Page 2 of One of Them (Beyond Ties #1)

The fear previously occupying her brain disappeared. If anything, she was feeling a strange sense of thrill. A pulsing under her skin that got her blood pumping. As if there was an adventure awaiting ahead.

Maybe it was her imagination running wild; she knew it often did. But in this instance, she possessed what she lacked before: a purpose.

She loved to daydream. In the darkest moments of the day, the girl would imagine herself being more than an orphaned teenager, but the road ahead had too many holes. Holes she had to patch up to move forward.

Her mother was gone.

Alone in the safety of the apartment she now occupied, the girl watched the news. A picture of a house on fire stared back, and all she could think about was how unfamiliar the structure looked from the front, the street the reporter stood at .

Grief and anger stirred inside her, but the tears refused to come. Too many nights she’d spent crying, exhausting herself to the point of passing out.

Many possibilities flashed in her brain during the endless hours of the night. Calling the police. Accepting help. Nothing ever felt right.

Maybe she felt like she owed it to her mother to keep her word.

Maybe part of her had something to prove. Or maybe she was already too lost.

She shut off the TV and crawled back to bed.

Taya was the girl’s name. The one who fixes. She briefly recalled the stories of a girl who healed wounds buried deep. Fairy tales in a foreign language her mother knew but never spoke aloud or taught her.

It made no difference.

No cure was strong enough to patch the emptiness within her. No force could fight the poison spreading through her. Nowhere to hide from the darkness of the world she’d entered.

In society’s eyes, she never existed. But Taya refused to see herself as a nobody. Under the darkness of the night, with only the quiet driver for a witness, she vowed in the yellow taxi that she’d become somebody. Somebody who wouldn’t cross paths with fear ever again.

With money and a place to stay, she’d remain focused on one thing and one thing only: becoming the best version of herself.

She only needed to figure out what that meant first.