For years, my stepfather kept my twin sister and me living in constant fear, as though our suffering was the only thing that satisfied him. One night, after beating us until we both lost consciousness, he carried us into the emergency room while my mother quietly told the doctors, “They just fell down the stairs.”

“They weren’t just trying to steal our trust,” Chloe whispered.

Detective Martin slowly shook her head.

“No.”

Another investigator looked directly at us.

“They were planning to eliminate the only people who could stop them.”

Later that afternoon, detectives questioned our mother separately. She initially claimed she knew nothing about Edric’s financial plans, but that story collapsed after investigators confronted her with bank transfers, forged medical reports, recorded conversations, and surveillance evidence. Faced with overwhelming proof, she finally admitted what she knew.

“He promised…” she said, struggling to breathe. “He promised the girls would only be declared mentally unstable.”

Detective Martin never raised her voice.

“And you believed that?”

“I… I was afraid.”

“So were your daughters.”

Those four words ended the interview.

Edric refused to admit anything for much longer. He dismissed the recordings as lies, blamed attorneys for the forged paperwork, and insisted the deleted messages had been fabricated. But everything changed when Detective Martin played Recording Eighty-Seven, the one where our mother calmly instructed him to hurt me first.