The glass hit me before I even saw it coming.
It shattered against my cheekbone with a sound I’ll never forget—sharp, final, like the structural beam of a house snapping under too much weight. A warm, wet heat instantly bloomed across my skin, streaking down to stain my mother’s pristine white tablecloth. Around the dining table, twenty pairs of eyes froze. The silence that followed wasn’t empty; it was heavy, suffocating, sucking the air out of the room.
My sister, Emily, stood across the table. Her chest heaved, and her eyes glowed with a rage that seemed too vast for her petite frame.
“You need to learn your place,” she hissed, the words dripping with venom.
No one moved. Not my parents, not my cousins, not even my father—the man who had once sat me on his knee and promised that family always protects family. The only sound in the room was the trembling, ragged intake of my own breath.
