The Day He Learned the Truth, I Was Already Dead Chapter 02

The Day He Learned the Truth, I Was Already Dead Chapter 02

Too cold to sleep, I forced myself up and moved around to warm my body.

The second I stood, I saw a little homeless girl ahead of me, a man’s hand clamped over her mouth as he dragged her away.

I knew that kind of grip. He was a trafficker!

Without thinking, I ignored the severe pain in my head, lunged forward and sank my teeth into his wrist as hard as I could.

I hit him with everything I had, fists, elbows, knees, but my strength was nothing next to his. He kicked me so hard a rib of mine broke, and I only stopped when I saw the girl stumble free.

I barely felt the pain. I just stared at her, safe, and laughed like an idiot. Then the laughter broke, and tears started pouring out of me.

Because no one understood better than I did which was worse, being trafficked or living as a beggar.

Five years ago, on Ava’s birthday.

All it took was one sentence from her, delivered through tears. “Brandon! Sylvia said I’m fake, that I stole her life! She said she’s going to sell me to traffickers!”

That same night, security caught a suspicious man creeping around the back garden. He swore I had paid him to kidnap Ava.

I couldn’t prove a thing, and my brother refused to believe me. His eyes burned with rage when his hand came down across my face, and then he turned around and handed me to the traffickers themselves.

“I thought I spoiled you enough that you’d grow out of those nasty habits. Instead you got more arrogant, more vicious.”

“Before Mom and Dad passed, I promised them I’d raise you right. If the gentle approach doesn’t work, then you’ll learn the hard way!”

On the first day, they snapped one of my legs and sold me into an illegal labor ring. Sometimes I worked two straight days and nights without a single meal.

Other times they shipped me off to a circus, locked me in a cage like an animal, and let people point and laugh like I was less than a dog.

I even managed to steal a phone once. I called Brandon, sobbing, begging him to bring me home. Yet his voice stayed flat and relentless.

“I promised Ava you’d suffer for five full years. That’s the only way to knock the edge off you for good, so you never dare bully her again.”

Ava. Ava. Why was it always her?

From the first day I was brought back into that house, she framed me for everything. And every time, Brandon sided with her. Gradually, I became the villain in his mind.

After that call, I collapsed and cried until I could not breathe. Then I stopped craving the family love I had spent my whole childhood missing.

I went numb, letting them move me, use me, break me… until one night, a box they kept me in wasn’t locked. I rolled down a hillside in the dark and managed to escape.

Terrified they would drag me back, I didn’t dare show my face or get a real job, so I made a living by begging and other vagrant ways.

I collected bottles for months and finally scraped together enough money to see a doctor about old injuries, only to be told I had late-stage brain cancer.

Back to the reality, the little girl reached up and gently touched my face, wiping away my tears. Then she draped half her coat over my shoulders, and we huddled together for warmth.

Somewhere in the distance, a massive commercial screen lit up with a breaking story.

“Mr. Wilcox buys his sister a top-tier American estate, valued at one hundred million dollars! The world-class philanthropist does it again. The kinder he is, the more his fortune grows!”

The girl stared at the mansion on the screen, then looked up at me with wide, shining eyes. “Will everyone have a home? Then I hope you and I both have one someday!”

I went still. A home?

The orphanage had been home for all us children when I was little. After I was “found,” that so-called “home” was occupied by Ava.

Now, with my life on a countdown, I suddenly wanted a home of my own after death. So I started collecting bottles day and night, selling scrap, doing all kinds of hard labor.

Finally, I saved enough to reserve a burial plot.