My twin sister came to visit me at the hospital, covered in bruises all over her body. Realizing she was being abused, I decided to swap my life with hers to teach that monster a lesson he would never forget.

My name is Nia, and my sister’s name is Lisa. We are twins, identical as two drops of water. But our destinies were as different as oil and water, as heaven and earth.

People said I wasn’t right, that I was crazy. The doctors used more elegant words. They said I had an impulse control disorder, that I struggled to regulate my emotions.

I describe it as feeling too much. I feel everything ten times more intensely than other people. My joy can make my chest feel like it’s going to explode. And my anger… well, my anger is what brought me to this place.

When I was sixteen, I broke a kid’s arm with a chair right out on the block. He hadn’t done anything to me. He was just grabbing my sister Lisa by the hair, trying to drag her into a dark alley.

Lisa was just crying, and I felt the blood boil in my head. I don’t exactly remember what I did. I only remember the sound of a bone snapping, the boy’s scream, and the horrified eyes of the people looking at me.

They weren’t looking at him. They were looking at me. They called me a demon.

My parents, who were already struggling, started going through the worst. They were scared of me. Eventually, they brought me here, to Crestwood State Hospital.

And just like that, ten years went by. Ten years living in a white room less than one hundred square feet. Ten years seeing the world through a window with iron bars. Ten years in which my only friends were the medication and the soulless screams of the other patients.

But if I’m honest, I don’t dislike this place. It’s quiet. Nobody bothers me. I have time to read and exercise.

For the past ten years, I’ve trained every single day. I did push-ups and pull-ups using the window bars as a bar. I did sit-ups, anything to burn the energy bubbling inside me.

My body was lean but hard as a rock. The only gift this decade of confinement gave me was physical strength most men on the outside would envy.

I had only one pain, one single worry: my sister Lisa.

She inherited all our mother’s kindness, and I inherited all our father’s fierceness. She was soft as water, incapable of hurting anyone’s feelings. The day they took me away, she cried until she ran out of tears.

“Nia, it should have been me who left. I’m useless.”

I slapped her. The only time in my life I’ve ever hit her.

“If you say that stupid stuff again, I’ll break out and choke you. You have to live. You have to be happy. Live for both of us.”

She promised me she would.

The following year, she came to see me with a man, saying they were getting married. His name was Darius Rakes. He was handsome and tall, but his gaze wasn’t honest. His eyes darted around constantly, and when he looked at me, I felt a subtle sense of superiority and contempt.

I gripped my sister’s hand tightly.

“I don’t like this man. Think about it again, sister.”

Lisa just smiled sadly.

“With my luck, it’s a miracle anyone even wants to marry me. My parents are old, and he promised to take good care of me.”

I wanted to scream. I wanted to break the glass separating us, but what could I do? I was the crazy one. What weight could my words possibly hold?

The wedding happened, and I couldn’t attend.

Lisa came to see me every month. She always brought a gift, like a box of fruit or some pastries. She talked about her new life. She bragged about being pregnant. She also talked about her daughter, Sky.

Her voice struggled to sound cheerful. But I’m Nia, her other half. I knew she was lying.

Every time she visited, she was a little thinner. The dark circles under her eyes were darker, and her smile was fragile and painfully forced. She always wore long-sleeved shirts buttoned up to her neck, even in the scorching heat of a July sun.

I asked her several times, but she always said a married woman had to dress modestly.

A lie.

She was hiding something.

Today was visiting day again. I waited from early morning. The sky outside was gray, just like my heart. I had a terrible feeling. The rage I’d suppressed for ten years was starting to stir. It was like a hungry beast crouching, waiting for just one drop of blood to fall. And I knew that today that drop of blood was going to fall.

I heard the dry click of the lock and the heavy iron door opened with a screech.

The instant Lisa walked in, I felt like someone squeezed my heart.

The person in front of me wasn’t the Lisa I knew. She was just an emaciated, fragile shadow. She wore an old blouse with worn shoulders and the collar pulled up to her chin. Despite the suffocating summer heat, she was dressed like this. Her hair was messy, her face sunken and pale.

But what chilled my blood were her eyes.

Where were my sister’s clear, sweet eyes?

Now there were only two deep pits filled with despair, two dead, lifeless pupils. And beneath her left cheekbone, a faint purplish bruise clumsily concealed with cheap drugstore makeup.

She forced a smile, a smile that turned my stomach.

“Nia, how are you doing?”

Her voice was weak and trembling like a dry leaf. She set a basket of bruised oranges on the table, probably cheap ones she’d bought on sale at the market to save money.

I didn’t answer. I walked up and stood firmly in front of her. I raised my hand, and with my calloused fingers, I gently touched the bruise under her eye.

She startled and stepped back like a bird frightened by a bending branch.

“Ah, it’s nothing. I fell off my bike.”

“You fell off your bike,” I repeated, my voice ice cold. “You fall and only get a bruise on one eye? How do you have to fall for that to happen?”

She stammered, lowered her head, and wrung her hands.

I looked at her hands. Her knuckles were swollen and red, her nails short and scratched. Were these the hands of someone who worked hard, or of someone desperately defending herself?

The anger began to rise. I took a deep breath, trying to keep my voice calm.

“I’m asking you, sister, why are you wearing long sleeves in this heat?”

“I… I don’t like the sun. I’m a little weak lately.”

I couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed her wrist. She let out a little cry and tried to pull away.

“Nia, what are you doing? It hurts.”

That “it hurts” was like adding fuel to the fire. Ignoring her pleas, I yanked her sleeve up.

And then I saw it.

The map of hell.

My sister’s thin, pale arms were covered in bruises. Old yellowish bruises, recent dark purple bruises, red and swollen marks. There were circular marks as if she had been tightly squeezed with fingers and long thin marks like from a whip or a belt.

I released her hand. My entire body trembled, not from fear, but from rage. A consuming, demented rage I hadn’t felt in ten years.

“That bastard. Darius.”

It wasn’t a question. It was a certainty.

Lisa froze. She stopped hiding it, and as if a dam had broken, she collapsed, covering her face and starting to sob.

A long-held cry burst out. A sad, bitter weeping that filled the white room.

“Nia, Nia, save me. Help me.”

She crawled on the floor and clung to my legs.

“He hits me. He hits me constantly. His mother, his sister, that whole family treats me worse than a dog. And he hits Sky, too. He hits Sky.”

That last sentence turned me to stone.

That monster had hit Sky, my three-year-old niece.

I crouched down and lifted her. This time she slumped into my arms, completely drained of strength. I looked at her tear-swollen face. I looked at those eyes identical to mine, now filled only with despair.

“Stop crying.”

My voice was deep and raspy.

“Crying doesn’t solve anything. Tell me. Tell me everything from the beginning to the end. What has that bastard done to you? What has he done to Sky?”

I sat my sister down on my single metal bed. I poured her a glass of water. She drank between sobs and then she began to speak. Her desperate confession was a death sentence for that family.

Lisa, sitting on the bed with trembling shoulders, shook the glass of water in her hands. With a broken voice that was choking in her throat, she began to speak. Every word she uttered was like a knife plunging into my heart.

“At the beginning of the marriage, he behaved,” Lisa began to recount, “at least in front of our parents. But when I moved in with them, that’s when I discovered what hell was like.”

Her husband, Darius, was a gambling addict. Working as a simple warehouse worker, he earned a miserable wage, but every night he blew it all on sports betting and online casinos.

“He spent all the money from our wedding in three months,” she sobbed. “When I said something to him, he slapped me. It was the first time.”

‘What would you know, woman?’ he said. ‘It’s my money. I’ll do whatever I want.’

“That slap was the start of a habit. If he lost money betting, he hit me. If he won, he hit me anyway, claiming it was my fault he hadn’t won more.”

I clenched my fists so hard my nails dug into my flesh. But I didn’t feel the pain.

“But the worst part,” my sister trembled, “wasn’t Darius. It was his mother.”

“My mother-in-law, Mrs. B, a terribly wicked and bossy woman. She looked at me like I was a bother, like a thief who’d stolen her son. She tormented me slowly.

“If I cooked, she complained it was too salty or too bland, dumping the whole pot into the organic trash and making me start over. Even if I cleaned the house three times, she said it was dirty. And that woman, that woman forced me to handwash the whole family’s underwear, even my sisters-in-law’s.”

I closed my eyes. The image of my sweet, timid Lisa crouched down washing those filthy things made me nauseous.

“And the sister-in-law?” I growled.

“She was worse.” Lisa shook her head. “Trina got divorced, moved back with her son, and lives rent-free in her mother’s house. She treated me like a maid. She left her clothes everywhere and ordered me to wash them.

“Her son Julian is a spoiled brat. He tormented Sky every single day.”

I opened my eyes abruptly.

“What did he do to Sky?”

Lisa started crying again.

“Sky is only three years old, Nia. Julian is five. He took her toys, pushed her, and threw her to the floor. He even spit in her plate of food. When I said something, my sister-in-law came running and yelled at me, ‘Who do you think you are to scold my son? Your daughter doesn’t even have a father.’

“And then she even encouraged her son to hit Sky. ‘Hit her, son. Spoiled brats need a lesson to learn.’

“Mrs. B just watched and laughed. ‘They’re just kids. Your daughter is stronger. She has to yield to her cousin.’”

“And Darius, your husband, the child’s father?” I asked, my voice raw.

“He…” Lisa lowered her head and said in a thread of a voice, “He looked the other way. He said women needed to give birth to sons. That having a daughter was useless. And… and…”

She hesitated.

“Talk,” I shouted, and she jumped.

“Yesterday. Yesterday he came back completely wasted after losing money betting. Sky was crying because Julian was pulling her hair and he… he went crazy.

“‘Shut up, you useless brat,’ he screamed at her. When the little girl got scared and cried louder, he… he…”

She couldn’t continue talking and put a hand to her cheek.

“He hit Sky in the face,” I whispered, but I felt like someone was strangling me.

Lisa nodded, tears streaming down.

“She’s only three years old. She had the mark of five fingers across her face. When I ran to protect her and plead with him, he hit me. He dragged me to the bathroom. He slammed my head against the sink. I thought I was going to die, Nia. I couldn’t breathe.

