My hands were trembling. Not the kind of tremor you get from nerves, but the deep, involuntary shudder that meant my time was almost up.

I backed away from the crowd in my doorway and went straight to the kitchen drawer, where I kept a little orange pill bottle tucked behind the coffee filters. When I came back, I held it up like a talisman.

“I’m sick,” I said, meeting each of their eyes in turn. “I mean really sick. I have a serious mental health condition. If I don’t take my medication on time, I can’t control myself. I could hurt someone. Badly.”

For a second, there was silence. Then Mr. Landry barked out a laugh.

“What’s this, vitamins? Don’t try to scare us, girl. We know when someone’s faking.”

“They’re prescription,” I said. “And if you stay here, you’re taking your lives in your own hands.”

They weren’t listening. In fact, Mrs. Landry’s face had tightened into the smug, superior look she used when she thought she’d caught me bluffing.

“Tyler told us you were dramatic, but I didn’t think you’d stoop to this,” she said.

And then, something in me shifted. There were five of them in front of me—and a sixth, technically, still baking inside Jessica’s belly.

My doctor had once told me, clinically, dispassionately, that fifteen was the maximum “safe” limit per month before I risked full psychosis. The thought flickered through my brain, uninvited, and I had to shake my head violently to clear it.

“No,” I muttered, to myself more than to them. “I don’t want that. I just need you to leave.”

I put the pill bottle down on the table and pressed my hands together like I was praying. “Please. I’ll pay for a hotel, I’ll call you a cab, I’ll even give you grocery money. Just—don’t stay here.”

Adam’s answer was a hard kick to my shin. The shock of pain nearly dropped me to the floor.

“Quit the crap,” he said, stepping forward.

Then, all at once, they surged through the doorway. My living room filled with their voices—complaints, demands, the shuffle of bags hitting the floor, shoes scuffing over my rugs. Jessica’s gasp cut through the din.

“Oh my God—why is there so much blood in here?”

That got them looking around. The floor in front of my balcony door was still sticky from last night’s mess, which I hadn’t had the energy to clean.

Before anyone could ask questions I didn’t want to answer, I went to the knife block, yanked out a chef’s knife, and started moving toward them with short, sharp steps.

The reaction was instant. Tyler leapt backward, practically crab-walking away from me. His parents made for the front door, Mr. Landry tripping over the threshold and hitting the floor hard. Adam shoved Jessica toward the stairwell, not even looking back to see if she caught herself.

I slammed the door shut and threw the locks—both of them—my chest heaving. My phone alarm chirped from the counter. Meds. Right on time. I downed the pill dry, leaning against the door while my pulse steadied.

Maybe they’d gotten the message. Maybe I’d scared them enough to keep them away.

I was wrong.

Sometime after midnight, just as I was drifting toward sleep, a floorboard creaked in the living room. I froze. There was no mistaking it—weight shifting on wood, a soft whisper of fabric, low voices.

“She thinks if she locks us out, we’ll give up?” Adam’s voice, low and ugly.

“Wait until morning,” Mrs. Landry said. “We’ll put her in her place. And Tyler—get her pregnant. She’ll beg you to marry her again once she’s carrying your kid. Then the condo’s as good as ours.”

I slipped out of bed in the dark, pressing my ear to the bedroom door. My front door was locked. I’d double-checked before sleeping.

How the hell had they gotten in?

The doorknob to my room rattled. Hard. “This one’s hers,” Jessica said sweetly. “Let’s take it for Mom and Dad. Adam, you and I can have the bigger guest room.”

My head pounded, my stomach twisted. I threw the door open so hard it hit the wall.

“You’re trespassing,” I spat. “Breaking and entering. That’s a felony. Get the hell out.”

Mrs. Landry stepped right up to me, close enough that I could smell her perfume—cheap, powdery, cloying. “Trespassing? I came to the city to see my daughter-in-law. You’re the one who’s dangerous—waving a knife at family, almost scaring Jessica into losing the baby. That’s attempted murder, honey.”

She smirked, and I realized she was enjoying herself.

It was the first time that night I wondered—not if I could make them leave—but whether I would.

I didn’t sleep after that. I sat on the edge of my bed, clutching my phone, listening to their voices drift through the walls.

By morning, I was ready to figure out exactly how they’d gotten in. The front door’s deadbolt looked untouched. The digital keypad was dead, its screen cracked. Then I spotted it—the sliding door to my balcony was ajar.

The balcony of my unit sat just a few feet from the emergency stairwell landing. All it would take was a few bold steps along the narrow concrete ledge—eighteen floors up—to climb in. One wrong move, and they’d have been street art. The thought should’ve made me feel lucky they hadn’t fallen. Instead, my skin prickled. People that desperate weren’t going to be scared off easily.

When I came back inside, I found Mrs. Landry sprawled across my bed in a silk robe I’d bought just last week, her feet on my pillows. Mr. Landry was sitting beside her in nothing but boxer shorts, working at a stubborn toenail.

From the guest room came muffled noises that made my skin crawl. I didn’t knock. I didn’t want to know.

In the smallest bedroom, Tyler was spreading fresh sheets, like we’d just agreed to move in together again. He looked up and smiled like nothing was wrong. “Come on in. It’s been a while since we slept together.”

