Time stopped being measured in days. It was measured in pain.

Month one. Dorothea sat at the metal cafeteria table, staring at her plastic tray. A thick glob of spit slid down the side of her mashed potatoes. She picked up her plastic spoon, scooped around it, and forced the food down her throat. She had to eat to survive.

Month three. She was assigned to the laundry room. She was folding a rough cotton sheet when Rhonda walked by. Rhonda grabbed the heavy, industrial steam iron and deliberately pressed the scorching metal plate directly against Dorothea's forearm.

Dorothea screamed, the smell of her own burning flesh filling her nose. When she tried to show the guard the blistering, oozing burn, the guard hit her in the stomach with a baton and threw her in solitary confinement for a week.

Year one. The sirens wailed in the middle of the night. Black, choking smoke poured into the cell block from a fire in the kitchen. The guards panicked and locked the gates.

Dorothea couldn't see. The heat was unbearable. She heard a young girl-Jada, a nineteen-year-old who had shared her food once-screaming in the corner. Dorothea crawled on her hands and knees through the thickest part of the smoke, grabbing Jada by the collar and dragging her toward the ventilation grate.

Dorothea inhaled lungfuls of toxic, burning chemicals. Her throat felt like it was coated in battery acid. When they finally pulled her out, her vocal cords were permanently scarred. Her voice was gone, replaced by a harsh, grating rasp.

Year two. A massive brawl broke out in the yard. Dorothea tried to back away, but someone hit her in the back of the head with a padlock wrapped in a sock.

She woke up in the prison infirmary. A sharp, agonizing pain radiated from her lower back.

The prison doctor, a man with dead eyes, stood over her. "You took a bad hit to the kidney during the riot. It ruptured. We had to do an emergency removal to save your life."

Dorothea stared at the ceiling. She knew it was a lie. There was no riot near her. She had been targeted. Her kidney was gone, carved out of her body and sold on the black market by the people Alfredo paid to destroy her.

Her body was permanently broken. If she stood for too long, a deep, sickening ache throbbed in her empty side.

Year three. Rhonda was transferred to a maximum-security facility for stabbing another inmate. Before she walked out the gates, Rhonda looked at Dorothea. There was no mockery in her eyes anymore. Only a strange, twisted respect.

Everyone in the block knew. You could beat 926, you could burn her, you could cut pieces out of her, but you couldn't kill her. She was a cockroach.

The day her sentence ended, the heavy metal gates of Rikers Island buzzed open.

No one was waiting for her.

She walked out holding a clear plastic bag containing a pair of cheap jeans, a faded t-shirt, and forty-two dollars in prison wages.

The sunlight hit her face. It felt too bright, too aggressive. She raised a scarred, calloused hand to shield her eyes. She didn't feel free. She felt hollow.

She walked to the bus stop and stepped into the small public restroom.

She stood in front of the scratched mirror.

The woman looking back at her was a stranger. Her skin was a sickly, sallow yellow. Her cheekbones jutted out sharply against her hollow face. She was terrifyingly thin. Her hair was a dry, brittle mess of split ends.

She opened her mouth. "Dorothea," she whispered.

The sound was awful. It sounded like heavy sandpaper grinding against wood.

She reached into her pocket and pulled out her plastic prison ID card. The bold black numbers stared back at her. 926.

She dropped the card into the overflowing trash can.

She walked out of the bathroom and took a deep breath of the outside air. A passing truck blew a cloud of exhaust into her face, sending her into a violent, painful coughing fit. She clutched her side, waiting for the pain to pass.

She had nowhere to go. But she was alive.

The bus ride into Manhattan cost her fifteen dollars. She sat in the back row, her knees pressed tightly together, staring out the smeared window.

The city skyline rose in the distance, a glittering forest of glass and steel. It was the city she grew up in, but it felt like an alien planet. None of those lights belonged to her anymore.

A small TV screen behind the driver's seat played the local financial news.

"Hendrix Enterprises announces a hostile takeover of..." the anchor's voice droned.

The screen flashed to a segment on New York's most powerful CEOs. A file photo of Alfredo Hendrix appeared on the screen. He wore a custom Tom Ford suit. His jaw was sharp, his dark hair perfectly styled. He looked powerful, untouchable, and completely unaffected by the fact that he had spent the last three years torturing a woman in a cage.

Dorothea looked at his face. Her heart didn't race. Her hands didn't shake. She just felt a heavy, cold exhaustion. Hate required energy, and she didn't have any left. She turned her head and looked back out the window.

She got off at Times Square. The sheer volume of people, the blinding neon lights, and the deafening roar of traffic hit her like a physical blow. She stumbled, her head spinning. She hadn't been around this many people in three years.

Her stomach let out a loud, painful cramp. She hadn't eaten since the watery oatmeal at 5:00 AM.

She walked into a corner bodega. She stared at the pre-made sandwiches in the cooler, doing the math in her head. She couldn't afford them. She walked to the heated rollers and bought a single, shriveled hotdog for two dollars.

She sat on a dirty concrete bench near an alleyway, taking tiny, slow bites to make it last.

A shadow fell over her. A large, unwashed homeless man stepped up, his eyes locked on her food. He reached his hand out, stepping into her space.

Instinct took over. Dorothea didn't shrink back. She snapped her head up. Her eyes went dead, locking onto his with the feral, violent intensity she had learned in Cell Block D. She didn't say a word, but her body tensed, ready to strike the throat.