“The bruises on my arms are from the mother-in-law and the sister-in-law. Instead of stopping him when they saw him hitting me, they joined in. Trina scratched me with a comb, and Mrs. B grabbed some dirty socks and shoved them in my mouth to shut me up.”

That was enough.

Everything inside me crumbled. Done with normalcy, patience, and submission, I leaped up.

Lisa looked at me, terrified.

“Nia, what are you going to do?”

I walked over to the single metal mirror in the room. I looked at myself. My face was pale, but my eyes were burning. I looked at Lisa. We were identical. The same face, the same build. The only difference was that she was dying inside, and I had just been reborn.

“Sister.”

I turned around. My voice was frighteningly calm.

“You didn’t come here today for a visit. You came to swap your life.”

Lisa froze, staring at me. Her eyes widened with terror.

“Nia, what are you saying?”

“Swap our lives.”

I looked directly into her eyes, firmly and without the slightest hesitation.

“You stay here and I go out.”

“No. No.” Lisa shook her head frantically and grabbed my hand. “Nia, don’t you understand? That place is hell. Those people are animals. You’ve been locked up in here for ten years. You won’t survive out there. And what about the paperwork? How are you going to get out?”

I smiled coldly.

“You’re wrong, sister. Precisely because I’ve been here for ten years, I can survive those animals. Look.” I pointed at the bars. “I’ve lived with animals here, too. The only difference is the ones here are locked up and the ones out there are running free.”

I released her hand and grabbed her by the shoulders.

“Listen to me carefully. You are not crazy, which is why you can’t beat them. I am crazy. Only a crazy person like me can handle that trash. Do you think I’m going to escape?”

I gave a slight smile.

“No. I’m walking out the main door with all the honors.”

I led her to the metal mirror.

“Look, we are one. Who is going to tell the difference between Lisa and Nia?”

Lisa looked at our reflection in the mirror, trembling. We were identical down to the last hair.

“This is the plan,” I said quickly. Visiting time was almost over. “Take off your clothes. I’ll take off my hospital uniform.”

“Nia, but—”

“No buts,” I cut her off. “Do you want Sky to live her whole life getting beaten? Do you want to rot in that corner? Trust me. I haven’t rotted in here for ten years in vain. I’ve been waiting for this day.”

I explained the plan.

“From now on, you are Nia. You are safe in this room. Nobody will hit you or bother you. The doctors and nurses here are good people. They just don’t understand me. You just stay calm.

“If anyone asks you anything, you don’t have to answer. Just nod or shake your head. They are used to me doing that. They’ll say, ‘Nia is so quiet today.’

“You just eat, sleep, and read. See all the books I’ve read? Read those. Relax.”

I looked deep into her eyes, conveying my calm.

“You don’t have to do anything. Just wait for me. I will clean up that dumpster. I will make them pay for what they did. I will get Sky out of there. I promise you.”

Lisa’s desperate look slowly shifted to a faint ray of hope. Though weak, she was cornered. She had nothing to lose.

She nodded her head.

“Be careful.”

“I know.”

We quickly changed clothes. I put on her old threadbare clothes. They smelled of mildew, fear, and a faint trace of blood. The rage boiled inside me again.

I slipped Lisa’s state ID and the old house keys into my pocket. In the baggy patient uniform, Lisa suddenly looked very small.

I gave her a fierce hug.

“Don’t move from here. Wait for me.”

The bell announcing the end of the visit rang. I took a deep breath and headed for the door.

The duty nurse saw me and nodded.

“Mrs. Rakes, you’re leaving now.”

I nodded, forcing a trembling smile identical to my sister’s.

The iron door of the patient ward slammed shut behind me. A dry metallic sound echoed. I walked out the main entrance of the hospital.

The blinding summer sunlight hit my face.

Ten years.

I breathed free air after ten years. It was filled with car exhaust, dust, and the noisy roar of the street. But to me it was the smell of war, and I was a demon freshly freed from her chains.

I squeezed the bunch of keys in my pocket.

Darius. Mrs. B. Trina. Julian.

Here I come.

I grabbed a bus and walked almost another mile. Remembering Lisa’s directions, their house was deep in a dark, winding alley in the east side neighborhood. The houses were jammed together, damp, with electrical wires tangled like cobwebs. The smell of sewage and old food hit my nose.

I stopped in front of a dilapidated one-story house. The iron gate was rusty.

Lisa lived here.

My sister, who had always been so neat and tidy, had to bury her life in a place worse than my cell. My hands trembled as I put the key in the lock.

The door opened with a screech.

The first thing I saw was chaos. Clothes thrown carelessly over a chair. Plates with leftover food on the table from lunch, attracting flies. The floor was sticky, and a sour, nauseating smell of laziness and filth permeated everything.

And then I saw my niece, Sky.

She was sitting in the darkest corner of the house next to the leg of an old cabinet. She was skin and bones with pale skin. She wore an old dress that was too small, with a large tear in one shoulder. She held a doll, a headless doll.

Hearing the noise of the door, she started. She looked up.

Seeing her mother, she didn’t run towards me. She shrank back and hugged the doll tightly with both hands. Her eyes were full of fear.

The child was afraid of her own mother.

I felt like my heart was breaking into a thousand pieces.

Damn animals. What had they done to a little girl?

They had turned a three-year-old into a frightened creature who feared even her own mother.

I tried to soften my expression. I crouched down and forced myself to use a gentle, almost forgotten voice.

“Sky, mommy… Mommy is here now.”

The girl just trembled and stared at me.

“Come to mommy.”

I held out my hand. The girl hesitated, looked at me, and then looked behind me as if waiting for someone else.

And that someone spoke.

“That has crawled back already.”

A sour, malicious voice came from inside.

Lisa’s mother-in-law, Mrs. B, shuffled out. She was short and heavy with ashen-colored skin. She wore loud floral pajamas and held a hand fan.

“Where have you been all day dragging yourself back now? Did you go see your crazy sister?”

She spit on the floor right beside me.

“Did you bring anything back to this house, or are you just coming back again with that pathetic face to sponge off our food?”

I slowly stood up, shielding Sky behind my back. I looked at her. I didn’t say a word. I just stared. I drilled my eyes into her turbid, evil ones. I remembered this face from Lisa’s descriptions.

The old woman seemed to notice something was different. The daughter-in-law who usually lowered her head and trembled when insulted was standing tall today and daring to look her in the face.

“What? What are you looking at?”

She raised the fan and pointed it at my face.

“What bug bit you today? You want me to poke your eyes out?”

I gave a very slight, slow smile.

“Excuse me, mother-in-law. I didn’t hear you clearly.”

My smile seemed to chill her blood.

“I— I—”

Before she could finish, another shrill voice interrupted her.

“Oh, Mom, why bother talking to her? Tell her to make dinner. I’m starving.”

My sister-in-law, Trina, came out of the main room. She was just as heavy as her mother with a face full of acne and messy, artificially blonde hair. Behind her, a chubby five-year-old boy followed with an arrogant air. He was his mother’s spitting image.

“Julian! Julian!”

Seeing Sky, he ran toward her.

“Hey, you’re playing with a doll. Give it to me.”

He abruptly snatched the headless doll from her hands.

Sky, frightened, burst into tears.

“Give it back. Give it back, cousin. It’s mine.”

“I won’t give it back. Your toys are mine.”

Julian raised the doll and threw it against the wall.

“Who plays with this garbage?”

He turned to Sky and shoved her hard.

“Why are you crying? Shut up. If you cry again, I’m going to really hit you.”

Sky fell onto the dirty floor. She was so scared that she stopped crying instantly. Only a choked sob escaped her throat.

Mrs. B and Trina watched and laughed as if it were highly amusing.

“That’s my boy,” Trina said, lifting her chin. “Men have to be strong like that, not like that little brat.”

My rage.

Yes, there it was, roaring in my chest. Ten years of repression. It was over.

The smile disappeared from my face.

Julian, seeing that Sky wasn’t crying, became even bolder. He walked over and raised his foot to kick her.

“I told you to shut up, sassy—”

A hand grabbed his ankle midair.

Julian lost his balance and fell backward, but his ankle was still firmly held.

It was my hand.

Suddenly, the house fell into a deathly silence.

Julian’s eyes were wide. He was used to abusing his cousin, used to his grandmother and mother always taking his side. Never had Sky’s mother laid a finger on him.

“Let go of me! Let go, you crazy witch! How dare you touch my leg?” he squirmed.

Without a word, I squeezed a little.

“Ow! It hurts! It hurts! Mom, Grandma, this aunt is breaking my leg!”

Julian started shrieking.

Trina finally reacted.

“My God, Lisa, what are you doing? Let go of my son right now!”

She ran toward me, ready to scratch my face with her red-painted nails.

Still holding Julian’s leg, I raised my other hand and blocked Trina’s arm. I grabbed her wrist.

“Let go! Let go!”

Trina struggled, but my hand was like a steel clamp.

“Sister-in-law,” I said with an expressionless voice, “you should raise your son better. He is a child, yes, but he cannot be a spoiled brat.

“If he touches Sky again…”

I squeezed my hand. Both Julian and Trina let out a cry of pain.

“The next time, I won’t settle for just breaking one leg.”

“Mom! Mom, help me!” Trina screamed, terrified, calling her mother.

Mrs. B finally snapped out of it. She trembled with rage. Her daughter-in-law, the one she hit and insulted daily, dared to rebel today. She dared to touch her daughter and her golden grandson.

“You— You are crazy!”

Mrs. B grabbed a feather duster that was nearby.

“You’ve gotten too big for your britches. Today I’m going to beat you to death.”

She swung the duster and started hitting my back nonstop.

I didn’t flinch. My back was used to worse pain at the hospital.

I slowly released Julian and Trina. Mother and son quickly backed away.

Mrs. B, seeing that I wasn’t reacting, became even bolder.

“I’m going to give you such a beating to knock that insolence out of you so you know your place.”

I slowly straightened up and turned to face her. The duster continued hitting my shoulders and chest. I raised my hand and grabbed the duster handle.

Mrs. B, surprised, tried to pull it away, but it didn’t move an inch. I looked at her. She looked at me. In her eyes, there was anger. In mine, only cold emptiness.

I pulled hard. Mrs. B stumbled forward. I snapped the duster handle in two.

