The room spun around me. My knees weakened, but I held onto the cabinet to steady myself. All these years, all the humiliation, all the silence I endured… and this was why. This was what I had been discarded for.
I didn’t realize Coreen was watching me until she yanked at my wrist. “Evil! Evil!” she screamed, tugging at the bracelet I wore—my mother’s bracelet, the only thing left of her.
“Stop it!” I snapped, my voice breaking as I slapped her tiny hand away.
Her cry rang through the house like an alarm.
In seconds, Jackson stormed into the room, his face red with rage. “What the hell, Mom?!”
“I didn’t—” I started, but before I could finish, his hand collided with my cheek. The sting spread across my skin, searing, humiliating.
“You hurt my daughter again?” His voice dripped with venom. “I regret you being my mother. It should have been Aunt Beatrice instead.”
Tears blurred my vision, but they couldn’t blur the image of my own son, my flesh and blood, looking at me with hatred.
Then Oliver stepped in. His eyes were full of disgust, his lips curled into a sneer. “You really can’t do anything right, can you? You’re nothing but a curse in this house.”
And then the blows came. One after another.
I lost count after the first ten. My body folded against the wall, but his fists didn’t stop. The air left my lungs. My cries filled the room but were drowned by his fury.
By the time he was done, I wasn’t sure if I was breathing anymore. My body trembled, my skin burned, my heart… shattered.
All I could do was cry, my sobs muffled against the cold floor, as the voices of the people I had loved most in the world echoed around me—mocking me, despising me, rejecting me.
And in that moment, I realized…
I was utterly, devastatingly alone.
Every part of my body ached. My ribs throbbed, my cheek stung, and the bruises on my arms burned each time I tried to move. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think.
But lying there in the dark, crumpled on the cold floor, hurt even more. So I forced myself up. One trembling step after another, I dragged my body to my room. I found the small first-aid kit I had hidden long ago—the only thing in this house that ever felt like it belonged to me. My fingers shook as I dabbed at the cuts, wrapped the wounds, whispering to myself not to cry. Not this time. Not anymore.