The man froze. He recognized the look of someone who had nothing left to lose. He backed away and shuffled down the street.

Dorothea relaxed her shoulders. The old Dorothea would have cried and handed over her purse. That girl was dead.

Night fell. The temperature dropped. She needed a place to sleep, but a cheap motel would wipe out her remaining twenty-five dollars.

She started walking, looking at the windows of restaurants and stores.

Waitress Wanted. Must have experience and presentable appearance. She looked down at her stained shirt and scarred arms. No.

Sales Associate. College degree required. Her degree had likely been scrubbed from the system when she was convicted. No.

She walked for hours, her bad leg dragging slightly, the dull ache in her lower back throbbing with every step.

She turned down a quiet, upscale street in the Meatpacking District. A sleek, black awning caught her eye.

The Velvet Room.

Dorothea stopped dead in her tracks. Her breath caught in her ruined throat.

This was the private club. The place where Emery died. The place where her life ended. It was a sick, twisted joke of the universe to lead her back here.

She turned to run away. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird. The very air around the building felt toxic, suffocating her with phantom scents of blood and panic. She made it half a block before her bad leg gave out. She leaned against a brick wall, shivering violently, the hollow ache of starvation twisting her empty stomach. She closed her eyes, trying to block out the memories, but Jada's voice echoed in her scarred mind. Live, Dottie. Live like a cockroach. Don't let them win. Hell's entrance, she realized with a sickening wave of resignation, was sometimes the only way to survive. She forced her eyes open and limped back toward the alleyway. That was when a small, white piece of paper taped to the heavy metal service door in the alley stopped her.

URGENT: Night Shift Cleaner. Must be willing to do heavy lifting. No background check required. Inquire within.

Cleaner.

She stared at the word. It was the bottom of the barrel. But it was cash. It was survival.

She remembered Jada, coughing up blood in the infirmary, grabbing Dorothea's hand.

Dorothea dug her fingernails into her palms. She walked up to the heavy metal door and pushed it open.

The air inside was thick with the smell of stale beer and industrial floor wax. A tired-looking man with a mop bucket looked up at her.

"What do you want?" he grunted.

"I'm here for the cleaner job," Dorothea rasped.

The man led her through a maze of narrow, concrete hallways to a small, cluttered office in the basement.

A woman sat behind a metal desk, aggressively typing on a laptop. She looked to be in her late forties, wearing a sharp blazer and a no-nonsense expression.

"Alicia, someone for the cleaning gig," the man said, turning and leaving immediately.

Alicia Rowe stopped typing. She looked up, her sharp eyes scanning Dorothea from the messy hair down to the scuffed prison-issue shoes.

"Name?" Alicia asked, her tone clipped.

"Dottie," Dorothea said, using the nickname. She didn't dare say Fowler.

Alicia's pen hovered over a notepad. "You sound like you swallow glass for breakfast. You sick?"

"No. Vocal cord damage," Dorothea rasped.

Alicia didn't blink. "Criminal record?"

Dorothea's chest tightened. She squeezed her hands into fists at her sides. If she lied, they would find out eventually.

"Yes," Dorothea said, her voice steady. "Felony."

Alicia leaned back in her chair. She looked surprised. Usually, the drifters lied until they were caught.

"Why are you here, Dottie?" Alicia asked, crossing her arms. "This isn't a halfway house. It's a high-end club. We cater to billionaires and politicians."

Dorothea looked her straight in the eye. "I need money. I need a bed. I have no degree, no references, and I've been out of society for three years. I have nothing but my hands and a strong back."

She paused, a bitter, self-deprecating smile touching her cracked lips. "It's better than selling my body on the street, isn't it?"

Alicia stared at her in silence. The ticking of the wall clock sounded incredibly loud.

Alicia had hired hundreds of desperate people. But she had never seen someone wear their desperation with such terrifying, unapologetic honesty. There was a raw, unbreakable grit in this skinny woman's eyes.

Alicia opened her desk drawer and pulled out a single sheet of paper. She slid it across the desk.

"Fill this out," Alicia said. "You're on a one-week trial. You get a bed in the basement staff dorm and one hot meal a shift. But I hold half your pay until you pass the trial. If you steal so much as a napkin, or if you bring any drama to my club, you're out on your ass."

Dorothea's hands shook as she took the paper. The physical relief was so intense her knees felt weak.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"Don't thank me. Prove it," Alicia said, looking back at her laptop.

Dorothea filled out the basic information. When she reached the line for Emergency Contact, she stared at it for a long time. She left it blank.

Alicia noticed the blank space when she took the paper back, but she didn't comment. She pressed a button on her phone. "Alex, get down here and show the new girl to the dorms."

A young guy in a staff polo walked in. He took one look at Dorothea's ragged clothes and sneered, but he nodded at Alicia.

Dorothea followed him down another dark hallway. He pushed open a door to a cramped, windowless room containing two sets of metal bunk beds. The air was stale and smelled like cheap perfume and sweat.

Three other women were in the room. They stopped talking and glared at Dorothea with open hostility.

Dorothea ignored them. She walked to the only empty bed-a bottom bunk with a thin, lumpy mattress. She set her plastic bag down.

She sat on the edge of the bed. The springs dug into her thighs. It was uncomfortable, ugly, and hostile.

But it wasn't a prison cell. She had a job. She was alive.