The Vows of Vengeance
The walls of the hospital corridor were far too white—sterile, silent, suffocating.
Melissa stood by the vending machine, her hands trembling as she held a cup of lukewarm coffee she hadn’t sipped. Her mother was in the room beside her father’s ICU, sobbing quietly, shoulders hunched, asking the same question Melissa had no answer for: How will we pay for the surgery?
The weight of her decision hung heavy in her chest like a stone.
She had signed the papers. Sold herself.
And now, her stepfather—her father—the man who shielded her from abuse, who once walked out of his own job just to attend her school recital, lay bruised, unconscious, and dying inside.
The sound of polished shoes striking the tiled floor echoed through the hallway. Slow. Deliberate. Dangerous.
