Echoes of a Stolen Life

ry time I closed my eyes, I saw their faces from that last dinner, a grotesque portrait of greed and manipulation. My father' s cold command, my mother'

s. He just wanted the cash up front. It was perfect. I was a ghost, and this was a ghost' s life. I needed to stay invisible

taught myself to code. I had a natural talent for it, a logical mind that found comfort in the clean, unforgiving rules of p

ch sectors of the tech industry were about to explode. I had a

to pay for my room and food while I worked on my real projects. I found a job washing dishes at a greasy diner. The hours were long, the pay was terribl

y face, and I coded. I wrote lines of code until my fingers were stiff and my eyes burned. The anger was always there, a low hum beneath the surface. I

d connections." The memory was sharp, a jab of pain. They saw me as a quiet, socially awkward boy, a tool to be used and di

was chipping away at the naive boy I used to be, hardening me into the man I needed to become. I was shedding my

academic awards were met with a brief nod. It was in the way my father would discuss future business plans with Noah, even when he was just a teenag

ods from the other kitchen staff. It was a world away from my family' s passive-aggressive manipulations. Here, things were

sses. I knew from my past life that there was a huge market for affordable, user-friendly softwar

n. There were moments of doubt, dark hours in the middle of the night when the loneliness felt overwhelming and the goal seemed impossibly far away. In those moments, I would

ught up in their own struggles to notice anyone else. But I preferred it this way. Attachments were a weakness I couldn't afford. My only compani