My husband's mother, Margaret Walker, never knocked on the door before she entered our bedroom.

She locked my brother, Brandon Nelson, and me in the room and complained to my husband, Matthew Turner, "Your wife brought a strange man home, and they went into the bedroom together!"

I walked to the window and shouted to the whole neighborhood, "Hey everyone, my husband's mother married me to another man!"

Meanwhile, Margaret was having a bath.

I took Brandon to visit our new house.

There were three sets of toiletries lined up on the sink, and the mouthwash cups and toothbrushes were all the same style in different colors.

He picked up the newest one and winked at me. "Am I going to be an uncle?"

Taking back the mouthwash cup with a stern face, I stuffed it and the matching toothbrush into the top shelf. "Don't talk nonsense. It belongs to Margaret."

He frowned, "This is your house, and she doesn't live here. Why do you prepare these daily uses here?"

To declare her "ownership" of her son, Margaret always interfered in our lives.

A vague voice came from the entrance. It was Margaret talking on the phone. "Matthew, come back now! Your wife brought a strange man home, and they went into the bedroom together!"

Brandon blushed and clenched his fists to stop her from talking nonsense.

I pulled him back and said, "It's okay. He knows you, and there's no need for you to explain when he comes back. Besides, I can't really fight with my husband's mother."

Before I could finish my words, Margaret slammed the door and locked my brother and me in the bedroom.

She shouted, "Sherry Nelson, how dare you bring a strange man home! Matthew will know this!"

Worrying the misunderstanding would get bigger, I explained in hustle, "Margaret, he's my younger brother!"

"Bullshit! You think you can fool me with such a silly excuse? I know all the relatives of yours and have never seen such a man!" she said.

Her saliva seemed to spray through the door onto my face, causing a burning pain.

I continued explaining, "When we got married, Brandon was still studying abroad and didn't attend our wedding. Matthew also knew about this."

Seeing me being so cowardly, Brandon was furious. "This is your house, Sherry, you don't have to be like that!"

I don't want to be like a coward either.

But Margaret brought up Matthew on her own, and they loved each other so much.

At the wedding, he held me with one hand and Margaret with the other, and said with a smile that he was the happiest person in the world.

They held hands with their fingers interlocked, and the distance between them was even closer than that of us. I was so embarrassed but could only smile bitterly.

Margaret also had the key to our new house and always entered without knocking on the door.

I wore casually at home and liked to go to the toilet in the morning without closing the door of my bathroom.

While I was playing with my phone in the bathroom, she quietly appeared in front of me and commented satirically, "Why don't you close the door when you go to the toilet? It seems that the rich don't have good parenting.

I was so startled that I screamed and pulled my nightgown down hard, even trying to cover my toes.

"I'm in the bathroom. Please stop staring at me!" I said.

She scanned my body a few times, then raised her chin proudly. "Why are you yelling? I have what you have, too, and mine are even bigger than yours."

I didn't dare retort her and wanted Matthew to take her key back.

But he refused me irritably, "She worked hard all her life to raise me, and you want to keep her out of our house? If you really can't stand it, just close the door when you go to the toilet."

I opened my mouth but didn't know what to say.

Was this my home or hers?

Hearing that, Brandon couldn't stand it anymore and rolled up his sleeves to break the door.

I stopped him and said, "Calm down. Matthew and I bought all the things in the house together. Don't break them."

He stamped his feet in anger. "Can you leave alone these trivial matters when someone is bullying you?"

The door was suddenly kicked open.

Matthew strode in and shouted at me, "How dare you cheat on me?"

I had never seen such a fierce side of him, being too stunned to dodge his slap.

But Brandon grabbed his arm and shouted back, "How dare you try to hit my sister?"

Freezing for a moment, Matthew's fist turned into a pat on Brandon's shoulder. "You're Sherry's brother, right? Why didn't you tell me to pick you up from the airport when you came back?"

Brandon shook his hand off and pulled me to his side. "If I had told you that I came back, I would have missed the show today! I'll tell my father what you and your mother did to my sister!"