Crack.

I threw the pieces at her feet.

“Starting today,” I said, “this house is going to have rules.”

I looked at the panting old woman, the sister-in-law massaging her wrist with a trembling hand, and the damn nephew who was whimpering.

“It’s time for dinner. What do we have tonight, mother-in-law?”

Mrs. B, caught between fear and fury, stammered,

“Th-the… the dinner, the rotten tilapia you brought from the market yesterday. Make a stew with it, very salty and dry, so we don’t waste the money I feed your family with.”

There it was, the star dish Lisa had told me about—the salty fish stew she was forced to prepare and eat every time.

“Yes, mother-in-law. I will.”

Leaving three pairs of stunned eyes behind, I walked into the kitchen.

I saw the fish that gave off a rotten smell in a basin. With perfect calm, I cleaned it and put it to stew. I poured half a package of salt into the pot. I left it to cook until the liquid completely evaporated and the fish burned black.

The smell of salt and burning was unbearable.

I set the table: a bowl of yesterday’s cold rice, a dish of yellowish boiled vegetables, and my masterpiece, the tilapia stew.

“Mother-in-law. Sister-in-law. Nephew. Dinner.”

Mrs. B, huffing, sat down at the table, grabbed a large piece of fish, and shoved it into her mouth.

Her face instantly changed color from red to purple and she spat out the food.

“Ghk— Ghk— This is so salty. It’s so salty. It’s going to kill me. You— You want to kill me?”

With complete calm, I picked up some vegetables.

“You told me to make it salty and dry. I followed your instructions. Is it to your liking?”

“To my liking, my foot!”

She was so angry that she picked up the hot clay pot with her hands.

“I’m going to smash this pot over your face!”

Just as she was about to lean it toward me—

Boom.

I slammed the table hard.

The cheap plywood table shook violently. The plates and cutlery clattered.

“Put it down on the table.”

My voice wasn’t loud, but it was enough to startle the whole family.

Mrs. B’s hand froze. She looked at me. She saw the gaze of a mad woman.

“You are not going to eat?”

I lowered my voice.

“If you don’t eat, it’s a waste of food. Do you want me to feed you? A daughter-in-law must be respectful to her mother-in-law.”

I stood up and walked around the table. With a large spoon, I took a piece of burnt fish.

“Come on, mother-in-law. Open your mouth.”

“You— You— This… This is crazy!”

Mrs. B, terrified, pushed her chair back. With one hand, I grabbed her chin and squeezed hard. Her mouth opened on its own. I shoved the spoonful of fish down her throat.

“Eat it,” I snarled. “Taste the flavor my sister Lisa had to put up with for years. Taste what it’s like to respect other people’s labor.”

Mrs. B coughed violently, snot and tears mixing on her face. The hard, salty piece of fish got stuck in her throat. She tried to spit it out, but I held her jaw firmly.

“Swallow,” I commanded.

My sister-in-law, Trina, couldn’t just sit there watching her mother being treated like this. She forgot her fear, and her years of arrogance resurfaced.

“Hey, Lisa, let go of my mother right now! How dare you force-feed her?”

She ran towards me, ready to claw my face with her thick, sharp nails. She thought that since I was busy holding the old woman, I wouldn’t be ready.

She was wrong.

My left hand was holding Mrs. B’s chin. My right hand was free. Without even turning my head, I swung my right hand back.

Splat.

It sounded like an explosion. It wasn’t the sound of a slap. It was like hitting a piece of meat with a board.

Trina froze. She staggered. Her huge body spun and hit the wall. Her cheek went from pale to deep red and instantly swelled up. The mark of my five fingers was imprinted.

Her ears were ringing. Her eyes were wide. She touched her cheek and then looked at my hand. She had an expression of disbelief.

She, who had spent her whole life hitting and insulting others, was being hit for the first time—and by her sister-in-law, whom she considered trash.

It was then that I let go of Mrs. B’s chin. She immediately crawled on the floor to vomit the piece of fish.

I slowly faced Trina.

“Sister-in-law.” My voice was like ice. “Does your cheek hurt?”

She trembled with fear and humiliation.

“You— You dare to hit me? I’m— I’m your sister-in-law!”

“I only slapped you.”

I moved closer to her. She pressed against the wall, backing away.

“Do you want to feel what a real beating is like? Like the one you and your mother gave Lisa last night, helping Darius.”

I recited exactly what Lisa had told me.

Trina’s face turned white as paper.

“How— How do you know?”

“I know everything.”

I smiled.

“I also know that you scratched my sister with a comb and that your mother shoved dirty socks in her mouth. Do you want to try it?”

I glanced at a pile of Julian’s dirty socks thrown in a corner.

Trina let out a scream. She knew I wasn’t joking.

“No. No. You’re a demon. You’re not Lisa.”

She fled and took refuge in her bedroom. The click of the lock echoed. She hid inside, barely able to breathe.

Mrs. B, seeing her daughter flee, hastily crawled to her own room and slammed the door shut.

Julian, seeing his grandmother and mother being hit, peed himself and, without making a sound, ran behind his mother.

The house fell into an eerie silence. Only Sky and I remained, and the salty fish stew that was still steaming.

I turned around.

Sky was still sitting in her corner. She wasn’t crying. She just looked at me with wide eyes. In her gaze, the initial fear had lessened, giving way to astonishment and a strange curiosity.

My heart ached.

I threw away the dirty spoon and went to the kitchen. I knew this trash never ate with Lisa and Sky. Lisa had told me that the old woman always hid the good food in a private fridge for herself.

I opened the old fridge. Just as I expected: chicken, ham, yogurt, fruit.

I took out a cooked chicken drumstick and a yogurt. I also found the fresh rice that Lisa had hidden for her daughter. I heated it up.

I put a generous portion of rice on a clean tray and shredded the chicken over it. I took it to Sky.

“Eat, little one.” My voice softened. “Eat until you’re full. From now on, nobody will take your food. Nobody will hit you.”

I sat down next to her.

Sky looked at me, trembling. Then she looked at the plate. The smell of chicken was delicious. She was hungry.

Carefully, she took the spoon, ate a spoonful, and burst into tears.

This time, it wasn’t fear.

She sobbed as she ate. I didn’t console her. I just sat beside her, gently stroking her back in silence.

“Eat, little one. Eat it all. Mommy is here.”

Sky finished the whole plate of rice and drank the yogurt. When she was done, she looked at me. She hesitated for a moment, then got up and wrapped her arms around my neck.

A weak hug, but enough to surprise me.

“Mommy,” the girl whispered. “Mommy’s a little different today.”

I hugged her back.

“Mommy has just decided not to be afraid anymore.”

That night, I slept hugging Sky. The girl slept deeply. How long had it been since she had eaten until she was full and felt safe?

But I didn’t sleep. I stayed awake, listening to the snoring coming from the next room.

The husband’s snoring.

Oh no—he hadn’t come back yet. Those snores were the rats in the adjacent room.

I was waiting.

Lisa had told me the husband, Darius: his shift ended at eleven at night, and he always came home completely drunk.

Exactly at 11:30 at night, I heard the noise of a motorcycle engine in the alley, followed by the screech of sharp braking. Then the sound of stumbling steps and a string of curses.

“Damn, I lost again. I lost everything. Open the door!”

Darius, the monster, was back.

Sky, who was sleeping in my arms, was startled and hid her head in my chest. I soothed her.

“Hush. Sleep. Mommy is here.”

Boom.

The front door was kicked open. I hadn’t locked it.

A tall man stumbled in. He was a head taller than me. He smelled of cheap alcohol, tobacco, and sour sweat. His work clothes were disheveled and greasy. His eyes were bloodshot.

This was the demon who had tormented my sister. This was the bastard who had slapped his own three-year-old daughter.

“Lisa, where are you?” he yelled, his tongue thick with alcohol. “Where have you hidden?”

Not seeing anyone, he grabbed a glass from the table—a glass that I had washed and left clean—and smashed it against the bedroom wall.

Crash.

Glass fragments flew everywhere.

Sky screamed and cried,

“I’m scared, Mommy. I’m scared. Daddy’s here.”

I hugged her tight.

“Hush. Stay here. Mommy’s going to see what’s going on.”

I tucked her into bed and covered her with the blanket.

“Close your eyes. Cover your ears. Mommy will be done soon.”

I left the room.

Darius saw me. He smiled maliciously.

“Ah, there you are. Where’s the water? I’m thirsty. Get me some water quick.”

I remained still, ten feet away from him.

Without moving, Darius frowned. His wife usually ran to get him water as soon as she heard his voice. Why was she so bold today?

“Are you deaf?” he shouted.

He looked around for something to throw.

“You’re acting up today. I’m going to have to teach you a lesson again.”

He stumbled toward me.

“I lost money today and I’m in a bad mood, so you better obey.”

He raised his hand.

A familiar slap. The same one he had used to discipline Lisa for the past seven years. The same one he had hit Sky with the night before.

“I’m going to give you a beating so that—”

His thick, hairy arm swung toward me, but it stopped in midair.

I had grabbed his wrist.

Darius was stunned. His eyes widened. He tried to pull free, but he couldn’t. His wrist was trapped as if in a steel vice.

He looked at me, then at my hand gripping his wrist.

“What are you doing? Let go of me.”

He started to realize something was wrong. He was drunk, but he wasn’t stupid. How could the weak Lisa, the Lisa who wouldn’t hurt a fly, have such strength?

“Let go of me!” he yelled, and with his other hand, he threw a punch at my face. It was a drunk’s punch, but strong enough to break a normal person’s teeth.

I still held his wrist firmly. I simply tilted my head, and the punch grazed my ear.

Darius was even more perplexed. He had missed.

“Honey.” My voice was eerily sweet. “Tired from work?”

“You… you bitch!”

He sensed danger and tried to pull free, but I squeezed harder.

Crack.

A dry, short sound, the sound of a wrist bone dislocating.

Darius let out a scream of pain that instantly sobered him up.

“My— my hand! What did you do to my hand?”

He collapsed.

I didn’t release him. I lifted him up.

“Hitting has become a habit, hasn’t it?”

“You— You are not Lisa. Who are you?” he hissed.

“I’m your wife.” I smiled. “The same one you love to smash against the sink.”

