The duality of Joie's life became a nightmare of shifting textures. In the morning, the texture was the smooth, cream-colored pages of her Physiology textbook; in the afternoon, it was the cold, cross-hatched grip of a tactical firearm and the gritty concrete of a basement range.
Her education was no longer just about passing the board exams. It was about survival. She was a weapon in tuition-funded clothing.
Lolo Tenorio had designed her curriculum with the precision of a general. Her cousins weren't just family; they were her deans of destruction.
Stephen was the architect of her tactical mind. He taught her the coldness required for leadership. "A heart rate above 100 beats per minute is a liability, Joie," he would say, standing behind her as she practiced her breathing. "In a hospital, you want the patient's heart to beat. In the field, you want yours to be as still as a grave." He taught her that empathy was a chemical malfunction—a surge of Oxytocin that could get her killed.
Matthew taught her the "Art of the Ghost." He took her to high-society galas and expensive hotel bars, showing her how to blend into the background. "Don't look like a killer, munchkin. Look like a bored heiress," he'd whisper, sipping champagne. He taught her how to scout a target's security detail by watching the way they shifted their weight, and how to identify the exits before the appetizers were served.
Timothy was her shadow in the digital world. He taught her that a heartbeat left a trail. He showed her how to erase CCTV footage, how to ghost a GPS signal, and how to make a man's digital existence disappear before his physical one did. "If it isn't on a server, it never happened," Tim would say with a wink.
Her university lectures became a surreal blur. While her classmates listened to Professor Galvez explain the Cardiovascular system as a marvel of nature, Joie sat in the back row, her eyes tracing the Jugular Vein of the student in front of her. She wasn't thinking about how to save them; she was calculating the angle of entry for a three-inch blade.
The afternoons were the hardest. The brothers put her through "stress tests."
Joie would have to strike the targets with clinical speed. She began to stop seeing people as humans with stories, dreams, or families. Instead, they were a collection of pressure points, major arteries, and Neurovascular clusters.
One evening, after a particularly grueling session with Matthew on how to hide a sedative-filled syringe in a cocktail napkin, Joie sat in the campus library.
She looked at her hands. They were steady. Too steady. The Fine Motor Skills she had once hoped to use for intricate heart surgery were now being honed for "clean" removals. She felt a profound sense of mourning for the girl she used to be—the one who lived in a normal townhouse with a leaking roof.
That girl was being methodically erased, one "lesson" at a time.
She was becoming the "Iron Sister," a prodigy of medicine and a master of finality. She was the pride of the Tenorio family, and she had never been more alone.
Until the train. Until the girl who smelled like coffee and rain.