And he sold me like I wasnothing.
Like I wasinventory.
Eventually—I don't know how long—the shaking slows. The hyperventilating eases. My combat medic brain notes the shift: acute stress transitioning to processing. Still traumatized. Still shocky. But functional.
I look up at the cracked bathroom mirror from my position on the floor.
The woman looking back is a stranger.
Blood crusted at her temple from the pistol-whip three days ago. Butterfly bandages pulling the cut closed. Face pale beneath the desert dust. Eyes red-rimmed and wild.
But not broken.
I watch her in the mirror—watch myself—and something shifts.
Tyler sold me.
That's the truth. That's the reality. That's what my baby brother—the one I raised, the one I loved, the one I would have died for—chose to do.
But I'm not dead.
I'm here. In this abandoned ranch house with a Guardian operative who went rogue to save me. I'm armed. I'm trained. I'm not that helpless woman zip-tied to a chair anymore.
Tyler made his choice.
Now I make mine.
I stand. My legs are unsteady, but they hold.
I run cold water over my hands, splash it on my face. The water is rust-brown and probably not safe to drink, but I don't care. I need to wash the vomit taste from my mouth. Need to look less like I'm falling apart.
The woman in the mirror watches me. Maggie Brooks. Magnolia Brooks. Former Army combat medic. Survivor of deployment, IEDs, and firefights.
Survivor of this, too.
I grip the edge of the sink, lean close to my reflection, and make myself say it out loud:
"Tyler sold you to a cartel. Your brother—your baby brother—gambled away everything and paid his debt with your life."
The words should break me again. Should send me back to the floor, back to the shaking and heaving.
But they don't.
Because somewhere between the vomiting and the memories and the grief—I've moved past denial.
I'm not arguing with reality anymore.
I'm not making excuses.
Tyler did this. Tyler chose this. And when those cartel members come back—because they will come back—I'm not dying for his mistakes.
Something in my chest that's been soft for twenty-seven years hardens into something sharp.
I'm walking out of this desert.
And Tyler?
Tyler is going to face what he's done.
