Sia POV

The blaring of a siren ripped through the silence of my sleep, so loud it felt like my eardrums would burst. I jerked awake, disoriented, my heart pounding in sync with the deafening sound. The cell door rattled as someone banged on it, hard enough to shake the whole frame.

“Rise and shine, princess! It’s a beautiful day in paradise,” a female guard’s voice boomed with an almost cruel sarcasm, the words biting in their hollowness.

I groaned and sat up on the hard, cold mattress. My entire body ached from the previous day’s events. The cramped space felt more like a tomb than a room, with nothing...