Forged in the Flames

The fire consumed everything.

It wasn' t an accident. I lit it myself, watching the flames devour the apartment where I' d cried for so many nights, wiping away the misery.

Across the room, Tiffany Chen, my former roommate and so-called friend, was tied to a chair, her eyes wide with terror, her expensive clothes torn and dirty.

She was the one who lured me, a naive college kid struggling with tuition and rent, into her family' s predatory online loan scheme.

She promised quick cash, easy approval, a solution to all my problems.

Instead, the money never materialized, the interest rates ballooned to illegal levels, and the "online loan" turned into a hundred-thousand-dollar nightmare.

When I couldn't pay, she forced me into her family' s "club" -a hellhole where rich men paid to do whatever they wanted, and I was just another girl forced to endure their hands.