Chapter 1 Diamond in the Trash

# Chapter 1: Diamond in the Trash

I remember the exact taste of blood and glass in my mouth. How the tiny shards cut into my gums as I chewed, my eyes never leaving Winton's horrified face. The pain felt right—a baptism of sorts.

"What the hell are you doing?" he had shouted, lurching forward but stopping short of touching me, as if my madness might be contagious.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me rewind to twelve hours earlier, when I was still Cynthia Zhang, an eighteen-year-old nobody from the East Side slums who thought being invited to a penthouse party meant I was special.

The invitation came via Melissa, a girl from my community college who occasionally ran with the upper-crust crowd. "Lucas Albert asked about you specifically," she'd said, eyes wide with disbelief that matched my own. "His family literally owns half the city. Do you know what this could mean for someone like you?"

Someone like me. The words didn't sting because they were true. I lived in a one-bedroom apartment with my grandmother, worked two jobs, and still wore the same three outfits on rotation. The Alberts existed in another stratosphere, their name plastered across skyscrapers and charity galas. Lucas Albert had noticed me during a catering gig I'd worked last month. I'd served him champagne, and he'd looked at me like I was the exotic dish.

I spent my last fifty dollars on a second-hand dress—black, simple, but with delicate lace at the collar that made me feel almost worthy of stepping into their world. Grandma helped pin my hair up, her arthritic fingers trembling as she secured the last bobby pin.

"Be careful with these people," she'd warned in Mandarin. "They see girls like you as entertainment, not equals."

I kissed her papery cheek. "It's just one night, Nǎinai. One glimpse of how the other half lives."

The penthouse occupied the entire top floor of the Albert Tower, with floor-to-ceiling windows framing the city like a living painting. Everyone inside seemed crafted from different materials than regular humans—smoother skin, whiter teeth, clothing that hung from their frames as if custom-made for each curve and angle. Which, I realized with a pang, it probably was.

Lucas found me within minutes, materializing beside me with two flutes of champagne. He was beautiful in that manufactured way rich people often are—everything enhanced, optimized, perfected. Dark hair swept back from a high forehead, eyes the color of expensive whiskey.

"You came," he said, as if my attendance had been uncertain. "I wasn't sure you would."

"I was curious," I replied, accepting the champagne. It fizzed coldly against my tongue, expensive and unfamiliar.

His friends circled like elegant sharks. I recognized a few faces from society pages—the sons and daughters of tech moguls, real estate developers, old money families. They asked me questions with razors hidden beneath polite smiles.

"Where did you go to school?"

"East Side Community."

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"Oh... how diverse."

"That's an interesting dress. Vintage?"

"Second-hand."

"How... sustainable of you."

Each response diminished me, but Lucas seemed increasingly entertained. His hand found the small of my back, proprietary and warm. "Don't mind them," he whispered, his breath hot against my ear. "They're just jealous I found something real in this plastic city."

I believed him. God help me, I wanted to believe I was special.

The champagne kept coming. One glass, then another. The third tasted different—sharper, with a bitter aftertaste I attributed to my increasingly numb tongue. The room began to tilt and sway. Lucas's arm around my waist became less comforting and more necessary to remain upright.

"I don't feel well," I mumbled, the words sticky in my mouth.

"Let me show you somewhere quiet," he offered, steering me down a hallway that stretched and contracted like a living thing.

We ended up in a bathroom larger than my entire apartment. Marble and gold and mirrors everywhere. Too many mirrors. Lucas locked the door behind us.

"What's happening?" I asked, my reflection fractured across multiple surfaces, each showing a girl I barely recognized—flushed, disheveled, eyes wide with dawning fear.

"Just having some fun," Lucas replied, his smile no longer charming but predatory. "Don't you want to have fun with me, Cynthia from the East Side?"

What happened next exists in my memory as disjointed flashes. His hands gripping my wrists. My dress tearing. Me struggling, then growing weaker. His friends' voices—when had they entered? Their laughter echoing against marble.

And then the liquid. Burning, caustic, splashing across my face as Lucas held me down over the sink.

"Let's see if you're still so pretty now," someone said—Lucas? One of his friends? The voices had merged into a single cruel entity.

I screamed until my throat tore, the chemical eating into my skin, melting flesh like candle wax. Through the haze of pain, I heard someone say, "Shit, that's too much. You said it would just be a small scar."

"Shut up and help me get her out of here."

I lost consciousness then, mercifully. Woke up in a hospital bed three days later, half my face bandaged, the other half tear-stained as the doctor explained "significant chemical burns" and "permanent scarring" and "reconstructive options."

A week later, as I sat in my hospital room learning to change my dressings without vomiting at the sight of my melted flesh, the lawyer came. Winton Pierce—tall, silver-haired, with the kind of tailored suit that cost more than a year of my rent.

"Miss Zhang," he said, not bothering to hide his distaste as he surveyed my small room, the cheap flowers Grandma had brought from our window box. "I represent the Albert family. This is an unfortunate situation."

He placed a document and a check on my tray table, sliding them toward me with manicured fingers. "This is a standard non-disclosure agreement. The sum is quite generous. Sign here, and we can all move forward from this... incident."

I stared at the check. More money than I'd ever seen. Enough for surgeries, maybe. Not enough to make me whole again, but enough to stop drowning.

"And if I don't sign?" My voice sounded strange, distorted by my new facial topology.

Winton smiled thinly. "Then we remind the authorities about your blood alcohol level that night. Your history of asking Lucas for money. The witnesses who saw you making advances. It would be your word against the entire Albert family. Consider your position carefully."

I picked up the check, my hands shaking. Not from fear, I realized, but rage—pure, clarifying rage that crystallized every thought into diamond-hard certainty.

"This is the price for my silence?" I asked.

"This is the price for your future," he corrected. "Take it and disappear."

Instead, I tore the check into pieces, placed the fragments in my mouth, and began to chew. The paper dissolved quickly, but the tiny shards of glass from the hospital water cup I'd crushed in my other hand did not. Blood filled my mouth as I chewed and swallowed, my eyes never leaving Winton's face.

"What the hell are you doing?" he demanded, recoiling.

I swallowed, feeling the glass cut all the way down. "Making a promise," I said through bloody teeth. "I'm going to take everything from them. Not with this pathetic check. With my bare hands."

He left quickly after that, pale and shaken. But I'd seen it in his eyes—beneath the disgust and fear was something else. Recognition. He'd recognized the monster they'd created in that marble bathroom.

I was no longer Cynthia from the East Side. I was something new—something born of acid and betrayal and rage. And I would make them all pay.