I backed out so fast I nearly tripped.

The air in the condo felt thick, sour. I left without another word, spent the night in a 24-hour coffee shop two blocks away, watching the same silent newscast loop until sunrise.

When I came back the next day, I planned to have one last, civilized conversation. Tell them to leave, or I’d call the cops.

The elevator doors slid open, and my stomach dropped.

My sofa, coffee table, and bookshelf were in the hallway. In my living room, a crew of men in dust masks was swinging hammers at my walls. Light fixtures lay shattered on the floor. Even the hardwood planks were being pried up and stacked like firewood.

“What the hell are you doing?!” My voice cracked halfway through.

“Making the space more practical,” Adam said from the kitchen, holding one of my wine bottles—nearly empty. “A big living room’s a waste. The baby needs its own room.”

I shoved past him to the wine rack. Ten bottles gone. Only two left, both vintage reds I’d bought to share with my mom.

“That’s for my family,” I snapped. “Do you have any idea what those cost?”

Mrs. Landry strolled out from the kitchen, wearing my mother’s birthday necklace and the matching gold bracelets. “Don’t be so territorial. What’s yours is ours. We’ve given the workers a taste too—”

Jessica emerged in my mink coat, grinning. “We believe in sharing the good stuff.” She plucked the last two bottles from the rack and handed them to one of the men tearing down my walls. “For your trouble.”

I caught her wrist before she could let go. “You don’t give away my property.”

Mrs. Landry slid between us and slapped me hard across the face. The room tilted for a second, my cheek burning. “Watch yourself,” she said. “You’ll stress Jess and hurt the baby. The workers offered to knock a couple hundred off the bill if we gave them something nice. You should be thanking us for saving you money.”

I stared at her, my pulse pounding in my ears. “Saving me money? You’re demolishing my home. And I’m supposed to pay for it?”

Mrs. Landry folded her arms. “Who else would? Your ex’s savings are for a new car, Adam’s got a kid on the way, and we’re retired. You’ve got lottery money and no responsibilities. It’s time you learned what family means.”

That word—family—made something in me twist.

Behind her, a man in overalls was lugging two large boxes toward the door. I recognized the tape on them instantly. My dad’s books.

The man in overalls stopped in the doorway when I shouted, but not for long.

“Hey,” I called out, crossing the room in three strides. “Where are you taking those?”

He shrugged. “Old books. Your dad’s, right? They’re heavy as hell. Adam says you don’t need ’em.”

“They’re not for sale.” I grabbed at the nearest box, my fingers scraping against the cardboard. “They’re rare. Out of print. My father spent decades finding them.”

Mr. Landry stepped in front of me, his frame filling the hallway. “Don’t make a scene. I can get five bucks a box from the scrap guy. That’s a pack of smokes.”

“You can’t—”

The rest of my sentence turned into a grunt as his foot slammed into my hip, sending me to the floor. The boxes were gone before I could get up, carried down the hall toward the freight elevator.

I pushed to my knees, but Adam’s boot came down between my shoulder blades, pinning me to the hardwood. My cheek pressed into a strip of duct tape that had fallen from one of the half-dismantled walls, the smell of dust and paint sharp in my nose.

“Stay down,” Adam growled.

Mrs. Landry’s voice floated over me, falsely sweet. “You know, you’ve been nothing but trouble since we got here. Always complaining, acting like we’re strangers. Family doesn’t treat each other this way.”

“Family?” I spat the word into the floor. “You broke into my home.”

“Which is why we need to keep you somewhere safe.” Her tone turned brisk. “Adam, take her to the bathroom. Tie her up. We’ll finish up in peace.”

Rough hands grabbed my arms, hauling me toward the hallway. My heels scraped against the floor, catching on a nail jutting from the baseboard.

The bathroom door slammed shut behind me. A towel was stuffed into my mouth, the bitter tang of detergent making my stomach turn. Rope—no, some kind of heavy nylon cord—wound tight around my wrists and ankles. My phone was plucked from my pocket before I could twist away.

“You bring this on yourself,” Mr. Landry said, not unkindly. “Could’ve just let us stay.”

The light clicked off, and I was left in the dark with the sound of their voices and the crash of my life being dismantled outside.

Through the muffled cotton in my mouth, I tried to breathe slow, steady. But the darkness pressed in. My muscles started to twitch, not from fear, but from the creeping, electric itch of what I’d been fighting to keep under control.

A few hours earlier, one of the workers—someone I’d never seen before—had mentioned, almost casually, that the building had “a crazy lady” on my floor. Someone who screamed in the middle of the night. Someone who left dead animals in the hall. His tone had been curious, almost amused.

Mrs. Landry had laughed it off, insisting he must be thinking of someone else. I could hear the edge in her voice even now in my memory. She was scared—not for me, but of what might happen if that story stuck.

The walls of the bathroom seemed to pulse with each beat of my heart. I imagined my father’s books being tossed into a pickup bed, spines splitting, pages crumpling. I imagined the gold on my mother’s necklace glinting on Mrs. Landry’s throat.

And then my mind went somewhere darker.

If I were free, I thought, I could make all of this stop.

The thought didn’t scare me like it should have.