I slapped him.

Splat.

This wasn’t my sister’s slap. It was my slap. A slap charged with ten years of contained rage.

The big man staggered and hit his head against the wall. He fell to the floor face down. His cheek was swollen and bleeding. He was dazed.

A woman had hit him.

“Mom! Trina! Help me!” he shouted, terrified. “Save me! Lisa—Lisa has gone crazy. She’s hitting me!”

In the two bedrooms, not a sound was heard.

Mrs. B and Trina heard him, but neither dared to open the door. They trembled behind their doors. Despite the cries of their son, their brother—cowardly rats.

Darius realized no one would come to save him.

The pain, the humiliation, and the remaining alcohol turned into rage, the fury of a man whose pride had been trampled.

“You dare to hit me, I’m going to kill you.”

He staggered to his feet like a wounded beast. He lunged at me, trying to crush me with his huge body. He opened his arms to grab me.

I sighed.

“Too slow.”

I didn’t back away. I stepped forward. As he lunged, I ducked. I grabbed his hair with one hand and pulled down hard. With the other hand, I closed my fist and delivered a powerful blow to his solar plexus.

Boom.

A dull thud sounded.

Darius folded over at the waist. His eyes rolled back. Saliva and stomach acids came out of his mouth. He couldn’t even scream anymore, only gasped with his mouth open.

I was still holding his hair.

“This,” I whispered into his ear, “is for Sky.”

I lifted his head by the hair.

“And this—” I slapped him again.

Splat.

“—is for my sister Lisa.”

I dragged him. He was corpulent, but now he was like a broken sack of potatoes. I dragged him to the bathroom. The narrow, dirty bathroom.

“You like slamming your wife into the water, huh?”

I filled the sink with water. I grabbed his hair and shoved his head under.

“Refreshing, honey.”

Darius writhed like a pig in a slaughterhouse. The dirty sink water bubbled. I held his greasy hair firmly. I shoved his head into the water.

I gave him a second to breathe, then shoved it back under.

“Refreshing, honey,” I whispered. My voice was eerily sweet. “Is the water cold? You loved dunking Lisa’s head, didn’t you? You heard her pleas. You saw her despair.”

Gulp. Gulp.

“Hel—”

He could barely articulate a word before the water filled his mouth again.

I yanked his head up. His face was pale. His eyes rolled back. Snot, saliva, and sewer water were dripping off him. He was trembling.

The drunkenness was gone, leaving only absolute terror.

He looked at me as if seeing a ghost. The big man, the one who a moment ago was threatening to kill me, was now cowering and had peed himself. The smell of urine was unbearable.

I frowned.

“Gross.”

I released him. Darius fell to the bathroom floor, coughing and vomiting. He vomited the alcohol, the food, even the bile.

I looked down at him with cold disgust. I looked at him, then at my hands.

For ten years, I used these hands to read and exercise. Now I was using them to clean up trash.

I left the man whimpering like a dying dog and walked out of the bathroom. I heard the door to Mrs. B and Trina’s room open slightly, then slam shut. They had seen everything clearly. The more they saw, the more afraid they would be.

In the kitchen, I saw the pot with the salty fish stew that Mrs. B had vomited up in the afternoon. An idea came to mind. A dark but very satisfying idea.

Lisa had told me that Mrs. B was the ringleader, the brains. Darius was just the muscle. To stop a dog from biting, you have to break its teeth. But for a dog to stop being loyal to its master, you have to make it fear and despise its master.

I looked around the house.

In a dirty corner that Lisa called the laundry area, I found a plastic basin full of sour-smelling dirty laundry. Lisa hadn’t washed their clothes since yesterday. On top of everything were Mrs. B’s old panties.

A smile spread across my face.

I turned the stove back on, put water in a large pot with a stick, grabbed the panties, and put them in the pot. I set them to boil, bubbling fiercely. A horrible smell began to rise, worse than the sewer.

Meanwhile, Darius had crawled out of the bathroom. He dragged himself to the door of Mrs. B’s room.

“Mom. Mom, help me. Th-that one is crazy. Mom…”

The door remained closed. Inside, Mrs. B was trembling.

“Go away. Go away. Don’t come near me. If you’re crazy, die alone!”

Darius froze.

His mother, the mother who had always protected him, the mother who had encouraged him to hit his wife, was now abandoning him.

He turned to me. He saw me stirring a special broth. He didn’t understand what I was doing.

I ladled a bowl of broth from the pot, a thick yellowish broth. I placed the bowl in front of Darius.

“Drink.”

He looked at it blankly.

“What— What is this? Medicine?”

I said,

“A medicine to cure abusive husbands. A medicine to cure ungrateful sons. A medicine to cure the illness of hitting your wife because your mother tells you to. Drink, honey.”

He looked at the bowl and sniffed it. His face went white as paper. He understood.

“No. No. You’re a demon.”

He crawled backward.

“A demon?” I laughed. “Compared to dunking a woman’s head in water, slapping a three-year-old child, and forcing someone to eat garbage, this is very humane.”

I grabbed his hair and yanked his head back.

“I told you,” I snarled. “This house has to have rules. First rule: you reap what you sow. Your mother sowed the seed, so you, her son, have to eat the fruit. Drink.”

I forced his mouth open and poured the awful broth down his throat. He squirmed and tried to vomit, but I held him firmly. He had to swallow, sip by sip.

The door to Mrs. B’s room flew open. She stood there. She saw her panties in the pot. She saw her son drinking the water they had been boiled in. Her eyes rolled back.

“My God. My God. You— You—”

Darius vomited violently, this time up to the bile.

Mrs. B looked at her son, then at me. There was no more malice in her, only terror. She stumbled and fainted.

Perfect. One down.

I looked at Darius, who was convulsing.

“See, your mother fainted. Now get lost in your room. If I hear a single moan from you tonight, I’ll make you drink the water from that whole basin of dirty laundry.”

Darius, with his last strength born of terror, crawled to his bedroom.

The house was finally silent.

The next morning, the house was silent as a tomb. I got up early and bathed Sky. I took delicious food from Mrs. B’s fridge and prepared a hearty breakfast for the two of us. Sautéed beef, fried eggs.

Sky ate eagerly. The light was starting to return to her eyes.

From the two bedrooms, no sound came out. Mrs. B, Trina, and Darius—the three demons of yesterday, like three dead rats—didn’t even dare to peek out.

I didn’t care. I fed Sky and put on cartoons for her.

Around nine in the morning, there was a loud and decisive knock at the door.

“Who is it?” I asked.

“Police. Open the door.”

I smiled. So fast.

I opened the door.

Two police officers, one older and one younger, stood in front of me. They wore serious expressions. The young officer looked at me. I still had Lisa’s old bruises.

“Are you Darius Rakes’s wife, Lisa?”

“Yes, I am.”

“We received a complaint from Darius. He accuses you of brutally assaulting him.”

Just then, Darius crawled out of the room. He looked pathetic, his face swollen, one cheek bruised, and his wrist bandaged. He walked with a limp, feigning great pain.

Seeing the police, he shouted as if he had seen a savior.

“Here, officers, look. She hit me.”

He pointed to his face.

“She— She—”

He hesitated, unable to recount the humiliating scene of the night before.

“She’s crazy. She’s the sister of that crazy woman who was in the psychiatric hospital. The madness rubbed off on her. Arrest her. Lock her up.”

Mrs. B and Trina also poked their heads out stealthily to support the story.

“It’s true, officer. She hit her husband, her mother-in-law, and her sister-in-law,” Trina said, pointing to her still swollen cheek.

The older officer frowned. He looked alternately at the bulky Darius and at me, small and thin, but strongly built.

“Mrs. Rakes,” he asked in a serious voice, “is what these people are saying true? Did you assault them?”

I didn’t deny it.

“Yes, officer,” I said in a quiet, contrite voice. “I assaulted them.”

The eyes of Darius and the two women shone.

“See? She confessed. Arrest her.”

But I continued.

“I did it in self-defense. My husband, my mother-in-law, and my sister-in-law hit me.”

“Lie!” Darius shouted. “When did I ever hit you?”

I looked at the older officer.

“Officer, my husband is accusing me of assault. May I ask what an assault is?”

The young officer snapped,

“She left her husband’s face looking like that and says it’s not assault.”

“Yes,” I nodded. “Then if a husband hits his wife until she is covered in bruises, chokes her in water, and swells her face, can that also be called assault?”

The older officer paused. He was beginning to understand the situation.

“You mean—?”

“I mean this.”

I walked into the room and took out a stack of papers. It was what Lisa had gathered in her desperation. She had brought it to the hospital yesterday, and I had kept it.

I put it on the table.

“This is my medical report from three months ago. Broken ribs. The doctor concluded it was from a strong impact.”

I took out a photo.

“This is my face from two months ago. Broken nose. My husband said I fell on my own.”

I took out a pile of injury reports.

“These are bruises on my arms, on my back. Belt marks. Scratches. There’s a whole lot.

“Officers, I’ve been living here for seven years. Seven years of receiving beatings. Who do I complain to? If I tell the neighbors, they say it’s a couple’s fight. And if I go to the police station, the officers tell me to work it out between ourselves.”

I looked Darius directly in the eyes. He was trembling. I rolled up my sleeve and showed Lisa’s old bruises.

“Look. This injury is from the day before yesterday. My husband hit my daughter in the face, and when I tried to stop him, he dragged me into the bathroom and choked me in water. My mother-in-law and my sister-in-law helped him hold me down.”

The two officers were stunned. They looked at me, then at those three demons.

“I put up with it for seven years,” I said. My voice trembled with indignation. I was playing Lisa’s role. “Yesterday, my husband came home drunk, kicked the door, threw things, and tried to hit me and my daughter. I couldn’t take it anymore. And without realizing it, I reacted.

“I have hit my husband once, but he has hit me thousands of times. I ask you, officers”—I turned to the two police—“if a husband can hit his wife and not be arrested, isn’t it also a domestic matter for a wife to hit her husband?”

The older officer sighed. He had dealt with too many cases like this. He turned to Darius. His voice became sharp.

“Darius, look at you. How big you are, and your wife is so small. You leave her face like this and now that she’s hit you back, you call us to arrest her.”

