Page 4 of The Vagabond

We were probably going to die there.

Not immediately. Not violently. Not in some cinematic blaze of glory. No—we were going to die slowly. In that crusty halfway house on the edge of nowhere, forgotten by everyone who once cared, and hunted by the ones who never did. The kind of place time forgot. Or maybe abandoned on purpose.

The paint peeled off the walls in long, curling strips like dead skin. The porch creaked under its own weight—and under ours, every time we paced it like caged animals. The air was thick with mildew and dust and bad memories that had soaked into the walls and stayed.

Mia said the monsters would come eventually. And when they did, it would be a fight to the death. At the time, I thought she was being dramatic. But now? What the fuck did I know? Because in the space of a week, our whole world had crumbled.

Dad died.

Then the phone calls started—silent, breath-heavy, careful threats meant to wear us down. Then the house got hit. Twice. Mason grabbed us in the dead of night, threw us into his carwithout so much as a plan, and dumped us in that decaying house like broken furniture.

Just me, Sophia, and Mia. Our trio. Our tragedy. And right then? I was pretty sure Mia wanted to smother both of us with a pillow and call it mercy. We were driving her insane. And honestly? I got it. Sophia and I weren’t built for hiding. We were built for lipstick and lighting, nights out and attention. We were nineteen, restless, and wired wrong with grief and boredom.

We snapped at each other constantly—over the stupidest shit. Who got the last packet of ramen. Who used up all the hot water. Who stole whose mascara. And Mia—our twenty-five-year-old, overly responsible, always-too-serious older sister—was unraveling by the hour. She hadn’t smiled in days. Had barely slept on that mattress-on-the-floor excuse for a bed. Every second she wasn’t guarding us, she was standing at the window, clutching the curtain like it might save her if something came through the dark.

“Mason says this neighborhood’s perfect for laying low,” she told us. “No one would think to look here.”

Yeah. No one would look. Because it was dead out there. No cars. No neighbors. Just crumbling sidewalks and rotting porch swings. Houses that looked like they were built during the Depression and left to die during the Recession. This wasn’t hiding. This was waiting. And waiting felt a lot like drowning. The house itself groaned like it was trying to evict us. The water ran yellow. The plumbing whined like a dying thing. Everything smelled faintly of mothballs and hopelessness.

Mason dropped off supplies every few days. Always with that same haunted look. Always with the same line:

“Just a little longer.”

But none of it felt temporary anymore. Even the shampoo he brought felt like a metaphor—two-in-one, hotel-grade, the kind that made your hair feel like itbelonged to someone else. I hadn’t felt clean in days. Not really. I was starting to forget what being myself even felt like. And that scared me more than any monster waiting outside.

Then came the truth—or the pieces Mia let us hear. Dad had been stealing from dangerous people. The kind who didn’t send court summons when you crossed them. They sent guns. They sent silent warnings.

And now there was a bounty on our heads we couldn’t buy our way out of, no matter how many boots or handbags we pawned.

I hated him for it. Not just for dying. But for leaving us behind to pay for his sins.

I flopped onto the couch like it might swallow me whole.

“How much longer do we have to stay in this dump?” I grumbled.

Sophia didn’t even look up.

She was busy examining her nails with the intensity of a surgeon.

“God, I’m so overdue for a manicure that it’s physically hurting me.”

Mia didn’t blink. Still at the window, scanning the street like she was waiting for the devil himself to show up. Her jaw was clenched so tight it looked like it hurt. Her eyes were hollowed out from too many nights without sleep.

“The alternative is being trafficked or killed,” she said flatly. “So yeah, I’m good with this hellhole.”

Sophia rolled her eyes. “Dark much?”

“She’s not wrong,” I muttered, picking at a loose thread on the couch. “You’ve seen the guys Dad did business with. Not exactly the boy-next-door vibe.”

Sophia smirked. “That’s one way to meet a billionaire.”

Mia turned. Slowly. Her gaze could’ve shattered glass.

“A billionaire who buys girls isn’t someone you want to meet, Sophia.”

Sophia twirled a piece of hair around her finger, playing dumb. But I saw it—the flicker of unease in her eyes. We were annoying and we knew it. We were being brats. But neither of us knew how to stop. The walls were too close; the days too long. Our whole lives had been ripped away, and now we were expected to behave like grateful refugees.

“You’re going to die alone and bitter,” Sophia said, directing her words at Mia with a dramatic sigh.

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