The moment Chloe opened her eyes, Edric stopped looking like the man who controlled every room he entered. He had spent months making sure every explanation came from him first, but now a doctor stood at the doorway, a security guard was making a call, and two injured sisters were finally being seen for what had happened to them.
For the first time, Edric Kaine could not simply close a door, turn up the television, or tell someone the girls had fallen down the stairs.
The hospital room had become the one place where his version of events no longer controlled the conversation.
Faye watched him from her bed while the room seemed to tighten around every word. Her body hurt everywhere. Chloe was still weak beside her. Their mother, Brenda, stood nearby with the same calm expression she had worn when she gave the doctor the story about the stairs.
But the doctor had already noticed what the lie could not explain.
The bruises on the sisters matched.
Not perfectly in the way two people might be injured in the same accident. They were spread across both girls’ bodies in a pattern that made the explanation impossible to ignore. Dr. Marcus Cooper had looked from Faye to Chloe and then back again, asking the question that changed everything.
“Both girls fell the same way?”
Edric had answered before either sister could.
“Teenagers lie. Just treat them.”
It was the kind of sentence he had learned to use at home. Make the victim sound unreliable. Make the witness defensive. Make the person asking questions feel as though they were interfering in a family matter.
But a hospital room was different from the house he controlled.
Here, injuries were documented.
Questions were expected.
And the people around him were not required to accept his explanation simply because he said it with confidence.
Faye knew that much even through the pain.
She also knew something Edric did not.
There was a phone.
Months earlier, Faye had found an old device tucked inside a box of Christmas decorations. The screen was cracked, but the microphone still worked. She understood immediately that the phone might be useful, but usefulness meant nothing if Edric discovered it.
So she waited.
Every night, she hid the phone beneath a loose floorboard near the heating vent. She made sure it was where he would never think to look. The recordings uploaded automatically to a private account their late father, David Morgan, had created years earlier.
The device had become a quiet witness to the life Edric believed nobody could prove.
That was why Faye had said, “No. I’m remembering.”
She was not simply trying to sound brave.
She was remembering what she had recorded.
She was remembering every time Edric had chosen to hurt them.
Every time he had closed the curtains.
Every time he had removed his wedding ring.
Every time he had told Brenda to turn up the television.
Every time he had made Chloe and Faye stand side by side and decided which sister would be hurt first.
Edric never confused the twins, even though teachers did. He knew exactly which one was speaking. He knew exactly which one was resisting him.
