I have to prove the truth. I have recordings of my own—three months of saved texts, witness statements from the cafeteria, a video from a security camera he didn’t know existed. I have to remind Yuna who she was before the loneliness set in.
For months, he’d sneer, "Go home to Mommy Yuna. I bet she’s lonely without a man." I’d clench my fists, take a breath, and walk away. It was manageable. It was within the lines.
Last Tuesday, I came home to find Yuna wearing a silk dress I’d never seen before. Expensive. Elegant. She was sipping wine—Yuna never drinks wine; she drinks jasmine tea. my bully tries to corrupt my mother yuna new
She looked at me—really looked at me—for the first time in weeks. And I saw the war happening behind her eyes. The lonely woman who wanted to feel seen, fighting against the mother who raised me.
And most terrifying of all? I have to sit her down tonight, look her in the eye, and tell her everything. Not the filtered, "I'm fine" version. The raw, humiliating truth of what Derek has done to me—and what he’s trying to do to us. I have to prove the truth
Over the next two weeks, Derek’s strategy unfolded like a military campaign. He wasn't trying to bully me anymore. He was trying to corrupt her —to turn the only safe harbor I had into a hostile port.
Except Derek had edited it. He’d clipped out his own taunts. All that remained was me, screaming in a dark hallway: "You don’t know anything about my father! You don’t know why he left her!" For months, he’d sneer, "Go home to Mommy Yuna
I came home from my grocery shift to find Derek’s black BMW in our parking lot. Through the window, I saw him on our couch. He had his arm along the backrest, inches from Yuna’s shoulders. She was laughing—a genuine, melodic laugh I hadn’t heard since before the divorce.