By the third week, the little girl stopped crying.
Not because the pain had stopped, but because every time she cried, the dogs would whimper. And their whimpering would bring her stepmother outside with a bucket of cold water for all of them.
So, at 6 years old, Adai taught herself silence.
But what she did not know was that one day, that silence would make her more dangerous than anyone in that house.
She pressed her face into the fur of the biggest dog, a scarred German Shepherd she called Ease, and breathed quietly until morning.
That was her life every single night for 10 years.
The kennel had no mattress, no blanket, no light—only cold concrete, rusted chain-link wire, and the warm bodies of 3 dogs who had more right to that house than she did.