The first thing I heard after they shattered my hearing was laughter. The second was silence, thick and permanent, swallowing the entire left side of my world.

Rain hammered the stone steps of Hawthorne Academy as I staggered through the gates, one hand pressed against my bleeding ear. My blazer was torn. My ribs burned every time I breathed. Behind me, three seniors in navy coats watched from beneath the archway, smiling as if they had completed a school tradition instead of nearly killing me.

“Don’t be dramatic, Eli,” one called. “You wanted to belong.”

I kept walking.

By the time I reached our townhouse on East Seventy-Fourth Street, my shoes were filling with water. I expected my mother to be home. I expected panic, an ambulance, perhaps one honest question.

Instead, I found two suitcases by the door.

My stepfather, Victor Hale, stood in the foyer with his sleeves rolled up, calmly folding my clothes into a duffel bag.

He was polished in public—a philanthropist, defense consultant, academy donor. At home, he treated kindness like a weakness that needed correcting.

He looked at my bloodied face and sighed.

“Look at you,” he said. “A broken loser.”

I stared at him.

“Hawthorne called. They said you started trouble. Do you understand what this does to our family reputation?”

“They locked me in the boiler room,” I said. My own voice sounded distant and warped.

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