The darkness was not peaceful. Delois felt her body falling through an endless, suffocating void. Her stomach plummeted, and her heart hammered wildly against her ribs.
Suddenly, the blackness shattered like glass. She was thrown into a dream so vivid it made her skin crawl.
She was watching herself. She saw her own body, looking thin and desperate, clinging to Julian Sloan's arm. Julian's face was twisted in pure revulsion. He peeled her fingers off his sleeve like she was a diseased insect.
The scene violently shifted. She was looking into the Thornton family kitchen. Her sister-in-law, Felicie, was hiding behind the door. Felicie was pointing at Delois's retreating back, her shoulders shaking with silent, malicious laughter.
The nightmare accelerated, flashing like a broken film projector.
She saw her elderly parents walking down Main Street. Their shoulders were slumped. Neighbors pointed and whispered about their crazy, desperate daughter. Her parents kept their heads down, swallowing the bitter humiliation.
Then, the images turned bloody.
She saw a bank officer nailing a bright red foreclosure notice to the front door of the Thornton farmhouse.
She saw her oldest brother, Gonzalo, his face bruised and bleeding. Cold steel handcuffs were snapped around his wrists. A police officer shoved him roughly into the back of a squad car.
A screech of tires tore through her eardrums. She saw her second brother, Connie, lying on the asphalt. A pool of dark blood expanded rapidly around his head.
She saw her mother, Blanca. Blanca was lying in a sterile hospital bed, her skin gray and sunken. Blanca's weak hand squeezed Delois's fingers one last time before her chest stopped moving forever.
Delois tried to scream, but her throat was paralyzed.
The dream snapped to a completely different world. A towering skyscraper in Manhattan.
Bart Hawkins stood in front of a massive floor-to-ceiling window. He wasn't wearing his wet leather jacket. He was wearing a dark, perfectly tailored bespoke suit that screamed unimaginable wealth.
A television in the background played a financial news report. The anchor's voice announced Bart Hawkins as the country's newest billionaire tech mogul.
The camera angle of her dream zoomed in on Bart's massive mahogany desk. Sitting right in the center, carefully preserved, was a faded, cheap cotton handkerchief.
Delois recognized it instantly. It was her old handkerchief. The one she had thrown at him in disgust years ago.
The air in the dream turned freezing cold. The luxurious office vanished.
Delois found herself curled into a tight ball in the corner of a damp, moldy basement. Her bones ached from the cold. Her stomach cramped with violent hunger. She was completely alone. She closed her eyes in the dark, waiting for death.
The sheer terror of the vision crashed over her like a tidal wave. She fought against the paralysis.
She opened her mouth and forced the air out of her lungs.
"No!"
Delois's eyes snapped open. Her pupils were dilated, adjusting to the dim light. She sucked in a massive, ragged breath of real air.
She was lying in her own bed. The familiar floral wallpaper surrounded her. Her forehead was slick with cold sweat. Her nightgown clung to her damp back. She instinctively reached up, her trembling fingers wrapping around the old, wooden amulet her grandmother had given her. The familiar, braided cord and the cool touch of the wood grounded her slightly.
Her mother, Blanca, was sitting on the edge of the mattress. Blanca held a damp washcloth in her rough hands. Her eyes were swollen and red, the skin around them puffy from hours of crying.
The moment Delois opened her eyes, Blanca dropped the washcloth. She leaned forward and crushed Delois against her chest.
"You foolish girl," Blanca sobbed, her voice cracking. "Why would you do something so stupid? Why would you jump?"
Delois felt the solid, warm weight of her mother. She felt the callouses on Blanca's hands gripping her shoulders. Her brain fired on all cylinders.
She looked at the old wooden dresser. She looked at the faded curtains. The horrific images she had just witnessed weren't just a nightmare. They were a brutal, unfiltered preview of her actual future. And they were a key. As the terror of the vision receded, the locked doors in her mind burst open. The missing six months of her life came rushing back in a dizzying torrent. Every humiliation, every stupid mistake she had made over Julian, every cruel whisper in town-she remembered it all with agonizing clarity.
She realized she was nothing but a pathetic, tragic side character in a story meant to destroy her family. But right now, her mother was alive. Her brothers were safe. The farm was theirs.
Delois wrapped her arms tightly around Blanca's waist. The lingering panic in her chest hardened into something cold and sharp. She would not let that future happen. She would tear it apart with her bare hands if she had to.
Suddenly, the heavy thud of boots echoed from the hallway.
"I'm going to kill that bastard!" her brother Gonzalo roared, his voice shaking the floorboards.
