Chapter 4

Weeks turned into a miserable blur.

The beatings continued, sometimes from Mom, sometimes just her cold, hateful silence.

Dad ignored me, or looked at me with that same veiled disgust.

Ashley and Olivia were ghosts.

I was saving every penny I could from my part-time library job, hiding it under a loose floorboard in my closet.

I had to get out.

One evening, I was upstairs, pretending to do homework.

I heard raised voices from Dad' s home office downstairs.

It was Mom and Dad, arguing. This was rare.

Mom' s voice was sharp, "I can' t keep doing this, Richard! It' s not working!"

Dad' s voice was a low growl, "Just do what you have to do, Brenda. Keep her in line. Or away."

Curiosity, mixed with a cold dread, pulled me downstairs.

The office door was slightly ajar.

I crept closer, heart pounding, and peeked through the crack.

Brenda' s phone was on the desk, screen lit up.

A video was playing.

The sound was off, but the images...

It was grainy, like old home-movie footage.

A much younger Richard, my father, was in the frame.

And a little girl, blonde pigtails.

It was Ashley, maybe seven or eight years old.

He was... touching her.

My breath hitched.

The scene changed.

Another girl, darker hair. Olivia, younger still.

The same horrible actions.

My stomach churned, bile rising in my throat.

This was the video.

It wasn' t about me at all.

It was about him.

It was about my sisters.

And my mother knew. She' d always known.

The power of the video wasn' t that it damned me.

It damned him. And she was using it. But how? Why make me the target?