The day I received my Harvard acceptance letter, my brother Joziah tore apart my future with his own hands—and ripped my beating heart right out of my chest along with it. He claimed Emmeline, the fake wealthy daughter raised in our family, was born with a fragile heart. He accused me of deliberately provoking and hurting her just because my exam scores were three hundred points higher than hers.
He transplanted my healthy heart into Emmeline’s chest, fitted me with the cheapest artificial heart money could buy, and abandoned me in the slums of Roxbury.
For four long years, I never received the monthly three thousand dollars he had promised me, nor did I ever meet the guardian he’d sworn would look after me. All I endured was endless darkness, brutal beatings, humiliating insults, and overwhelming despair—slowly wasting away, little by little, until I had nothing left.
After I died, my soul was trapped, forced to follow him everywhere. I watched him finally come looking for me, only because he needed me gone to make way for Emmeline’s grand celebration banquet. He grabbed my dirty, terrified little son Kylen and demanded he tell him where I was.
But Kylen could only cry broken…
