Blood Ties

Chapter5-Broken

Sera

Fifteen years earlier

The night everything broke didn't start loud.

It started with the sound of tyres on gravel, too fast, too close, and my stomach dropping before my brain caught up. The boys froze mid-argument, five heads turning toward me at once. They didn't need to ask. They already knew.

I told them to get to the back room.

They listened. They always did.

The door slammed hard enough to rattle the walls. His voice came next — slurred, furious, already convinced he'd been wronged. Mum said something I couldn't hear, something placating, something that made my chest tighten with a familiar mix of hope and dread.

I moved without thinking. Couch. Table. Anything heavy enough to matter. My hands shook, but they worked. I dragged the furniture into place, wedging it against the door like it was a spell I could cast if I did it right.

"Stay quiet," I told the boys. "No matter what."

They nodded, eyes too big, too old.

The first hit came through the door — a solid thud that made the wood bow inward. I stepped in front of it anyway, planting my feet like that could turn me into something unmovable.

He yelled my name.

That was worse than him yelling hers.

"Open the door," he shouted. "This doesn't concern you."

It always concerned me.

Another hit. Harder this time. The frame splintered, just a little. Enough to tell me it wouldn't hold forever. I braced my shoulder against it, teeth clenched, heart pounding so hard I could hear it in my ears.

Behind me, one of the boys started crying. Another shushed him. I didn't turn around.

Mum's voice rose and fell on the other side. Crying. Begging. Promising. The sounds blurred together until they stopped meaning anything at all.

Then he said it.

"Get her," he told the boys. "If you want me to leave, make her move."

The words sliced through the room.

I felt them hesitate behind me — confused, scared, pulled in two directions they were too young to understand. I turned then, finally, dropping to my knees so we were eye-level.

"It's okay," I said. I don't know how my voice stayed steady. "It's not your fault. Just go sit down. I've got this."

They didn't move.

The door slammed again, and something gave way.

The pain came fast after that — too fast to catalogue properly. My hand crushed between wood and weight. A sharp, blinding crack near my eye that left my vision swimming. I went down hard, my knee screaming as it hit the floor.

I remember thinking, absurdly, I can't pass out. They need me awake.

Hands grabbed at me — small ones, shaking ones — and I wrapped my arms around whoever was closest, pulling them into my chest like I could absorb everything for them if I held on tight enough.

The door finally burst open.

Everything after that fractured. Shouting. Crying. Someone dragging me backward. Mum screaming my name like it was the first time she'd ever really seen me.

We ran that night.

We always did.

Packed bags in minutes. Shoes on the wrong feet. The boys half-asleep and silent in the back seat, as if noise might summon him back into existence. A women's refuge that smelled like disinfectant and boiled vegetables. Thin mattresses. Thinner walls. My hand wrapped and splinted, my eye swollen shut, my knee throbbing with every movement.

Mum cried there.

She cried hard.

She held my face in her hands and told me she was sorry. Told me she didn't know how it had gone so wrong. Told me she loved us.

I believed her. At first.

But belief doesn't survive repetition.

She went back.

She always went back.

Each time she did, it felt less like confusion and more like a decision. She didn't ask us what we needed. She didn't ask what it cost. She just packed our things again and told us it would be different this time.

It never was.

The boys learned to scatter when his voice changed. To stay quiet. To watch me instead of him, waiting for cues. I learned how to read his moods, how to step into his line of sight at the right moment, how to redirect his anger like it was a skill you could master if you practiced enough.

Mum let it happen.

That's the part people don't like hearing. They prefer words like trapped or afraid or trying her best. They don't like the idea that someone can be both a victim and a collaborator.

But she saw my injuries.

She wrapped my hands.

She told me to be careful next time.

She watched me become another thing he could hit so the boys wouldn't be.

And she stayed.

Something in me changed then. Not all at once — hatred isn't that dramatic. It grows quietly, fed by small, repeated choices. By the way she looked past me when I stood between them. By the way she thanked me for "helping" instead of stopping him. By the way my pain became useful.

I stopped asking her to leave.

Not because I forgave her — but because I understood her.

She was choosing him.

Every time she went back, she chose him over us. Over me. Over the danger she was putting into our hands and calling love.

I learned what that meant.

I learned that blood doesn't protect you.

That love can be a weapon if you let it be.

And that sometimes the most dangerous person in the room is the one who lets the door stay open.

That was when the hatred settled in.

Cold. Patient. Permanent.