The Women Who Survived Him

The air in the house was still, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath.

Delilah Quinn had come and gone like a storm with no lightning, only the sound of past lives shuffling through the halls after her departure. And now, the letter Whitlock had delivered through Jason's hands sat like a live wire on the coffee table.

I watched Cassandra read it again.

Then fold it.

Then unfold it again.

“You don’t have to respond,” I said gently.

She gave me a look that was half-exhausted, half-furious. “I responded the moment I let him have power over me all those years ago.”

Her voice was steady, but her hands weren’t.

“He’s not going to stop until he breaks me,” she said.

Jason leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed. “Then don’t let him. Break him first.”

Her eyes softened slightly at her son. “You sound like your father.”

He straightened. “He wasn’t always wrong.”

She looked away. “He was never brave enough to tell the truth.”

That night, we stayed up late, sitting in the kitch