When I was fifteen, three organ traffickers pinned me against a fetid garbage heap in the
slums. A cold scalpel pressed to my eyeball, a hair’s breadth from tearing it out.Three gunshots
split the silence. A man drenched in blood knelt before me. With hands tainted by bloodshed,
he brushed the muddy filth from my face and calmed my trembling spirit. From that moment
onward, my life belonged to him.A decade slipped by. I welded hardened-steel chains fast
around his ankles. Every meal was prepared by my own hands. I whispered *I love you* to him
hundreds of times over.He could have shattered those chains whenever he wished, yet he
chose not to until the night of the Ross family’s engagement banquet. That night, he broke
free.I crashed through the banquet hall’s glass windows in an armored vehicle. At the head of
the Sterling Consortium’s full armed contingent, I trod across pools of crimson blood and stood
face-to-face with him.His life and death rest in my hands, and mine alone
