Alle Kapitel von I AM MY STEPBROTHER'S OBSESSION : Kapitel 91 – Kapitel 100

WARNING: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE... YOU CAN SKIP TO THE NEXT CHAPTER IF IT'S A TRIGGER. THANK YOU.His fist found my ribs. Once. Then again, lower, driving the air out of me in a broken gasp that would not turn into a full breath. I folded forward and he shoved me upright by the hair and put me into the wall. My shoulder took the first hit. The back of my head took the second. Something in my vision tilted and went soft at the edges. I tried to get small. I had learned that. Chin down. Arms up. Make the target narrower. It did not matter. He was past the version of himself that stopped when I stopped fighting. Past the bathroom-door apologies. Past the morning voice that asked to drive me to work like kindness and control could share a car. He threw me toward the coffee table. I caught the edge with my hip and went down hard on my side, the empty glass tipping off and rolling without breaking. He came after me. A kick landed in my thigh, heavy enough that my leg went numb and then lit up

Something moved in his face... rage or fear or the start of another apology... and Clara didn’t wait to find out which. She got me to the door. The night air hit my raw face and made my eyes water. A car was idling at the curb... Clara’s, not Luca’s... and she had left the passenger side open like she had known she wouldn’t have hands to spare.Getting into the seat took a long time. I folded carefully, ribs screaming, one hand on the dash, and Clara shut the door with a solid thunk and went around. Through the window I saw Richard on the porch, lit by the hall light, one hand on the frame, not coming down the steps. Not yet. His mouth moved. I couldn’t hear the words. I didn’t try to read them.Clara pulled away from the curb with both hands on the wheel and her eyes on the road. In the side mirror the house shrank, porch light still on, a man still standing in it, until we turned the corner and the block was gone.For a few streets neither of us spoke. My breath fogged faintly on th

I don’t know how long I sat on that floor after they left.Long enough the ice melted into the rug. Long enough the TV kept spitting numbers that didn’t mean shit anymore. Not long enough for the noise in my head to shut up.Every time it started to quiet down I’d hear her again. Don’t come to the house. Send someone. She’d already called. While I was still in the kitchen with a wet cloth in my hand. While I was still trying to clean her up. She sat there in my shirt and turned the whole night into a report before I even got the chance.My knuckles were already going dark. Kept rubbing them on my trousers like that would do something.Sirens hit the street and I was up. Pacing. Shirt still had her blood on it. Trying to get the story straight before someone else wrote it down for me. She pushed me. She said no in that voice. She’d been lying for months. I was in a house I paid for, about to explain myself to people who’d never lived through the last year of watching everything fall ap

They discharged me in the afternoon, after one more round of questions I could answer with my eyes closed. Name. Date. Place. Year. Follow the light. Squeeze my hands. Deep breath...or the half-breath my ribs allowed. The attending signed the papers with the same practical tone she used for everything else. Stable overnight. No delayed bleed. Pain managed enough to leave. Someone adult and sober with me for twenty-four hours. Ice. Spirometer. Meds on the printed schedule. Follow up in two days, sooner if the headache changed or the eye stopped tracking. Luca handled the wheelchair argument by not arguing. A nurse insisted for policy. I sat in it as far as the elevator bank and stood for the rest of the walk because sitting still made my side stiffen. Clara had already gone back to the office to keep the family emergency story upright. The attorney had called the room before noon: temporary protective order in motion, address for service listed as Luca’s building for now, hearing dat

They served the papers in the morning, like a package delivery.​No dramatic scene. No judge looking me in the eye. Just a process server with a bored expression and a clipboard, catching me on the steps outside the building where Feldman told me to wait after the bail was sorted out. Temporary restraining order. Stay away, no contact, no phone calls, no texts. No sending messages through third parties. No showing up at her job, her mother’s house, or the address listed where she was currently staying.​I read through it twice on the sidewalk while cars passed by as if nothing had happened.​Her name, my name. A list of places I wasn't allowed to go. Legal jargon that turned my marriage into a set of mandated distances.​Feldman snatched the copy out of my hands before I could crush it in my fist.​“Do not call her,” he said. “Do not text her. Do not ask your mother, her mother, a coworker, or a random stranger to pass along an apology. If you do, you hand them a violation on a silver