I said nothing.
Then his sister, Nicole, walked in with her son. The boy grabbed Ava’s doll and threw it.
“She doesn’t deserve it,” he said.
Ava cried.
He raised his foot to kick her.
I caught his ankle mid-air.
The room went silent.
“Touch her again,” I said calmly, “and you won’t forget it.”
Nicole lunged at me. I stopped her easily.
“Control your kid,” I said quietly.
Marcus’s mother tried to hit me with a stick.
I took it. Snapped it in half.
“Enough,” I said. “No one touches that child again.”
That night, Ava ate without being insulted.
And when Marcus came home drunk, everything changed.
“Where’s my dinner?” he shouted.
He saw me standing calmly—and something in him hesitated.
“She’s a child,” I said. “Don’t yell at her.”
He swung at me.
I caught his hand.
And in that moment, he realized—I wasn’t the same woman.
“Let go,” he growled.
“No.”
I twisted his wrist. He dropped, screaming.
I dragged him to the sink, forced his face under cold water.
“That’s what she felt,” I whispered. “When you locked her in here.”
From that moment on, fear shifted.
Not ours.
His.
That night, they tried to attack me while I slept.
Rope. Tape. A plan to send me back.
They didn’t succeed.