The sharp, greasy smell of fried chicken hit Elowen before she even turned the key in the front door.

She stood on the worn welcome mat with her keys trembling in her hand. Her foot hurt from a nine-hour shift standing on the concrete floors at the diner, on top of four hours spent sitting on a broken stool doing freelance blueprint drafting. Every joint in her ankles throbbed with a dull, heavy ache. She was exhausted down to her bones, but as soon as that warm, savory smell drifted through the cracks in the door, a cold knot twisted tight in her chest.

She knew there would be nothing left for her. More importantly, she knew there would be nothing left for her father.

She pushed the door open as quietly as she could.

Odalys was sitting at the dining table under the warm chandelier light. Beside her sat her stepsister, Camille, wearing a crisp, expensive college hoodie she had bought yesterday. Camille was casually picking at a plate heaped high with golden, crispy chicken legs and buttered biscuits, flipping through videos on her phone.

Her father was nowhere near the table. His wheelchair had been shoved into the dark corner by the front closet, out of sight.

Odalys set down her glass of iced tea and looked up. A smooth, rehearsed smile spread across her red lips, but it never touched her eyes.

"Elowen. You are late," she said smoothly. "Rent was due yesterday."

Elowen carefully set her bag down on the floor, her fingers clutching the thin paper envelope in her coat pocket. "I worked a double. I brought three hundred dollars. It's everything I made from tips tonight. The drafting client promised to transfer the rest on Friday."

Camille let out a loud, mocking scoff without looking up from her screen. "Three hundred dollars? Mom, that barely covers the lip gloss set I wanted. Have you seen the shoes the other girls on campus are wearing? It is so embarrassing being seen in public when my stepsister looks like a homeless beggar."

Odalys did not scold her. Instead, she stood up slowly, smoothing down her blouse. She walked across the hardwood floor toward Elowen with deliberate, slowed steps. She carried herself like she owned the floor under Elowen's feet, the air she breathed, and the very clothes on her skin.

"Three hundred dollars is not enough, Elowen," Odalys said, her voice dropping into a soft, terrifying tone. "You know what happens when you bring me excuses instead of money."

Elowen's stomach dropped straight to the floor. The air suddenly felt too thick to breathe. "Where is Dad?"

"In his room," Odalys replied casually. "Where he belongs. He kept complaining and asking for lunch around noon. I had to remind him that hot meals are for people who actually contribute to this house."

Elowen pushed right past her, ignoring the sting of her shoulder bumping into hers. The narrow hallway leading to the back of the house was pitch black. She reached out and touched the cold wood of her father's bedroom door.

Appended to the doorframe was a heavy, rusted iron padlock. It was locked tight.

Elowen squeezed her eyes shut as her chest heaved. She had begged her on her knees last month to take that awful lock off his door.

"Dad?" She knocked softly on the wood, her knuckles shaking. "Dad, it's Ellie. Can you hear me?"

From inside the dark room, a small, weak voice answered. "Ellie? Is that you, sweetheart?"

Odalys stepped into the hallway behind her, her high heels clicking loudly against the floor. "He is completely fine, Elowen. Stop making a scene."

"Take this off," Elowen said, turning around to face her. Her voice cracked, but she did not care. "Open this door right now. He needs to eat. He needs his heart medication and his kidney drops. You know he cannot skip a dose!"

"And who pays for those expensive drops?" Odalys snapped, her sweet, gentle facade instantly vanishing into cold spite. "You? With your pathetic little three hundred dollars? I pay for this roof. I pay the electric bills. I am the one keeping this family afloat while your useless father rots in bed. So as long as you live under my roof, I make the rules."

She took a step closer, leaning down until her heavy floral perfume choked Elowen's nostrils.

"Have you already forgotten what happened last month when you fell short on the grocery money, Elowen?" she whispered, her eyes dark with cruelty. "Seven days. I kept that padlock secured for seven whole days. No soup, no warm tea, nothing except tap water and stale bread crusts passed through the crack. Do you remember how he cried? He sobbed like a helpless child, calling out your name every single night. And where were you? You were stuck working night shifts, helpless to do a single thing about it. Do you remember what he looked like when I finally unlocked that door?"

The memory crashed over Elowen like ice water. She remembered every horrific second of it. She had walked into that dark room to find her father collapsed on the floor beside his bed, too weak to lift his own head, his lips cracked and bleeding, his eyes hollowed out with misery. She had dropped to her knees and held his frail, shuddering frame in her arms, weeping until her lungs burned.

"Please," Elowen choked out, tears finally spilling over her eyelashes and burning down her cheeks. "Please don't do that to him again. He won't survive it this time. I am begging you, Odalys."

