed against the brick wall behind him. He flinched so hard he nearly tripped over his own feet.
I kept walking.
“Huh,” I said casually. “Must've slipped.”
Behind me, he muttered something I couldn't make out.
Good. Maybe next time he'd keep his mouth shut.
My apartment came into view a few minutes later. It wasn't much – small, tired and barely holding itself together.
But it was mine.
And tomorrow, I'd do it all again.
Because Dario was still trapped in that place.
Until I brought him home, nothing else mattered.