He was the first monster I ever knew.
When I was a child, my home wasn't a home. It was a war zone. A prison where laughter went to die. Where silence meant danger. Where crying only made it worse.
I used to watch him, watch him break our mother over and over again like she was something made to be destroyed. He'd slam doors. Throw punches. Spit vile, venomous words. And she'd flinch. She always flinched. But she never left.
Not until the night he went too far.
She was on the ground, gasping. Bleeding. Her dress torn. One of her eyes already swelling shut. And Olivia, just barely eight, was screaming in the corner, tiny hands over her ears.
Something snapped inside me.
I was thirteen.