Matthew worked in my father's company, so he didn't have the guts to risk letting my father hear about this.

He tried his best to deny it and coaxed me at the same time, "Sherry, I did that because I care about you so much. Please forgive me."

Brandon also left it to me to decide.

I was fed up with the life of shock in my own house and mustered up the courage to say, "Margaret, just return the key."

But she covered her pocket with one hand and said, "Oh, I just lost my key."

It was apparently nonsense since she just opened the door.

Seeing that we couldn't force her to return the key, she stretched her hands proudly and said, "If you don't believe me, just search my body. Come on!"

Brandon gritted his teeth and took a step forward.

Matthew didn't dare to stop him, so he could only warn me in a low voice, "Sherry, do you have to humiliate us like this? My mother took the key because she was afraid that you would lose something and couldn't get into the house. She says that she lost the key. Are you suggesting she is lying?"

It was hard to say. There was the sound of keys clinking in her pockets, after all.

I was also reluctant to start riot and figured out another solution. "Since she lost the key, I think we'd better change a fingerprint lock on the door. I wanted to upgrade the security of our house a long time ago, anyway."

Brandon secretly gave me a thumbs up and proudly put his arm around Matthew's shoulders. "There will be no keys to lose if you have the fingerprint lock, so there is no need to record your mother's fingerprints, right?"

While Matthew went on a business trip for a few days, I restored our house to what it used to be.

I took away the picture of the three of us on the bedside table, wiped the wedding photo and hung it up, and put our intimate photos on the TV cabinet.

When I was just about to replace all the toiletries, my husband's bath towel was missing.

I wondered if there was a thief in my house.

Hiding in the bedroom, I locked the door and tried to call 911 with trembling hands. In my peripheral vision, I saw a huge bulge in the blanket, as if someone was hiding inside, so I quickly turned the handle to try to rush out of the bedroom.

"It's so noisy!"

Margaret suddenly threw off the blanket and sat up, glaring at me angrily. "It's so early in the morning, can't you let me sleep?"

She was lying on the bed where Matthew slept in her pajamas, holding his bath towel in her arms.

Seeing that I was staring at the towel, she deliberately put it under her nose and sniffed it. "Matthew has been away on business for six and a half days. I miss him so much."

This scene made me feel so sick, and I endured the nausea and asked, "Margaret, how did you get in my house?"

She smiled proudly, "Matthew recorded my fingerprints before he went on the business trip so that I could come here whenever I missed him. His house is mine."

I smiled bitterly. No wonder Matthew, who usually doesn't care about anything at home, would beg for the administrator privileges when installing the fingerprint lock.

He even held my hand and fooled me with a loving disguise. "Sherry, you don't have to worry about such a small matter. Leave everything to me."

It turned out that he had been planning for many days just to open a back door for Margaret.

I put my hands on the door handle and finally had enough courage to open the bedroom door.

As the light came in, the marks on the door from being kicked became more obvious.

The last time, a worker came to install the fingerprint lock, and I wanted to ask him to fix it together.

Unexpectedly, Matthew jumped up like a cat whose tail was stepped on and yelled at me, "Sherry, you are changing every lock in this house so that you can be the only one to open it, aren't you? You want to remind me that you bought this house, and I have nothing to do with this property, right?!"

As the room lit up, Margaret noticed that the photo hung on the wall had been changed.

She screamed and stood up from the bed, reaching out to the wedding photo of only Matthew and me. "Matthew and I are a family. Why do you, an outsider who came later, replace our photo?"

The frame of the wedding photo was big and heavy, and it tilted when she slightly pulled it. Soon, it fell down and broke into pieces.

I took great pains to put it up yesterday, and it hadn't even been 24 hours yet.

I tried hard to suppress the anger in my heart and called Matthew, "Matthew, your mother misses you so much, come back and give her a hug of love."

He must have been in a meeting over there, and his voice was very low. "What? What happened to my mother?"

"I said..."

