And he especially hated Faye’s silence.
“Still acting brave, Faye?” he had asked that night.
She had tasted blood and whispered that she was remembering.
For a moment, his expression changed.
He did not know what she was remembering.
He did not know she had been collecting the moments he thought would disappear.
The abuse had not begun with one terrible night. It had become a routine, and that routine was part of what made the situation so difficult to escape.
Edric had control over the house.
He had control over the story neighbors heard.
He told people the sisters were unstable, spoiled, and ungrateful. If they complained, he could point to their age and tell everyone they were teenagers exaggerating family conflict.
If they tried to explain what was happening, there was always another reason not to believe them.
Their mother was there, but Brenda did not protect them.
Instead, she helped preserve the explanation Edric needed.
That made the house feel smaller every month.
Their late father had left behind something that could have changed their future. David Morgan had been a forensic accountant, and before his death he had placed life-insurance money and company shares into a trust for his daughters. The money would become available when Chloe and Faye turned eighteen.
Edric believed their mother controlled it.
Brenda never corrected him.
That misunderstanding became another layer of the trap.
After David’s funeral, their Uncle Alan had warned them that money could bring dangerous people close. But Alan was overseas, and over time Brenda stopped allowing the girls to answer his calls.
One connection after another disappeared.
The sisters were left with the people inside the house.
Edric made sure the outside world heard his version first.
That was how control worked for him. It was not only physical. It was social. It was financial. It was psychological. He did not need everyone to love him. He only needed enough people to doubt the girls.
Then he made one mistake.
Chloe tried to protect Faye.
Edric slammed her into the wall.
Faye rushed toward him.
The room spun when he struck her temple.
After that, there was only darkness.
When Faye woke, the hospital lights were above her.
Chloe was unconscious in the bed beside hers.
Edric was washing his hands near the curtain as though the night had been an ordinary inconvenience.
Brenda stood there with her purse and gave the emergency doctor the story Edric needed.
“They fell down the stairs.”
It might have worked somewhere else.
It might have worked if nobody had looked closely.
But Dr. Cooper did look closely.
He checked Faye’s arms. Then he examined Chloe. He compared the injuries instead of accepting the explanation.
The doctor did not argue with Edric.
He did not give him a dramatic speech.
He simply stepped outside, locked the examination-room door, and told a security guard to call 911.
That decision mattered because it changed who controlled the next few minutes.
Edric could still talk.
He could still deny.
He could still insist that the girls were lying.
But he could no longer control whether someone investigated.
He had spent so long making the sisters feel as though telling the truth would only make things worse that even Faye had learned to measure every word.
Now someone else had seen the injuries before Edric could explain them away.
And then Chloe opened her eyes.
Her voice was weak, but it carried through the room.
“He will soon.”
Faye looked toward her sister.
For years, the twins had survived by staying close to each other. When one begged, the other tried to endure. When one broke d
