Behind Chains and Coffins

The Scars She Hid From The World

REGINA MCBRIDE

The heavy iron gates of the Wilderness Correction Camp groaned as they released me after three years of state-sponsored hell. I stood on the dirt road, clutching a plastic bag that held my entire life, waiting for the family that claimed they sent me there for "rehab." My brother, Brady, picked me up in a luxury SUV only to throw me out onto a deserted highway in the middle of a brewing storm. He told me I was a "public relations nightmare" and that the rain might finally wash the "stink" of the camp off me. He drove away, leaving me to limp miles through the mud on a snapped ankle. When I finally dragged myself to our family estate, my mother didn't offer a hug; she gasped in horror because my muddy clothes were ruining her Italian marble. They didn't give me my old room back. Instead, they banished me to a moldy gardener’s shack and hired a "babysitter" to make sure I didn't embarrass them further. My sister, Kaleigh, stood there in white cashmere, pretending to cry while clinging to her fiancé, Ambrose—the man who had once been mine. They all treated me like a volatile junkie, refusing to acknowledge that Kaleigh was the one who planted the drugs in my bag three years ago. They wanted to believe I was broken so they wouldn't have to feel guilty about the "wellness retreat" that was actually a torture chamber. I sat in the dark of that shed, feeling the cooling gel on the cigarette burns that covered my arms, and realized they had made a fatal mistake. They thought they had erased me, but I had returned with a roadmap of scars and a hidden satellite phone. At dinner, I didn't beg for their love. I simply rolled up my sleeves and showed them the price of their silence. As the wine spilled and the lies crumbled, I sent a single text to the only person I trusted: "I'm in. Let them simmer." The hunt was finally on.

Modern Revenge Scheming Kickass Heroine Comeback Revenge

Download the Book on the App

Emily's POV

I woke to darkness.

Not silence - the kind of dark that breathes, whispering things you can't quite hear. My head pounded. My limbs felt like stone.

I tried to move. Heavy chains - iron ones, cold against my skin - bolted me to the wall behind me. My wrists and ankles were bound.

I wasn't in a hospital.

This wasn't the recovery room.

The last thing I remembered was the doctor's voice:

You'll sleep a little, and when you wake, the world will be waiting.

Well, it was.

But not the world I knew.

The air was thick with mold and rot. The faint flicker of firelight slipped through a grated door across the room. Stone walls bled dampness. I could smell old blood, dried, and something more primal.

My pulse kicked. "Hello?" I whispered. "Is someone there?"

No response.

Until I heard footsteps.

Heavy boots echoed against stone. The door creaked open.

A man stepped through-towering, broad, dressed in black leathers with a crimson sash and a silver emblem on his chest: a crescent moon coiled in serpents.

He didn't look like a doctor, or someone I'd recognize, or anything safe.

"You're awake," he said.

I stared, throat tight. "Where... where am I?"

He didn't answer right away. Instead, he crouched just outside my reach and studied me like I was something strange, something beneath him.

"This is the Kingdom of Opsia," he finally said, his tone flat, distant.

Opsia? I'd heard the name in whispers, in nightmares.

"There's a mistake," I croaked. "I shouldn't be here. Please - there has to be a mistake."

He tilted his head. "Everyone says that at first."

"What did I do? I didn't-"

"Enough." His voice cut sharp and final. "You'll find out what you are when the prince decides."

The prince?

Before I could ask anything else, he stood and walked out, slamming the door shut behind him.

Darkness swallowed me again.

But now, it pressed on my chest like a weight. Every creak in the stone, every flicker of shadow felt like a warning.

Why was I here?

My heart twisted. Flashes of my father's strange behavior flickered - the way he'd avoided me for days, the sudden desperation, the quiet phone calls. Was this his plan all along?

Before I could process it, the door groaned again. Another figure entered - different this time.

A woman. I think.

Read Now