"Then bring me eight hundred dollars in cash by Friday evening," she said, tapping her long nail against the brass handle of the padlock. "Or that lock stays shut. It is very simple."

From the dining room, Camille laughed at a video on her phone. "Mom, stop arguing with her. She's just trying to guilt-trip you again. Tell her to come clean the kitchen when she's done crying."

Elowen bit the inside of her lip until the taste of copper filled her mouth. She couldn't fight her. If she fought her, her father suffered.

She waited until Odalys walked back toward the kitchen before reaching into the dirt of the potted fern beside the hallway wall. Her numb fingers dug into the soil until she felt the cold metal of the spare key she had hidden weeks ago. With trembling hands, she slipped the key into the padlock, popped it open as quietly as possible, and stepped inside the dark room.

The air in the bedroom was cold and smelled faintly of rubbing alcohol. Her father, Julian Marchetti, lay wrapped in a thin blanket on the narrow bed. His skin was pale, almost translucent, and his cheekbones stuck out sharp and severe. But when he saw Elowen step through the doorway, his sunken eyes lit up with profound warmth.

"Ellie," he rasped, reaching out a fragile, thin hand. "You came home."

"I'm always here, Dad," Elowen whispered, rushing to his bedside. She sat on the edge of the mattress and took his ice-cold hand in both of hers, holding it against her warm cheek. She checked his plastic water tumbler on the nightstand. It was completely dry. "Did she give you anything at all today?"

He gave a small, sad shake of his head, trying his best to offer her a reassuring smile despite his dry, peeling lips. "Don't worry about me, sweetheart. I'm not hungry. Did you eat your dinner? You work too hard for an old man like me."

Hearing him worry about her comfort while he sat starving in the dark tore Elowen's heart into a thousand pieces. Her mother had passed away when she was only two years old. She had no memory of her soft touch or her voice, only a faded black-and-white photograph her father kept tucked into his worn wallet. When Elowen was four, her father had married Odalys because he was terrified of raising a baby girl all on his own. He wanted her to have a mother.

For a few years, Odalys played the role of a loving stepmother. She braided Elowen's hair for school, packed her brown-bag lunches, and smiled at family dinners.

Then her father got sick.

First, his kidneys began to fail. Then his heart weakened. The overwhelming stack of medical bills devoured her father's entire life savings, swallowed the family house, and stripped away his thriving business piece by piece. When the money vanished, Odalys dropped her mask completely. She stopped being a wife. She became a merciless landlord, and her father and Elowen were merely unwanted squatters she could starve and torment at her whim.

"I'll get you some water, Dad," Elowen whispered, kissing his forehead. "I'm going to figure this out. I promise."

She crept out of his room, reattached the padlock so Odalys wouldn't suspect anything, and walked into the cramped laundry closet at the very end of the hall. It was the only space they permitted her to sleep in because the actual bedrooms were reserved for "real family."

Her tiny mattress sat directly on the cold linoleum floor next to the noisy water heater. She sat down, pulled out her old laptop with its cracked, yellowing screen, and opened a web browser. Her hands were trembling so violently she could barely type. She needed another job. A third shift, a weekend graveyard shift, anything that could give her five hundred dollars by Friday.

As she scrolled endlessly through job boards, her eyes caught a tiny advertisement tucked away at the very bottom of the webpage.

It was a stark, plain ad with a cream background and simple black lettering.

PRIVATE FAMILY SEEKING CONFIDENTIAL SURROGATE.

Criteria: Healthy female, 20 to 26 years old. Perfect medical history. Absolute discretion required.

Compensation: $500,000 upfront upon signing. $5,000,000 upon delivery. All medical and legal expenses fully covered.

Elowen's breath hitched in her throat. Her mouse pointer hovered directly over the box.

Five hundred thousand dollars.

It was an unfathomable amount of money. It was enough to buy a small house in the countryside. It was enough to hire a full-time private nurse for her father, pay for his heart surgery, and buy his medication for the rest of his life. It was enough to leave this toxic house, cut ties with Odalys and Camille forever, and finally give her father his dignity back.

It was terrifying. It meant handing her body over to a total stranger, carrying a child for an elite family she knew nothing about, and signing away a year of her life. Everything inside her screamed to close the tab and keep searching for normal drafting work.

From the room down the hall, a harsh, violent coughing fit rattled through the thin drywall. Her father gasped for air, his raspy groans echoing through the quiet house.

Tears blurred Elowen's vision as she stared at the screen. She looked at the dark wood of the laundry room door, thinking of the heavy iron padlock hanging on her father's bedroom.

She had no choices left.

With a shaking finger, she clicked APPLY.