Lahat ng Kabanata ng A Kiss For Every Bruise : Kabanata 81 - Kabanata 86

Gwen I watched the video again. I told myself I was only replaying it to notice details, to ground myself in something real, something good, but the truth was simpler and more humiliating. I could not stop. My thumb hovered over the screen like it had learned a reflex my mind had not approved.Kayla stood near a small table this time, her backpack still too large for her shoulders, one strap slipping as she leaned forward to peer at something a teacher was showing her. She nodded, once, decisively, then asked a question I could not hear, her expression earnest and intent.The teacher bent closer and listened. I pressed my fingers to my lips. She did not shrink. She did not look around to see whether she was allowed to speak. She did not check anyone’s face for permission. She spoke. I replayed it. Again.There was a short clip after that, Kayla sitting cross-legged on a bright rug, hands folded in her lap, her posture attentive but relaxed. Another child shifted closer to her, invadi

Gwen That night, I dreamed in fragments. Not the violent dreams, the ones with water and gunfire and the weightless terror of falling, but quieter ones. Disjointed scenes stitched together without chronology. A narrow bed. The smell of antiseptic. A ceiling fan spinning too slowly. Hands I could not see, voices I could not place. Borrowed years. I woke before dawn, my heart steady but heavy, as if it had been carrying something all night and had finally set it down. The room was dark, the villa silent except for the distant hum of security systems doing their tireless work. I lay still and stared at the ceiling, letting memory surface on its own terms. For months, I had told myself the same story. I stayed too long. I did not fight hard enough. I should have known something was wrong. The story had been useful. It gave me someone to blame who was always available, myself. It kept the anger contained, turned inward, where it could not disrupt anything or anyone. Camilla liked tha

Gwen The first thing I noticed, once I allowed myself to notice at all, was how little privacy truly existed.Not the obvious kind, there were no locked doors, no barred windows, no shouted commands. Camilla did not need those. She preferred subtler architectures. Courtesy. Concern. Family obligation dressed as care. But once I stopped telling myself I was safe, the pattern sharpened. My phone was always charged, yet the signal dropped in specific wings of the villa. Certain calls connected instantly, while others lagged, glitched or failed. My schedule was never dictated, yet suggestions appeared at precisely the moments when deviation might have mattered. Invitations arrived already framed as obligations. Decisions were praised when they aligned. Redirected when they didn’t. A cage, I realized, did not need walls. It only needed incentives. One morning, I sat at the breakfast table across from my mother, Camilla to her right, sunlight spilling across polished stone as if nothing