The apartment was deathly quiet as Sophie moved inside, her steps slow, almost mechanical. Her frail body stumbled slightly, but she caught herself, gripping the edge of the doorframe as she steadied herself. She felt… nothing. Just an endless void, stretching from her bones to the edges of her soul.
The pain, the betrayal—it had all faded into a numb emptiness, a hollow silence that consumed her. She had lost everything: her family, her innocence, her child. The life she had built had been torn apart, piece by piece, by the very people she'd trusted most. But now, standing here, she couldn't even bring herself to cry. There were no tears left. Only emptiness.
Sophie's gaze drifted blankly around the apartment. Dust had settled on the old furniture, casting a faint, lifeless film over everything. The room felt like a shell, a hollow space that echoed her own emptiness. She walked over to the couch and lowered herself onto it, staring straight ahead, her expression vacant.
She didn't feel anger. She didn't feel sorrow. She didn't feel anything. Even the deep ache of loss—the kind that once tore her apart—had faded to a distant throb, something she could barely register. Her hands rested limply in her lap, her fingers cold to the touch.
Time felt meaningless. She didn't know if hours passed or mere minutes. She was trapped in a haze, drifting somewhere between awareness and oblivion. Memories of her former life floated through her mind like ghosts, flickers of a girl she barely recognized—laughing with Natalie, planning her future with David, dreaming of a life filled with love and family. Those memories belonged to someone else. Someone she couldn't even mourn.
And then, an image of her child—a child who'd never been given a chance—flashed through her mind, and for a brief second, Sophie's hollow gaze flickered with the faintest glimmer of something almost like pain. But even that faded quickly, sinking back into the numbness that had taken root within her.
She reached out a trembling hand, touching the fabric of the couch, feeling its worn texture beneath her fingers. Her mind drifted again, an endless, empty stretch of thoughts with no beginning and no end. She was alive, but she wasn't living. Breathing, but barely existing.
---
Across the city, the Castellanos sat in grim silence. Natalie stared down at her hands, her stomach twisting with guilt and shame. Alex, too, remained silent, the weight of their actions pressing heavily on him. They had broken Sophie. In their anger and grief, they had destroyed the life of a girl who had once brought light and laughter into their family.
"She didn't even fight back," Natalie whispered, almost to herself. Her voice was hollow, carrying the realization of what they had done. "We took everything from her… and she didn't even cry."
Alex clenched his jaw, his eyes dark and haunted. "We thought she'd betrayed us. But it was us who betrayed her."
---
Back in her apartment, Sophie continued to sit in silence, her mind lost in the void. She didn't know if she would ever feel anything again, if her heart would ever beat with the joy, love, or laughter that once filled it. And maybe, she thought, it was better this way.
For now, she existed only as a shadow of who she'd once been—a ghost in the dim, empty space that had once been her life.