August 1839. Harrison County, Texas.The air was suffocating, as if the atmosphere itself had joined the watchmen. Sunlight poured down on fields of red earth and cotton, where value was not measured in land, but in human lives—coldly tallied in ledgers. And there, in that world, lived a woman named Eveina.At the time, her name meant nothing. On paper, she was merely the “property” of Sterling Vance. But behind lowered eyes and practiced obedience, Eveina was an observer. She memorized every footpath, every shift in the overseer’s routine, every rare moment when control loosened its grip. More than anything, she was a mother—to Isaiah, Cassia, and Milo—three children the laws of Texas already counted as future profit.The day Eveina stepped away from the cotton fields, no one realized history had slipped out of alignment. She didn’t run. She walked—purposeful, unquestioned. Only when the trees closed behind her did she break into the darkness, leaving behind a world that insisted she was an object.Two weeks later, the baying of hounds sounded like a sentence already passed.But her first fall did not destroy Eveina’s will. It sharpened it.Dragged back in humiliation, lashed thirty-nine times before the eyes of her own children, she learned a terrible truth: escape alone was not enough. To win, she would have to turn this hell into camouflage.And when the following spring arrived, wrapped in the posture of a woman finally broken, Eveina began preparing a plan that—if it failed—would leave no path back.