Chapter 4

Darlene rushed towards my roomette, Cletus and Junior trailing behind her like badly trained dogs.

"Honey! We found you! We were so worried!"

Her voice was sickly sweet again.

I stayed silent, heart pounding, phone still live streaming.

The lock was my only shield.

She rattled the handle. "Open up, dearie! It's Mama Darlene!"

Then she started pounding on the door. Bang. Bang. Bang.

"You ungrateful girl! After all I done for ya!"

The scene was escalating.

A woman from a nearby roomette opened her door a crack. "Could you please be quiet? People are trying to sleep."

Darlene whirled on her.

"You mind your own damn business, you stuck-up city cow!"

The woman recoiled.

Her husband appeared. Chad.

He was huge, covered in tattoos from neck to knuckles. The kind of man my mother would cross the street to avoid.

He filled the narrow corridor.

"You got a problem with my wife?" His voice was a low rumble.

Darlene, for the first time, looked intimidated.

She took a step back, her eyes darting around.

Cletus, seeing Chad, had vanished. Probably melted back into the shadows of the car. Coward.

"No problem," Darlene muttered, her bravado shrinking. "Just a misunderstanding with this... girl."

My TikTok live stream was blowing up.

Comments flooded in: "OMG, call the cops!" "That old lady is crazy!" "Is that guy her bodyguard?"

Chad wasn't my bodyguard, but he was something better: an ordinary person fed up with Darlene' s behavior.

The power dynamic was shifting.

Darlene was cornered, and she knew it.

I watched her through the peephole, a grim satisfaction starting to bloom.

She was loud, she was aggressive, but faced with real opposition, she faltered.

Her son, her muscle, had abandoned her.

It was just Darlene and Junior now, and a train full of witnesses.

My witnesses.