“But— But she—”

Darius was speechless.

“But nothing.”

The older officer slammed the table.

“With this stack of reports, if I open a case, you’re the one who’s going to be arrested. Domestic violence. Felony assault. Do you want to go to jail?”

Darius’s face turned ashen.

“I’m warning this family,” the officer pointed at the three. “Live like decent people. Don’t make us come back here. Next time there won’t just be a warning.”

He turned to me and said in a softer voice,

“Mrs. Rakes, if that man hits you again, come directly to the precinct with these reports. We’ll take care of it. Understood?”

“Thank you, officer.”

I bowed my head and sobbed.

The two police officers left.

Darius, Mrs. B, and Trina stood there stunned. They looked at me. Now there was a mixture of fear and hatred in their eyes. They realized the law was not on their side, and I knew they wouldn’t stop. They would use other methods.

Darius had lost humiliatingly. Throughout that day, the house returned to silence, but it was not the silence of a tomb, but the calm that precedes the storm. I heard the whispers, the murmurings, and the quiet curses coming from Mrs. B’s room.

The three of them—a limping Darius, a swollen-faced Trina, and a stunned Mrs. B—were plotting. I could smell their conspiracy in the air.

I knew without needing to hear it what they were planning. They couldn’t defeat me by force. They couldn’t use the police. So, what method would they use?

Of course, they would use my “crazy” label.

“That one is crazy,” I overheard Mrs. B’s voice say. “It’s not Lisa. It’s Nia, the crazy one from the hospital. She escaped. She’s impersonating her sister.”

Darius nodded.

“It’s true. Lisa… Lisa is weak as a snail. How could she have that strength? How could she do something like that? It has to be her crazy sister.”

Trina trembled.

“My God. No wonder she was so evil. She did that to my brother…”

“Shut up,” Mrs. B snapped. “Don’t mention that again. If the neighbors find out, it’ll cover us in shame.”

“And now, what do we do, Mom?” Darius asked. “We can’t live with a crazy woman. She could kill us all.”

Mrs. B was silent for a moment. I heard her footsteps as she paced back and forth. Then she lowered her voice.

“What’s crazy must return to its place.”

The plan began to form in that old, wicked head.

“We can’t catch her ourselves, but the psychiatric hospital can,” she said. “But we can’t just call an ambulance to take her away. She’s strong as a bull and she’ll fight back. And what if she tells them everything? We have to weaken her.”

“Weaken her?” Trina’s voice sounded sharp. “Something like sleeping pills, like in the soap operas, in the soup?”

“Exactly.”

Mrs. B clapped her hands.

“We give her a large dose of sleeping pills so she sleeps like a log. And then we tie her up tightly. Afterward, we call Crestwood State Hospital and report that patient Nia has escaped. She’s at our house and we’ve restrained her. They’ll come get her right away.”

“But what if she doesn’t drink it?” Darius worried. “She hasn’t eaten with us since yesterday.”

“She won’t eat, but her daughter will.”

Mrs. B smiled maliciously.

“Tonight, we’ll pretend to make peace. I… I will apologize to her. I’ll prepare a delicious dinner. I’ll tell her that Mommy was wrong, that we’re a family again.”

“She’s smart. She won’t believe it,” Trina said.

“Even if she doesn’t believe it, she’ll have to pretend she does,” Mrs. B said. “And we’ll put the drug in a separate soup, a chicken soup. We’ll tell her we prepared it for our granddaughter Sky to make her strong. Do you think she won’t give it to her daughter? If she doesn’t eat it, she’ll have to eat it herself. She won’t be able to refuse her mother-in-law’s kindness.”

My heart stopped for an instant.

Damn animals.

Daring to use Sky.

That night was just as I expected: a strangely abundant dinner. Roast chicken. Croquettes.

Darius and Trina, with their bruised faces, sat in silence. Mrs. B had changed 180 degrees. Smiling, she said,

“Lisa, come sit and eat.”

She served me a chicken drumstick.

“What happened yesterday was my fault. I… I’m sorry. I’m old and… forgive me.”

Trina also said in a thread of a voice,

“Sister-in-law, I’m sorry, too. Please forgive me.”

Seeing the circus in front of me, I smiled, too.

“Yes, mother-in-law. Sister-in-law, I don’t hold a grudge either. We are family.”

Darius, seeing my docility, sighed in relief.

“Eat,” Mrs. B said. “Oh, in the afternoon I prepared some chicken soup. It’s delicious. I made it especially for Sky. The little girl is too thin lately.”

She brought a small bowl of steaming soup. She placed it in front of me and Sky.

“You give it to the child.”

Sky’s eyes lit up when she saw the soup.

I looked at Mrs. B. She was smiling, but her eyes were not. Those eyes were staring intently, waiting.

I took a spoonful of soup.

“It looks so good. Thank you, mother-in-law.”

I raised the spoon. Sky opened her mouth, waiting.

I stopped.

“Ouch. It’s hot.”

I smiled.

“Mommy will cool it down by blowing on it.”

I blew and blew and then faked a mistake.

Splat.

The bowl of hot soup spilled onto the floor.

“Oh no!” I exclaimed, pretending surprise. “Mother-in-law, I’m sorry. How clumsy of me. I spilled all that rich soup you prepared.”

Sky started crying from sadness.

The three demons’ faces changed in an instant—from hope to disappointment and then to extreme rage. Darius clenched his fists under the table, but they couldn’t do anything.

“No— No problem,” Mrs. B forced a twisted smile. “If it spilled, it’s spilled. I— I’ll prepare another one for you.”

“No need, mother-in-law,” I said quickly. “I’m full with the food already. You eat. And you, sister-in-law, and you, honey—eat a lot. Eat a lot and get your strength up.”

The dinner ended. Their first plot had failed.

I knew they wouldn’t give up. They would try another method. They had lost patience. Since they couldn’t trick me with poison, they decided to use force.

That night, I went to bed hugging Sky.

I didn’t sleep. I never sleep deeply. My ten years at the hospital taught me to be alert twenty-four hours a day.

In the middle of the night, I heard a creak—soft, stealthy footsteps.

I closed my eyes and pretended to be sound asleep. I breathed evenly.

The door to my room opened slightly without a sound. Three shadows: Darius, Mrs. B, and Trina.

Darius was in front. In his hands, although both were bandaged, he held a thick rope, a rope for tying packages. Trina carried duct tape and Mrs. B carried a towel, presumably to cover my mouth.

They approached the bed stealthily. They thought I was asleep. They thought I was still the weak Lisa.

“She’s sound asleep,” Darius whispered. “Now.”

All three lunged.

Darius threw the rope. Mrs. B ran to cover my mouth and Trina to hold my legs.

Too slow.

The instant the rope touched the blanket, I sat up.

Not only did I sit up, I jumped like a panther.

I didn’t go for Darius. He was big but useless. I went for the weakest one—Trina.

I gave her a double kick to the stomach.

Boom.

“Ah!”

The corpulent Trina was thrown backward and hit the wall. She couldn’t even scream. She collapsed with her mouth open.

Mrs. B froze. The towel fell from her hands. Darius also stopped.

In just one second, I grabbed the cheap ceramic lamp from the nightstand. I smashed it hard on Darius’s head.

Crash.

Darius yelled and covered his head. Blood began to gush. He didn’t expect me to defend myself with such brutality.

“You! You—!”

While he was stunned, I was already behind Mrs. B. I wrapped my arm around her neck, using her as a shield.

“Darius!” I screamed. “One more step and I’ll break your mother’s neck.”

Darius froze. Blood streamed down his face. He looked at me and at his mother squirming in my arms.

Sky woke up then and burst into terrified tears.

“Silence!” I screamed. “Everybody shut up in this house.”

Darius was terrified.

“No. No. Don’t touch my mother. Wh-what do you want?”

“What do I want?” I laughed. “What were you going to do with the rope? Tie me up?”

I dragged Mrs. B. I picked up the rope from the floor.

“Good idea.”

I shoved Mrs. B hard toward Darius.

“Go.”

She fell into her son’s arms.

I walked closer. Darius, covering his head and holding his mother, backed away. He was afraid of me.

“You— You…”

I picked up the rope.

“You like playing hide-and-seek? Okay, I’ll play with you.”

Trina finally let out a moan.

“Help… Help…”

“Shut up!” I yelled. “Everyone go to the living room right now.”

I herded them like a flock of ducks. The big man, the fat sister-in-law, the wicked mother-in-law. All three, terrified, were led to the living room by one small, thin woman.

“Sit down.”

I pointed to the sofa.

They sat down, trembling.

“Darius,” I called him.

“Y-yes,” he trembled like jelly.

“You are my husband, right? A husband should sleep with his wife.”

I smiled.

“Go into the bedroom.”

He didn’t understand.

“B-but—”

“Just go in.”

I pushed Darius toward our bedroom.

Sky was crying in bed.

“Little one, come outside.”

I picked her up and carried her to the living room.

“Watch TV with Grandma and Auntie. Don’t come in here.”

I left her outside.

I slammed the bedroom door shut and locked it from the inside.

Now it was just Darius and me.

He backed away.

“Wh-what are you going to do to me?”

“The same thing you were going to do to me.”

I raised the rope and lunged at him.

Darius tried to resist, but he was wounded in the head. He was dazed, and the hand he injured yesterday still hurt.

I threw him onto the bed. I used the techniques I learned at the hospital to restrain patients having attacks. In five minutes, Darius was tied hand and foot. His hands and feet were firmly tied to the four corners of the bed. He couldn’t move. He could only look at me with wide eyes.

“My sister Lisa says,” I whispered into his ear, “that you like to use the belt. That you like rough play.”

I looked around the room and found his leather belt.

“No, no, please. I’m sorry. I beg you.”

The violent man started crying and pleading. I didn’t care. I grabbed a rag and stuffed it into his mouth.

“Shh. Quiet. The show is about to begin.”

I left Darius tied hand and foot on the bed with a rag in his mouth that only allowed him to emit a desperate grunt.

I turned off the light. The room went dark. I opened the door and walked out.

In the living room, Mrs. B and Trina were huddled on the sofa. The two wicked women now looked pathetic. Seeing me come out, both were startled.

“And… and Darius?” Mrs. B stammered. “What… what did you do to him?”

