Martha and Daniel, his parents, sat there like spectators at a show. And his sister, Chloe, held up her phone, recording, as if my suffering were entertainment.
“Look at her,” Martha said with a chilling smile. “She thinks being pregnant makes her special.”
There was no kindness. No hesitation. No guilt. Just a shared belief that I was the problem.
Ethan kept barking orders, not as if he were speaking to his wife, but to something beneath him.
I opened the fridge, but the room began to spin. My body was giving out.
I collapsed.
The fall hurt… but not as much as what followed.
“How dramatic,” Daniel muttered, annoyed, as if my pain were an inconvenience.
Ethan didn’t hesitate. Didn’t pause. Violence came to him like instinct.
He walked to the corner, picked up a wooden stick, and in that moment, everything I had tried to deny about my life became undeniable.
The blow landed hard on my thigh.
The scream that tore out of me carried both pain and terror.
I curled around my stomach, protecting my baby, because in that moment, my life mattered less than theirs.
“She deserves it,” Martha said, laughing, approving the violence as if it were discipline.