Fifteen degrees below zero. That is the temperature where human skin freezes in minutes.
I did not feel the cold yet—just the copper taste of blood in my mouth as my father, Marcus, dragged me to the back door. He threw me onto the patio ice like a bag of garbage.
“Get out, thief!” he screamed, his voice cracking the arctic silence. “You are dead to me!”
The heavy oak door slammed shut. The deadbolt clicked.
I looked up at the living room window. My brother Cameron was standing there, holding a warm mug of cocoa. He smiled at me. He knew I did not steal the vintage Rolex.
But as the wind cut through my thin shirt, I realized this was not just a punishment. In Anchorage, Alaska, without a coat, this was an execution.
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Banging on the door was not an option. Screaming for my mother—who was working a double shift at the hospital—was a waste of precious oxygen.
I knew the physics of my situation immediately. The house was locked. My coat was inside. The temperature was -15. If I stayed on the patio hoping for mercy, hypothermia would set in within twenty minutes.
I had to move.
My best friend Kayla lived two miles away. In the summer, that is a twenty-minute jog. Tonight, it was a marathon through the seventh circle of hell.
I started walking. Running was dangerous. Running makes you sweat, and sweat freezes.
I kept my arms wrapped tight around my chest to hold my broken ribs together. Every breath was a shard of glass in my lungs. The wind cut through my thin cotton shirt like it wasn’t even there.
I focused on the streetlights. Just make it to the next pole, then the next.
I dissociated from my body. I became a machine.
Left foot. Right foot.
Do not stop.
Stopping is dying.
I do not remember arriving at Kayla’s house. I remember the porch light—a blurry halo in the dark. I remember falling against the doorframe because my hands were too numb to make a fist to knock.
Then warmth. Noise. Kayla’s dad lifting me off the floor.
Then blackness.
I woke up the next morning on a strange sofa. The air smelled like antiseptic and coffee. My mother, Cynthia, was sitting in a chair across from me. She was still in her scrubs from the ER. She looked exhausted, gray-faced, like she had aged ten years in a single night.
But her eyes were dry.
She was staring at my hands, which were bandaged from the frostbite, and the purple bruising blooming across my jawline.
For years, my mother had been the peacekeeper. She was the one who smoothed things over—who told me to just ignore him when Marcus got angry, who whispered that he was just stressed when he belittled me. She had built her life around managing his volatility, treating him like an unexploded bomb that we all had to tiptoe around.
She thought she was protecting the family. She thought she was keeping us together.
She looked at me, and I saw the peacekeeper die.
“I thought I was saving us,” she said, her voice terrifyingly quiet. “I thought if I just absorbed enough of his anger, if I just kept the house quiet enough, he would be okay. I spent fourteen years negotiating with a terrorist because I was too afraid to leave.”
She stood up and walked to the window, looking out at the snow that had almost been my grave.
“I watched him chip away at you, Destiny. I watched him treat you like a burden, and I told myself it wasn’t that bad. I told myself he loved you in his own way. I lied.”
She turned back to me. There were no tears—only a cold, hard clarity.
“I kept the peace until it almost killed you. I am not keeping the peace anymore. Now I am going to burn his peace to the ground.”
She did not hug me. She did not offer empty comforts.
She reached into her purse and pulled out her phone.
Calling my father was not on the agenda. Neither was calling the dealership.
She dialed a number she had saved for years but never used.
“Hello,” she said, her voice steady as a surgeon’s. “This is Cynthia. I need to file for an emergency protective order and immediate divorce. Yes, I have photos. I have medical records, and I am done talking.”
To understand why my father, Marcus, was willing to kill me over a watch, you have to understand the economy of our household.
In Anchorage, Marcus was not just a dealership owner. He was a local celebrity. He sold high-end snowmobiles and ATVs to oil executives and tourists.
His currency was image.
He needed everything around him to shine, and that included his children.
My brother Cameron was eighteen and shone brighter than anyone. He was the star athlete, the charmer, the one who could sell ice to an Eskimo. But his biggest selling point was his reputation as a tech prodigy. He was the president of the robotics club—the kid who was going to Silicon Valley to make millions.
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