Welcome to Revenge with Lyra. ‘Break it if you have to, this is our son’s apartment.’
My mother showed up early in the morning with my father and brother, pounding on my door and insisting they they had the right to come in. They had no idea what was waiting on the other side.
The pounding shook the frame, each thud echoing like a memory I had tried too long to bury. I stood on the other side of it, barefoot, the morning light spilling across the hardwood floor like an accusation, catching on the stack of papers clutched in my hand. For a second, I just listened.
Mom’s voice, sharp and high, cut through the wood. ‘Break down the door. This is our son’s apartment.’
Our son’s.
Not mine. Never mine, at least not in their minds. I let the words wash over me, feeling the familiar burn rise in my chest, the old instinct to apologize, to smooth things over, to shrink.
But that version of me had signed too many checks and swallowed too many insults. She was done. I turned the lock and pulled the door open.
Their faces froze. Mom’s hand still gripped the crowbar, knuckles white, lipstick smeared at the corner of her mouth from yelling. Dad’s expression was somewhere between outrage and disbelief, like he had walked into the wrong movie.
And my brother, of course, stood half a step behind them, pretending to look concerned while his eyes swept past me into the apartment, already measuring what he thought he owned. What they saw in my hands made them all stumble back. It wasn’t a weapon.
It was a stack of papers, edges worn from my grip, bank statements, lease documents, printouts of transfers highlighted in yellow, and one thick folder titled, in all caps from the title company: PROPERTY TRANSFER AGREEMENT. My name was on every page. Mom’s voice faltered, a crack splitting through the false confidence.
‘What? What is that?’
I took a breath, steadying the tremor in my fingers. ‘The proof,’ I said calmly, my voice steadier than I felt.
‘Proof that this apartment, this home you keep calling your son’s?’ I tilted the folder so the bold letters caught the light. ‘It’s mine. Every bill, every payment, every signature.
All me.’
For a heartbeat, nobody spoke. The hallway seemed to inhale. My name is Lena Grant.
I’m twenty-nine years old. And if you think you know how this ends, you don’t. Not yet.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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