Boiling broth drenched my scalp with a sickening hiss. It felt like my skin was shriveling under the heat. Before I could even process the pain, Tommy yanked my hair and smashed my head into the table. BANG. BANG. BANG. My face slammed against the wood again and again, blood spilling from my nose and mouth, the taste of metal and bile flooding my throat.
Tommy laughed maniacally. “Hahaha! Look at this bastard scream. Bet you moan just like this when you’re serving that old hag too.”
His rage only grew. He barked orders to his cronies, who pinned me down hard. “You want to steal food? Fine. Then I’ll break your hands.”
I screamed in horror, “Tommy, don’t you dare!”
But it was too late. He raised the heavy soup pot and brought it crashing down on my hands. Pain shot through all ten fingers like bolts of lightning. I could only watch, helpless, as my fingers twisted and bent at grotesque angles. And then—like a flash of fury—Oliver leapt into the air.
Fur puffed, claws out, my cat launched itself at Tommy’s face and slashed at him.
“Agh! You little beast!” Tommy roared and kicked Oliver hard, sending the cat flying across the room.
“Oliver!” Through the blinding pain, I forced myself free and scrambled to protect my cat, shielding its tiny body with my own.
“Don’t touch my cat! If Sandra finds out, she’ll never let you off the hook!”
Oliver wasn’t just a pet. It was a living memory—something my grandmother left behind before she passed. It meant everything to me.
In fact, the last patriarch of the Wilson Family once stepped on Oliver by accident. I so much as frowned—and he was immediately stripped of his position by the elders for disrespecting the family senior. Now? He’s begging for scraps.
Sandra knew all this. That’s why she’d go out of her way to win Oliver over—walking the cat, cleaning up its litter, even catching its diarrhea with her bare hands just to earn my trust.
“Wait... I’ve seen that cat before,” someone muttered. “I swear I saw it on the news—belongs to the Wilson Family. Looks exactly the same.”
A flicker of doubt passed through the crowd. But Tommy’s face only twisted deeper in rage.
“Oh, so now this loser thinks he can scare me?”
“There are plenty of cats that look the same. Just like him—it’s a filthy stray. Even if it is the Wilson Family’s cat, so what?”
“You think Sandra would throw me under the bus for a damn cat?”