Chapter 2: Midnight Breakdown

The house had gone still hours ago, but sleep refused to claim me. I lay in the dark of my childhood bedroom, phone clutched like a weapon, the hidden folder glowing faintly under my thumb. Mom’s soft snores drifted down the hallway—steady, trusting, the same rhythm I’d heard since I was small. It was past one in the morning. The clock on my nightstand ticked like a heartbeat I couldn’t outrun.

I slipped out of bed in nothing but an oversized T-shirt and panties, bare feet silent on the cool hardwood. Every creak of the stairs felt like a gunshot. My pulse hammered in my ears, the same frantic rhythm from the garage earlier. Downstairs the kitchen light spilled a thin gold bar across the living room carpet. I followed it like a moth.

Dad sat at the island, shoulders hunched, a half-empty glass of whiskey catching the light. He wore gray sweatpants and nothing else, the broad plane of his back still marked with faint red lines from whatever had happened in the garage. His phone lay face-up, screen lit with messages I didn’t want to read. The air smelled of oak and sharp alcohol, undercut by the faint trace of garage grease that never quite left his skin.

He didn’t hear me until I was three steps away. When he looked up, his face—my strong, unbreakable Daddy—cracked open.

“Emma.” His voice was raw, cracked. The glass slipped from his fingers and shattered on the tile, amber liquid spraying like blood. He didn’t move to clean it. Just stared at me, eyes wide and wet.

I held up my phone, thumb trembling as I pressed play. The video—muted, thank God—showed everything in fifteen shaky seconds: the woman bent over the hood of his truck, his hips driving, the slap of skin, his growl. I let it run until the end, then stopped it. My voice came out shaking but clear.

“I saw you. In the garage. With her.”

The words hung between us like smoke. For one terrible second I thought he would yell, deny, turn into the furious man I’d braced for. Instead his face crumpled. Tears—real, hot tears—spilled down the salt-and-pepper stubble I used to nuzzle when I was little. He looked suddenly smaller, broken in a way that twisted my stomach worse than any rage could have.