I put on a terrified face.

“Mother-in-law, sister-in-law, something terrible has happened. Darius… Darius, I tricked him and tied him to the bed.”

The two women froze.

“I used all my strength. I lured him to let me tie him up. But he’s so strong that he’s about to break the ropes.”

I put on a masterful performance. I pretended to be scared.

“If he breaks free, he’ll kill me. He’ll kill us all. Mother-in-law, sister-in-law…”

Mrs. B and Trina looked at each other. They weren’t stupid. They were doubtful.

“Is— Is that true?” Trina asked suspiciously. “You really tied him up?”

I nodded.

“But I can’t hold him. Come and help me. He— He insulted me, and he insulted you, too, too. He said that when he breaks free, he’ll beat us all to death. He’s crazy.”

The doubt in the two women’s eyes slowly turned into a wicked glint.

They hated me, but they were also afraid of Darius. And they hated the humiliation he had put them through. If Darius was truly tied up, this was their chance—an opportunity to vent, to teach him and me a lesson.

They would think Darius was tied up and enter to hit him.

Or they could think that the one tied up was me.

I had to make sure.

“I— I tied him up, but he’s too strong,” I repeated. “Tied up.”

Mrs. B stood up.

“You mean… tied to the bed?”

“Yes.”

“Hold him tight,” she said. Her eyes gleamed. “I— I’m going to teach him a lesson. How dare that damn fool scare his own mother.”

Ah. It turned out she also hated her useless son, Darius, who had brought her disgrace. She wanted to take the opportunity to tame him again.

No, this scenario isn’t funny. I have to change it. I have to make them think that the one in bed is me.

I shook my head.

“No, no, it’s not like that. I… I tricked him, but he tied me up,” I said the opposite.

“What?” The two women were perplexed.

I screamed,

“Darius is so strong he grabbed me and tied me to the bed. He wants— He wants to kill me. Mother-in-law, sister-in-law, help me. He just hit his head and he’s not in his right mind. Now he’s looking for a knife. Yes, a knife!”

This scenario was more credible.

Mrs. B and Trina’s faces lit up. The daughter-in-law tied up, the crazy son looking for a knife. This was an opportunity fallen from the sky.

“She’s tied up?” Trina sneered. “Great. Very good. Where is she tied?”

“In… in the bedroom. Very tight. I can’t move.” I sobbed.

“Mom,” Trina turned to Mrs. B, “it’s our chance. Let’s give that— a beating to knock the insolence out of her.”

“Yes.” Mrs. B nodded. “She dares to hit me and make my son drink that garbage…”

She gritted her teeth.

“Get a stick. Today I’m killing her with a beating.”

Trina ran to the kitchen and brought a hard wooden mop handle. Mrs. B grabbed a bamboo cane she used for hanging clothes.

“The room is dark,” I said, trembling.

“Better in the dark,” Trina said triumphantly. “That way we hit her without her knowing who did it.”

The two women, armed and bloodthirsty, headed for the bedroom.

I backed away and hid in a corner. I grabbed my cell phone. I started video recording mode. The red light came on.

“Open the door,” Mrs. B ordered.

I opened the door, trembling.

“Mother-in-law, sister-in-law, help me,” I moaned.

“Help you? Ask for help in hell.”

The two women ran into the dark room. They only saw the silhouette of a person tied up in bed, writhing and emitting a muffled groan.

They thought… they thought it was me.

“Die, you crazy—”

Trina was the first to act. She raised the mop handle and began to hit the figure on the bed with all her might. Mercilessly.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

“You dare to hit me? You dare to slap me?”

Mrs. B was not far behind. With the bamboo cane, she hit his legs and sides.

“I’m going to knock that insolence out of you so you know who’s in charge in this house.”

Boom. Splat. Boom.

The sound of the sticks against the flesh. The sound of bones. I think I heard the sound of bones breaking.

Darius gagged. Couldn’t scream. He could only emit a choked moan.

“Ugh… Ugh…”

But the more he groaned, the more the two women believed it was me suffering, and the more they tormented him.

“Scream! Scream louder! I’ll show you how to shut up!”

I was standing at the door recording clearly.

When I had been recording for about five minutes, I saw that Darius was no longer writhing. He stayed still.

I decided that was enough.

I walked in and turned on the light.

The cold white fluorescent light flooded the room.

Mrs. B and Trina stopped, sticks in hand. They blinked and saw that the person tied up in bed, bloody and gagged, was Darius—their son, their brother.

“Ah!”

Trina was the first to scream. She dropped the stick and backed away, her face pale as paper.

Mrs. B was stunned. She looked at Darius, then at me.

I was standing at the door with the phone in my hand, the red recording light still blinking.

“You hit well, mother-in-law,” I smiled. “Hit harder. I have it all recorded. You and your daughter just committed a felony assault, an organized crime with weapons against your own son and brother.”

I held up the phone.

“With this video, I can say that Darius kidnapped me and that you, trying to rescue me, mistook the person. Will the police believe that?”

Mrs. B staggered and collapsed. This time, she didn’t faint. She peed herself.

The room filled with the smell of Mrs. B’s urine, Darius’s moans on the bed, and Trina’s terrified breathing.

With complete calm, I put the phone back in my pocket. I patted Trina’s pale cheek.

“Sister-in-law, if you’re done hitting now, you should call an ambulance for the victim. I think you broke your brother’s bones.”

Trina jumped and stammered,

“I— I— You ordered us. You set a trap for us.”

“I set a trap for you?” I laughed. “It’s true. I tied Darius up, but I asked you for help to come hold him down. I didn’t know you would bring sticks and give him a group beating. I didn’t order you to hit him. You did it voluntarily and with great enthusiasm.”

I turned to Mrs. B. She was still on the floor.

“Mother-in-law. So, now what? Do we call 911 first or the paramedics?”

I didn’t wait for her answer and took out my phone.

First, I called the police.

“Hello, precinct. This is Lisa Rakes from East Side, number X Street. I’m calling to report an emergency. A serious felony assault has just occurred in my house. The victim is my husband, Darius, and the aggressors are his own mother and sister, Mrs. B and Trina. They hit him with sticks, and I think they broke his bones. Come quickly. I’m afraid they’ll kill him.”

I hung up, leaving the two women stunned.

And then I called the paramedics.

“Hello, 911. I need an ambulance at this address. The patient suffered a group beating. I suspect broken ribs and a head injury.”

When I finished the call, I dragged a chair to the center of the living room, right in front of the bedroom door, and sat down. I crossed my arms and waited.

Mrs. B finally reacted. She realized what she had done and started screaming,

“Crazy demon! You ruined my family!”

She tried to lunge at me. I simply held up the phone.

“Hit me more, mother-in-law. Hit me, too, and make it a combo. That way, when the police come, they’ll take all of you together.”

She stopped.

Trina staggered up, ran to the room, and shook Darius.

“Brother, brother, wake up. Don’t scare me.”

Sirens sounded. A police car and an ambulance arrived almost at the same time. The narrow alley was illuminated with blue and red lights in the middle of the night. The neighbors, accustomed to the screams from this house, peeked out curiously.

The same two police officers from yesterday appeared again, this time accompanied by two security agents.

“Who is Mrs. Rakes?” the older officer asked seriously.

“That’s me,” I stepped forward.

“What happened? Another fight?”

“No,” I shook my head. “It wasn’t me. They fought among themselves.”

The paramedics rushed in with a stretcher. When they illuminated Darius with their flashlights, they too were stunned.

The big man was now a bloody, crumpled ball, his clothes disheveled and still tied up.

“What? What happened here?” the young officer exclaimed, horrified. “Who tied this man up?”

“I did,” I said calmly. “He tried to hit me, so I tied him up. It was in self-defense.”

“And after tying him up, what did you do?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I simply went out to ask my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law for help. I told them Darius was tied up and to come help me.”

“Lie!” Trina shouted from the room. “You tricked us. You— You said you were tied up.”

I shrugged.

“She can say whatever she wants now. I have proof.”

At that moment, after an officer cut the ropes with a knife, Darius whispered weakly,

“My side hurts… Mom… Trina…”

He pointed at the two women with his finger and fainted.

The paramedics quickly moved him to the vehicle. One of them told the police,

“He’s in serious condition. He has at least two broken ribs and a head injury.”

The older officer turned around.

“Mrs. B, Ms. Trina, what happened here?”

“She— She tricked us,” Mrs. B started to wail. “She’s a crazy woman. She escaped from the hospital. She tricked us into hitting my son. Officer, she is the instigator.”

“Yes,” I nodded. “I am crazy. Are you going to believe me, or would you prefer to see this?”

I turned on my phone and played the video.

The four police officers and the security agents crowded around to watch. They saw the dark room clearly. They heard my moan:

“Mother-in-law, sister-in-law, help me.”

And they also heard the two women’s curses:

“Die, you crazy— You dare to hit me, I’ll show you how to shut up—”

They clearly saw Trina hitting mercilessly with the mop handle and Mrs. B hitting without compassion with the bamboo cane.

The older officer’s face went from serious to ashen. He had been doing this for decades, but such a brutal scene of a mother and sister hitting their own son and brother was beyond his imagination.

He turned off the video.

“Enough.”

He turned to the two women with a face cold as ice.

“Mrs. B, Ms. Trina, we have the video as evidence. We also have the testimony of the victim, Darius. Both of you will have to accompany us to the precinct.”

“I’m not going. I’m innocent. She tricked me!” Trina squirmed.

“Whether you’re innocent or not, you will declare that at the precinct.”

The young officer pulled out the handcuffs.

“Officers, assist me.”

Mrs. B, seeing the handcuffs, went pale and fainted.

“Really fainted? No problem. The paramedics are right there,” the older officer said. “Put her in the ambulance and wake her up. When she wakes up, bring her to the precinct.”

It was chaos. Trina was taken away while screaming and cursing, making a ruckus throughout the alley. Mrs. B was taken away on a stretcher like a sack of potatoes.

The neighbors muttered and watched.

“My God, at the Rakes’s house, the mother and daughter hit the son. How barbaric. And the daughter-in-law was so good. Karma is karma.”

I stood at the door watching them with Sky in my arms. The little girl had fallen asleep at some point. I smiled.

