Chapter 89: Ruby
There are two kinds of people in this world:
People who are born knowing how to be soft.
And people who aren’t given the chance.
I am the second.
They say blood runs thicker than water, but in my childhood, blood was just another stain that didn’t wash out of the floorboards.
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I. The Knife Before the Name
My earliest memory is not my mother’s face.
It is a hand.
A large one — callused, impatient — shoving me behind a crate while sand filled the air like broken glass. The smell of gunpowder burned my lungs. My ears rang from shouting — not of fear, but of orders. Men barked them. Boys obeyed.
Girls weren’t supposed to be there at all.
But I was. Ruby Steele — property of the Crimson Jackals.
I learned to throw a knife before I learned to spell my own name.
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