My family didn’t survive it.
My mother drank until she forgot she had two daughters and not just one ghost. She drank herself into an early grave, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Because my father left after that, and I was alone in the world.
I carried my trauma through school. Through adulthood. Through every relationship that failed because there was no room for anyone else inside me.
I was lonely in a way that never eased. A loneliness that calcified into anger. Into resentment. Into something sharp and deliberate.
Eventually, the grief stopped being the loudest thing, replaced by rage.
And when that happened, I understood something else, too: I had nothing left to lose.
They took my sister. They took my family, and my future.
All that remained was the question of what I would do with what was left of me.
And the answer, whether the world liked it or not, was this: I chose not to let her disappear quietly. I chose to remember. I chose to name them. I chose to make sure they paid.
This is my truth. And I am done carrying it alone.
Bethany sobs softly.Lily’s eyes shine with tears she refuses to let fall. Titan stares at the floor now, jaw rigid, unmoving.
“I went to the morgue,” I continue. “I don’t know why. I think I needed to see her. Needed to prove that she had been a real, living thing. Not someone I had dreamed up. That she hadn’t just… vanished.”
My voice trembles then, finally.
“I saw the autopsy photos. I saw everything they did to her.”
I stop breathing for a moment.
“They didn’t just kill her. Theytookher apart. What sort of depraved animals do that to a person?”
Justin’s hands curl slowly into fists. Silence echoes through the room.
“I lost everything that day,” I sob. “And the anger had nowhere to go.”
Titan shifts then, pushing off the wall just enough to resettle his weight. His eyes are dark, distant. I know he’s not here anymore—not fully. I know he’s seeing Lily, younger. Broken. Bleeding.
“I studied them,” I continue. “Scott-Evans. Delaney. I learned how men like that move. How institutions protect them. I knew that Missy would never get her justice for what they did to her.”
Bethany squeezes my hand.
“And the resentment,” my voice is hollow now, “it didn’t fade. It just fermented.” I look at Justin. “Until all I could think about was making them pay.”
41
JUSTIN
Dean Stockton sits behind his desk, his hands clasped so tightly his knuckles have drained of color. He looks smaller than he did before, like the room has finally outgrown him.
Shame hangs off him in a way that’s impossible to miss—but it isn’t remorse. It’s exposure. The kind that comes when a lifetime of carefully managed half-truths collapses all at once, leaving nothing left to hide behind.
He’s promised transparency now. Cooperation. Accountability. It’s too little, too late, but at least it will put things to rest.
Scott-Evans is his nephew.Family.And now that the truth is out in the open, I understand what’s really written across the dean’s face.
It isn’t grief or fear, but resignation and relief.
Relief that the most dangerous secret he carried is no longer alive to unravel him. Relief that he no longer has to make the same choice over and over again—between protecting blood and doing what was right.