Justice is sometimes quite effective.

The next morning, the house was strangely silent. Darius in the hospital, Mrs. B and Trina in the lockup. According to news from the precinct, the felony assault charge with clear evidence meant the two women would be detained for at least seven days for investigation. They could only get out if the victim, Darius, dropped the charges.

But right now, Darius probably preferred to be in the hospital than to come home.

So, in this hellish house, only Sky, Julian, and I remained.

The boy was sleeping in his mother’s room. In last night’s chaos, no one had worried about him. He woke up in the morning and saw that neither his grandmother, his mother, nor his uncle Darius were there.

He came out and saw me preparing breakfast for Sky.

“Where’s my mom?” he asked with his usual arrogance. “And Grandma? Why are you making fried eggs? Those are mine.”

He tried to lunge at the table.

Sky, seeing Julian, instinctively shrank back and hugged her plate.

I put down the frying pan, turned around, and stood in front of Julian.

“Good morning, Julian,” I said calmly.

“Get away. Where’s my mom?” he yelled. “You hit my mom. I’ll tell Grandma. Grandma will beat you up.”

I crouched down to his level.

“Julian, listen to me carefully.”

I no longer called him nephew, but used a firmer tone.

“The police took your mother and your grandmother away.”

Julian stopped.

“Lie!”

“I don’t lie.”

I looked him directly in the eyes.

“Your mother and your grandmother did something bad. They took sticks and hit your uncle Darius until they broke his bones. That’s why the police came, put handcuffs on them, and took them away. Now they have to be in jail.”

Julian’s arrogant expression transformed into bewilderment and then into fear.

No matter how spoiled a child is, without adult protection, he is very weak.

“No. No. You’re lying. My mom and Grandma…”

He started to whimper.

“They are in jail because they did something bad, just like you.”

“Me? What did I do wrong?” he yelled, veins popping in his neck.

“You abused Sky,” I said, my voice still calm. “You took her toys. You pushed her. You spit on her plate. You pulled her hair, too, didn’t you?”

Julian backed away. He was scared. He didn’t understand how I knew.

“You also did wrong because you imitated the adults. You saw your grandmother, your mother, and your uncle abuse Lisa and Sky. And you thought you also had the right to abuse Sky.”

I pointed to Sky.

“But look—what did Sky do wrong to you? Sky is smaller and weaker than you. Why did you hit her?”

Julian went silent and lowered his head.

“Your mother and your grandmother are in jail for doing bad things. Do you want them to take you away, too? Do you want to go to jail?”

“No. No.” He shook his head, terrified. “No, I don’t.”

“Good.”

I stood up.

“Then, starting today, you are going to relearn how to be a person.”

I led him in front of Sky.

Sky was still afraid.

“Apologize to Sky,” I ordered.

Julian hesitated. Years of bad habits don’t get corrected in an instant.

I frowned.

“Or do you want me to call yesterday’s police again?”

He hurried to say, looking at Sky with a thread of a voice,

“I’m sorry.”

“Who are you apologizing to? Speak clearly.”

“I— I— I’m sorry, Sky.”

It was still bad. I shook my head.

“You are the older cousin, and Sky is the little one. But in this house, Lisa and Sky have suffered many injustices, and Sky has been very afraid. Starting today, you will call Sky… Queen Sky.”

“What?”

Julian was puzzled.

“Queen Sky. And you are Sir Julian. What is a knight’s mission?”

Julian stammered,

“To protect.”

“Exactly. To protect the queen,” I said. “Come on, Sir Julian. Apologize to Queen Sky for scaring her yesterday.”

Julian, although he feared me, seemed to find this game of queen and knight quite cool. He took a deep breath.

“Queen Sky, Sir Julian apologizes to Her Majesty.”

Sky was surprised. She looked at me, at Julian, and then burst into laughter. A clear, crystalline laugh that echoed in this house for the first time.

Julian, seeing the queen laugh, felt a little less scared.

“Good,” I nodded. “Now, Sir Julian, grab a plate and have breakfast. When you’re done, you’ll play together. The knight must yield his toys to the queen. Understood?”

“Yes. Yes.”

Julian docilely grabbed a plate. I served him food. As he ate, he kept glancing at Sky.

I know it’s not easy to change a child, but at least I had planted a seed—the seed of respect and fear. Sometimes, before teaching someone kindness, you first have to make them feel fear.

A week passed. The house, for the first time, had the atmosphere of a home. I made Julian clean his own room. I prepared decent meals. Sky laughed and talked again. She and Julian could play together under my supervision. Julian, the spoiled child, now knew to yield his toys to the queen.

On the eighth day, Darius was released from the hospital. He came home limping, with a bandage on his head, a cast on his ribs, and his arm in a sling.

He returned in silence. Seeing me reading in the living room, he was startled and froze at the door, not daring to enter.

“Come in, honey,” I said without looking up from the book. “What are you afraid of? It’s your house.”

Darius entered trembling, looked around. The house was spotless. His daughter, Sky, watching TV, had gained weight and had better color. His nephew, Julian, was coloring beside her.

“Queen Sky, Sir Julian is hungry,” Julian said.

“Knight, wait a bit. Her Majesty is finishing watching this cartoon,” Sky responded cheerfully.

Darius’s eyes widened. He didn’t understand what was going on. He limped to his room and closed the door. He didn’t dare to cross me.

He now knew he was the most useless being in the house. Beaten by me, beaten by his mother and sister, he could no longer hold his head up.

Two days later, after completing the seven days of detention, Mrs. B and Trina were released. Not because they were innocent. They were released because Darius dropped the charges. He was afraid—afraid of having to live alone with me if his mother and sister went to jail. He thought it was better to bring back those two beasts than to face me, the demon.

The two women returned looking pathetic. Seven days in lockup had been hell for them, who had never known hardship. Their hair was greasy. Their clothes smelled bad. Their arrogance and wickedness were gone, leaving only tiredness, fear, and a hidden hatred.

They saw me and kept silent. They saw the cowering Darius and also kept silent. No one spoke to each other. This family was now completely broken.

That night, I was tucking Sky into bed. The door to my room opened and Darius, Mrs. B, and Trina entered, limping.

I put a finger to my lips and said,

“Shh, the child is sleeping.”

I went out to the living room and sat down in a chair.

“What’s the matter?”

Darius, Mrs. B, and Trina looked at each other. And then something happened that I never would have expected.

Mrs. B, that wicked mother-in-law, knelt down.

“Mom!” Darius and Trina exclaimed, stunned.

“Shut up,” she snapped.

She raised her head and looked at me. Her cloudy eyes were now filled with weariness, humiliation, and pleading.

“Lisa or Nia,” she said in a hoarse voice. “I don’t care who you are. I beg you. Please, I implore you.”

Trina, seeing her mother kneeling, burst into tears and knelt too.

“Sister-in-law, I beg you, please save this family.”

Darius, with his broken ribs, couldn’t kneel, but he bent as much as he could.

“Forgive me. I— I’ll give you a divorce. Please leave. We’ll give you whatever you want, but please go away.”

The entire family that had tormented my sister for seven years was now begging me on their knees to disappear from their lives.

Seeing them, I felt more emptiness than satisfaction.

“All right,” I said. “We will divorce.”

Hearing the word divorce, the three of them sighed with relief, like death row inmates receiving a pardon.

Mrs. B quickly said,

“Yes, yes, divorce. Tomorrow— tomorrow we’ll arrange the papers. You… you pack your bags and go.”

“I should go?” I arched an eyebrow. “Mother-in-law, do you think this is that simple?”

I stood up and started walking.

“My sister Lisa married into this house seven years ago. Seven years working like a mule. Seven years receiving beatings and insults. Her daughter Sky, at three years old, has been slapped, starved, and abused. And now you think a simple divorce ends everything?”

“So what do you want?” Darius asked, trembling.

“Money? Is it money?”

“It’s money,” I said firmly. “Let’s end this cleanly—with money. We are no longer family.”

I held up three fingers.

“First, child support. Sky is three years old, and Lisa will raise her until she’s eighteen. That’s fifteen years left. You are the father. You have a responsibility.”

“How much?” Darius asked in a thin voice.

“Lisa doesn’t ask for much. $2,500 a month for food, school, and medical expenses. $2,500 a month for twelve months over fifteen years is $450,000. Let’s make it $350,000 paid in one lump sum.”

“$350,000?” Trina screamed. “You’re a thief! Where are we going to get that money?”

I ignored her and raised two more fingers.

“Second, marital assets. When they married, my parents gave Lisa $100,000. Lisa gave all of it to you, mother-in-law, to pay the mortgage on this house. Now that they’re divorcing, that money has to be returned, plus $30,000 my sister earned working for seven years. That makes a total of $130,000.”

“Better kill us!” Mrs. B shouted. “We don’t have that much money in this house. You’re cornering us!”

“Cornering you?” I smiled coldly. “Compared to what you did to Lisa, this is very humane.”

I raised another finger.

“And finally, third, compensation for moral damages. Seven years of assault, choking, fractures, inhuman insults—the price of that pain.”

I looked Mrs. B directly in the eyes.

“$140,000,” I concluded.

“Child support of $350,000, house money return of $130,000, compensation for moral damages of $140,000. Total $620,000. And the divorce papers signed by Darius.

“If you give me all that, Sky and I will disappear from this house.”

“$620,000?”

The three of them looked like they had been electrocuted.

“You’re crazy. Better kill us,” Darius yelled. “I’d rather go to jail. We don’t have the money.”

“You don’t have the money?” I laughed. “You don’t have money for the daughter-in-law and the granddaughter. But you do have money hidden for the daughter, right, mother-in-law?”

Mrs. B was startled.

“What… What are you saying? You don’t understand me.”

I moved closer to her.

“When your husband died in a workplace accident, he got an insurance payout from the company, right? A very large sum—$900,000. Correct?”

Darius and Trina looked at Mrs. B, stunned.

“Mom?” Trina stammered. “$900,000? What money?”

“Mom had money?”

Darius was also perplexed.

“Shut up. Shut up, everyone!” Mrs. B was terrified. “She’s— She’s talking nonsense. She’s making it up.”

