“My sister arrived trembling, br.uised, and begging me, ‘Don’t tell Dad anything.’ What she confessed about the woman living in her house chilled me to the bone. We looked so alike… that night I understood I could use my face to unmask the horror.”

“She checks my phone every single night,” my sister finally confessed without meeting my eyes. “She counts every calorie I eat and she even took the door off my hinges two months ago so I have no privacy.”

I felt my jaw tighten as I watched a tear roll down her swollen cheek. “If Dad is home, she’s the perfect stepmother, but the moment he leaves, she calls me a parasite and a waste of space.”

“Did she do this to you?” I asked, my voice dropping to a dangerous whisper.

Geneve nodded, and then the floodgates opened as she described how Francine had pulled her hair and slammed her against the drywall. Once, she had slapped her so hard that Gen’s ear rang for forty-eight hours, and another time she was denied food because an ungrateful brat didn’t deserve to eat.

My sister had tried to talk to our father, but Francine would always start crying first, clinging to him and claiming Geneve was trying to sabotage their new family. “He told me I was trying to destroy his marriage,” my sister muttered, looking defeated. “And now he looks at me like I’m the villain in his story.”