The screwdriver pinned me to the wall. My body shook. Blood began to run warm down my arm, soaking into my shirt.
Footsteps pounded in the hall.
Hope—stupid, desperate hope—flared in me so fast it almost hurt worse than the wound.
My father appeared first, hair messy, eyes half-lidded like he’d been dragged out of sleep. Evelyn came right behind him, silk robe tied neatly, lipstick perfect even at two in the morning as if she’d practiced how to look composed in emergencies.
“Dad,” I choked, my voice breaking. “Help me.”
Thomas stared at the screwdriver protruding from my shoulder like it was someone else’s problem. His mouth tightened in a familiar line—the one he wore when bills came in or when Evelyn cried about how hard her life was.
Evelyn tilted her head. Her gaze flicked to the blood and then back to my face, and a smirk touched her mouth like she couldn’t stop it.
“Oh, Kenya,” she cooed. “Stop being dramatic.”
Thomas exhaled, long and tired. “Dylan’s drunk,” he muttered, not to me but to Evelyn, like I wasn’t even there. “You know how he gets.”
Then they laughed.
Not hysterical laughter. Not even loud. Just a small, shared chuckle, the kind people make over a joke they’ve heard before. The sound hit me harder than the screwdriver. It told me everything: they were not shocked. They were not afraid. They were not coming to save me.
Something in my chest snapped cleanly, like a cord finally cut.
My left hand shook as I reached into my pajama pocket for my phone. My vision tunneled at the edges. Every heartbeat pushed pain through my shoulder.
Three letters. That’s all I needed.
SOS.
My thumb hit send.
The phone vibrated once—confirmation—and in that small buzz I felt something shift. The scared girl who had spent her life waiting for kindness didn’t have time anymore. In her place was a soldier who understood a different kind of battlefield.
Dylan yanked the screwdriver out with a wet jerk, and the world lurched. I slid down the wall, leaving a smear of blood on the wallpaper like a signature.
Evelyn stepped back, lips pursed as if I’d spilled something on her rug.
“See what you did?” Thomas said, voice full of irritation. “You always make everything bigger than it is.”
The room spun. My phone slipped from my fingers onto the floor. Somewhere far away, a sound began to rise—sirens, maybe, or my own pulse roaring in my ears.
The last thing I saw before the darkness took me was Evelyn’s face, calm and pleased, as if this was the ending she’d been waiting for.
Then everything went black.
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