“Making it up?” I laughed. “You have it hidden very well. You can’t even put it in the bank for fear your children will find out. You wrapped it in seven layers of plastic, put it in a jar, and hid it in the kitchen shed among the firewood. Right?”

Mrs. B’s face turned white as paper.

Darius and Trina didn’t say anything. They quietly got up, looked at each other, and ran toward the kitchen shed.

I heard banging and things falling.

A few minutes later, Trina came down. In her hands, a jar covered in soot. Trembling, she emptied it onto the floor.

Money. Lots of money. Wads of $500 bills carefully wrapped in plastic.

“Mom,” Trina trembled. “Money. It’s real money.”

Darius looked at the pile of money, then at Mrs. B.

“Mom, you hid the money from me. You let me get deep into debt. You let me lose money gambling while you had $900,000?”

“Trina!” Mrs. B yelled. “I was saving it for you two. Darius is a gambling addict. If I gave it to him, he would spend it all.”

“You old witch!” Darius yelled furiously.

Splat.

Trina slapped Darius.

“Shut up! And what if Mom gave it to me? What are you, an abuser? You dare to hit me?”

Darius also went crazy.

“I’m going to beat you up, you—”

The two of them lunged at each other, hitting, scratching, and cursing.

Mrs. B collapsed, crying.

“Oh, my family is ruined. My children are fighting over money!”

I observed the second part of the family drama. This time it was over money.

“Over.”

I coughed.

“Ahem.”

The three of them stopped. I pointed to the pile of money.

“$620,000. I give you three days. Prepare the money and the divorce papers. Otherwise”—I held up my phone—“this video of the mother-in-law and the sister-in-law hitting Darius, and this happy family story, I will spread it throughout the neighborhood, the city council, and the online newspapers. The choice is yours.”

Three days later, I received $620,000 in cash, neatly stored in a suitcase, and the divorce papers signed by Darius.

The three of them had faces full of bruises. It seemed the war for the rest of the money after my share of the $900,000 had been very intense in the last three days.

“Here is the money, and here are the papers,” Mrs. B said in a tired voice. “Now— now go. Disappear from our sight.”

Without a word, I counted the money and kept the papers. I returned to the room and collected Sky’s things, which I had already prepared the day before. A small suitcase.

“Sky.”

I picked the girl up in my arms.

“Say goodbye to this place. We’re going to find Mommy.”

Sky, though confused, was happy. She hugged me tightly.

“Yes. Let’s go find Mommy Lisa.”

I picked up Sky and the suitcase with the money and walked out of that hellish house. I didn’t look back even once.

I hailed a taxi.

“Destination: Crestwood State Hospital.”

I entered the same familiar smell of disinfectant. But today I was no longer the crazy one who had escaped. I was a free woman.

I headed for my cell. No—Lisa’s cell. But I encountered a strange scene.

In the common room where I used to spend hours sitting motionless, today there were flowers and a cake. The hospital director and several nurses surrounded a person.

It was Lisa.

She was wearing the patient uniform, but her face was radiant. She was genuinely smiling. She was talking to people and giving thanks.

“Congratulations, Nia,” the director shook my sister’s hand. “It’s incredible. A miraculous recovery.”

Lisa saw me and ran to hug me and Sky.

“Nia, you’re back. Sky, my daughter!”

She kissed the girl.

I froze.

“Sister, what’s going on?”

The director saw me.

“Ah, you must be Lisa, Nia’s twin sister. You are identical. You’ve come to pick up your sister. Very good.”

He turned to me, triumphant.

“I have wonderful news. Your sister Nia is completely cured.”

“Cured?” I stammered.

“Yes,” the doctor nodded. “Last week we had the periodic psychological evaluation and Nia— no, Lisa—participated and passed it with an excellent score. All her psychological indexes are stable. She is completely normal.

“We observed her for one more week. She communicates well and her emotions are stable. She is no longer crazy. We are processing her discharge today.”

I looked at Lisa. She winked at me.

I understood.

Lisa, my sister, was never crazy. She was just suppressed by fear. While I learned to control my anger in here for ten years, she learned to swallow her fear out there.

When she entered here into my safe cell and stopped receiving beatings and insults, she was able to be herself. And when she faced the psychological evaluation as a completely normal person, she passed it without problems.

She had cured my name, Nia.

“Yes, yes,” I said, containing my emotion. “I’ve come to pick up my sister.”

The doctor signed the last paper and politely handed it to my sister.

“Here is the discharge certificate. Starting today, Nia is completely free.”

Lisa took the paper, looked at me, and we laughed together. That paper didn’t just give Nia her freedom. It gave freedom to both of us.

I, Lisa, was officially divorced. My sister, Nia, was officially cured.

I picked up the suitcase of money. Lisa picked up Sky.

“Thank you, director. Thank you, everyone,” Lisa said her farewells with a nod. “I owe you all so much.”

We turned around. The three of us, hand in hand, walked out of the common room, down the long corridor, and headed for the iron gate.

It was really over.

Both hells were behind us.

The heavy iron door closed behind us with a final creak. The dazzling summer sun washed over us. I shielded my eyes with my hand.

The last time I escaped, this sun smelled like war. This time it smelled like freedom. It was warm. It smelled of tree sap, of life.

Sky leaned her head on her mother’s shoulder.

“Mommy, Auntie Nia, where are we going now?”

Lisa looked at me and I looked at her. We saw confusion in our eyes but above all great hope.

“We…” Lisa said, her voice still trembling. “We are going home.”

“Home?” I asked. “Where?”

Lisa smiled.

“Wherever the three of us are together. That’s our home.”

I burst out laughing.

“You’re right. But first we need a place to wash up and sleep. A very clean place.”

I hailed a taxi.

“Sir, take us to the best hotel in the area.”

We rented a large hotel room with a bathtub and white sheets. When the room door closed, separating us from the noisy world, Lisa finally relaxed. She put Sky on the floor, collapsed, and burst into tears.

She sobbed as if vomiting up the seven years of humiliation, beatings, and fear that had settled into her bones.

I sat next to her in silence and hugged her.

Sky, too, with her small arms, hugged her mother and me.

“Mommy, don’t cry. Auntie Nia and Sky are here.”

We hugged like that, crying and then laughing.

After a good bath, we ordered room service: lots of food—roast chicken, soup, cake. The three of us ate a decent meal for the first time without fear or worry.

Sky smeared cake all over her face and laughed out loud. Her crystalline laugh, like spring water, cleansed the darkness from our hearts.

That night, I put the suitcase of money on the table.

“$620,000. Sister, this is your money and Sky’s,” I said.

Lisa shook her head.

“It’s not just our money. If it weren’t for you, my daughter and I would probably be dead. Nia, you saved my whole life.”

“We saved each other.”

I took her hand.

“Now we have to live. Live very well—for our parents, too.”

The next day, we went shopping. The first thing we did was throw away all the old clothes. I threw away my patient uniform. Lisa threw away the threadbare clothes from her married life.

We bought new clothes—cheerful, colorful dresses. We also bought nice clothes for Sky.

We looked like three completely different people.

We didn’t buy a house immediately with the money. We knew we needed time to settle down. I rented a small apartment in another neighborhood, far from that dark alley—an apartment on a high floor full of sun.

We decorated it ourselves. We bought a new bed for Sky and a very large bookshelf. I told Lisa,

“For ten years, my only friends were books. Now I want to read all the books in the world.”

Lisa rediscovered her passion. She used to be very good at sewing. She bought a sewing machine. She started making dresses for Sky, making curtains. Our little house became cozier every day.

Sky started going to daycare. At first, she was shy, but she soon made friends. She was a smart and affectionate child, and she was no longer afraid.

One afternoon at sunset, I was sitting on the balcony reading a book. Lisa was making dinner in the kitchen. It smelled of fish stew—but this was a fish stew made with love, not the salty stew of hatred.

Sky was coloring.

Lisa brought out a plate of fruit.

“What are you reading?”

“A law book,” I smiled. “I think I should know some things.”

“Are you still angry?” Lisa asked cautiously.

I closed the book and looked at the glowing sky.

“Yes, I’m still angry. Angry at that trash. Angry about the ten years I was locked up.”

But I turned to her.

“That rage doesn’t burn me anymore. Now it’s like an ember—an ember that reminds me how strong I was and that I will never again let anyone trample on my sister, my niece, or myself.”

Lisa smiled.

“Nia, you no longer need to be crazy or act strong. Here, you just have to be Nia—my sister.”

I nodded. I understood.

My madness wasn’t a disease. It was resistance. The madness wasn’t in me, but in that family, in those soulless beings. We didn’t flee from madness. We simply escaped the cage of the beasts.

I looked at the smiling Lisa, at Sky humming a song. Ten years in the dark were for seeing a single sunrise. Although late, still dazzling, our new life had just begun.

You know, for years, people called me crazy. They locked me away, thinking that because I felt too much, I didn’t belong in this world. But sometimes feeling too much is the only thing that keeps you human.

If I hadn’t felt every bit of my sister’s pain, if I hadn’t let that pain burn in me, maybe I never would have had the courage to act. I didn’t just fight for Lisa or for little Sky. I fought for every woman who’s ever been silenced, every soul who’s ever been told to endure.

Looking back now, I realize that strength isn’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how deeply you love, even when love hurts. It’s about refusing to let fear control you. Sometimes you have to become the storm so others can finally see the light.

And you know what? I’m not ashamed of what I did. Because for the first time, Lisa and Sky can wake up without fear. For the first time, that little girl can laugh instead of flinching.

Maybe justice doesn’t always come wearing a badge or holding a gavel. Sometimes it comes wearing your face—the face of someone who’s had enough.

If there’s something I’ve learned, it’s this: no one deserves to live in silence. You can stay quiet and let the pain eat you alive. Or you can stand up, even shaking, and say, “No more.”

The moment you do, the world starts to change, even if it’s just your small corner of it.

If you agree with me and enjoyed my story, show it by giving this video a like. Let’s see how many of us are out there. I’m curious— which city and what time are you listening from? Write it in the comments.

If you’d like to support me on my journey, you can send a small donation. Thank you for listening and for sharing your precious time with me. For more life stories like this, you can check out other videos on my channel and subscribe. On the screen, you’ll see two new stories I’m sure you’ll love. Click one and start watching right away.

Love to you.