Masuk** **Lily’s POV** I nodded my head.... remembering my encounter with the therapist..... I sob slowly... realizing I had wrong my mom.... and my stepfamily.... I was too greedy for pleasure to watch out for the consequences. I thought she was clueless not knowing that I'm causing myself harm.... and destroying my own body and hormone..... Well earlier..... ***** The therapist’s office smelled like lavender and old paper. I sat in the soft gray chair with my hands locked together in my lap while Dr. Mendez settled across from me. She didn’t rush. She simply waited, the small gold cross at her throat catching the light every time she shifted. Mom and Kara were outside in the waiting area. For the first time in days I was alone with someone who expected the truth. “Whenever you’re ready,” she said gently. “There’s no correct place to begin. Just start where it feels possible.” I stared at the box of tissues on the low table between us. My throat felt tight. “It started with Etha
**Elena’s POV**Lily hit the kitchen floor hard.Kara screamed her name and dropped beside her. I was already on my knees, hands shaking as I checked for her breath and pulse. She was alive—breathing shallow, eyelids fluttering—but completely gone from us for those first terrifying seconds. I gathered her head into my lap while Kara ran for water and a cold cloth, both of us crying in different, broken ways.When Lily finally opened her eyes, they were empty.She stared at the ceiling for a long time before her gaze slowly found my face. No words came. She didn’t ask about the message. She didn’t ask where the aunts had gone. She simply looked at me like the world had finished ending and she was only now realizing she was still inside it.Kara pressed the wet cloth to her sister’s forehead, tears still streaming.“You’re okay,” she kept whispering, more to herself than to Lily. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”None of us were okay.I helped Lily sit up against the kitchen cabinets. She mov
**Elena’s POV**A message arrived while the house was still holding its breath.I was standing in the kitchen with Kara when my phone lit up. The number was unknown. The text was short.**Victor: It’s done. They won’t touch her again.** **And you won’t get to cry again…. Nobody can make you cry if it’s not me…**What is this obsess fool up to... I whispered in shaky hands....A second message followed immediately.**Victor: All of them.**wait.... does it mean that....My legs gave out. The phone slipped from my hand and hit the floor with a sharp, ordinary sound that somehow made everything worse. The sound that came out of me didn’t feel human—raw, broken, too loud for the kitchen, too loud for the morning that had begun with police and ends that still looked like paperwork. Kara grabbed me, eyes wide with fresh panic.“Mom? Mom, what is it?”My phone beeped again. My eyes widened when I saw the video. I couldn’t answer. I just kept screaming.Footsteps thundered down the stairs.
**Mark’s POV**My wrists were cuffed behind my back, the metal already biting into my skin with every small shift of the van. Ethan sat across from me in the same position, face pale, jaw locked so tight the muscle jumped beneath his skin. Frank, Leo, and Martins were further down the bench. My five nephews—Daniel, Marcus, Jordan, Caleb, Elias—filled the remaining space, all of us bound, all of us silent. The two men in police uniforms in the front didn’t speak. They hadn’t spoken since they loaded us in at dawn, when the real morning light had still been soft and ordinary and the charges had been read out in the doorway like any other arrest.The city fell away faster than it should have.I watched the windows. Familiar roads turned into less familiar ones, then into stretches of empty highway, then into a narrow, rutted track that cut through dense bush. No other cars. No houses. The kind of place where cell service died and people disappeared without a headline. My stomach tight
****Lily’s POV**Dawn had barely broken when the front door came open under hard, official-sounding knocks.I was in the kitchen with just my pajamas.....hands wrapped around a cold cup of coffee I hadn’t touched. The mug had gone lukewarm hours ago. My fingers were stiff around the ceramic. Mark, Ethan, the uncles, and our cousins were scattered through the main floor in various states of tense silence, waiting for the next consequence of the open doorway. No one had slept properly. The living room lights were still on from the night before. .Someone had left a half-eaten sandwich on the counter. The air smelled of stale coffee and the faint residual scent of bodies that had not yet fully left the house. No one knew where Mom and Kara had gone after they fled. The silence had stretched so thin it felt like it might snap if anyone spoke too loudly.Four men in police uniforms stepped into the entryway with the kind of practiced authority that made everyone freeze.“Mark Reynold
** **Elena’s POV** My eyes burned from crying and from the hours spent repeating every ugly detail into a recorder. The signed papers felt heavy in my purse. Kara was waiting in the car, curled against the door, finally exhausted into a restless half-sleep. I told myself I only needed to drive us to a hotel, lock the door, and start figuring out the next hour of our lives.Water.... Kara whispered I step out of the car.... to get her water ... On my way back.... Victor stepped out from between two parked cars as I reached the sidewalk, as if he had been standing there the entire time. The expensive coat, the calm expression, the same polished emptiness he had worn in the restaurant. For a second I thought I was hallucinating from exhaustion. Then he spoke my name. “Elena.” I stopped. Every muscle in my body went tight. He looked at my face—the swollen eyes, the streaked makeup I hadn’t bothered to fix, the raw exhaustion—and something that almost looked like concern set