Taking a deep breath, I yelled on the phone, "Your mother broke into our house, lying on our wedding bed in her pajamas, and she kept sniffing your bath towel! She also smashed our wedding photos, like an old pervert!"

People on both ends of the phone suddenly became quiet.

Matthew managed to shorten his business trip and explained to me, "Sherry, I had to go on a business trip for about a week, and I asked mom to take care of you. I only recorded her fingerprints for your sake."

Okay, it turned out to be my fault again.

"If you don't believe me, I'll delete her fingerprints right away," he said.

As he spoke, he opened the fingerprint lock management interface and clicked on the delete button of Margaret's fingerprints, but he glanced at my expression and hesitated to click.

I sat on the bed and sneered at him. "What, you won't even pretend to listen to me? It's too troublesome to delete the fingerprint and then input it again. It's more troublesome than fooling me, right?"

Perhaps my objection was too firm, he immediately deleted her fingerprints and confessed his loyalty to me. "That's impossible. I was just afraid that you would be sad, so I wanted to see you more and care about you."

I looked at his feet expressionlessly. He was stepping on our broken wedding picture, and the smile of us on it was more terrible than a crying face.

Meanwhile, Margaret was peeking in at the door, and I suddenly felt tedious arguing with him again and ended our conversation rashly.

She immediately pulled him to the living room and reprimanded him. "Matthew, how could you listen to whatever your wife says? Do I have to register when I enter the neighborhood and get her permission to enter your house?"

Matthew looked back at the bedroom and lowered his voice. "Mom, calm down. I'll put your fingerprint into the lock again. Remember to be careful next time and don't let Sherry find out."

Margaret was unhappy. "I'm so pathetic. Why do I still have to be under her control?"

"I can't help it. Her father stopped the meeting and told me to solve the problems at home before returning to the company. If she is still angry about it, I will lose my job!"

She complained, "Is there anyone who will deal with his abuse of power in the company?"

Matthew smiled bitterly, "He is the chairman. I still have to please Sherry first so that I can get promoted faster."

"But this is also a good thing. The more the Nelson family values her, the more resources we can get from them in the future," he said.

Margaret was deeply moved and hugged her son. "Good boy. You have sacrificed too much to our family."

He clenched his fist and said, "Mom, when I am powerful enough in the company and her home, I promise to let her kneel in front of you and wash your feet."

Margaret looked delighted at once. "That's great. A spoiled young lady like her needs to suffer before she knows how to respect her husband's mother."

Not long after I got married, Margaret indeed asked me to wash her feet.

I thought she asked me to bring some water for her to wash her feet on her own and also got me some water to wash mine.

However, Margaret splashed the water and started to blame me, "I said I wanted to wash my feet! You should wash them for me."

After realizing what she meant, I immediately refused. "No way, I haven't even washed my parents' feet. If you really want that, you can go to a foot massage place. It's not expensive, after all."

Margaret asked for Matthew's help with her eyes.

But at that time, he was reporting something about work to my father on the phone and dared not back his mother.

The trivial matter in my heart later became an enormous humiliation to Matthew and Margaret, and they stuck to the idea of revenging on me as soon as possible.

I heard the fingerprint recording buzz on the lock; Matthew was recording his mother's fingerprints again.

And he thought I couldn't hear that!

Lying on the bed, I opened my eyes wide and looked at the ceiling, letting the tears flow down my cheeks, wetting my collar and pillow.

The tears I shed now were all the water that entered my brain before marriage.

My family bought me a house early on because they hoped that no matter what happened in my marriage, I would have a way out and not be coerced.

Never had I expected that I would end up living like a rat in my own house.

Now, I had to wear underwear at home, close the door when going to the toilet, and wash my underwear by hand. I was always on my toes, afraid that if I relaxed for a second, Margaret would curse me for not being a good girl.

It was really hard for them as they had to face a "bad girl" like me all the time.

Now that my tears had dried, I would let them taste the feeling of living in fear at home!

Jack: [Ms. Nelson, Margaret has come into the neighborhood with some friends.]

The guard, Jack Moore, sent me a message. Here came my chance!