My stepfather used to beat me every single day like it was his idea of fun.

One night he broke my arm, and when they finally brought me to the hospital, my mother told the staff, “She slipped and fell in the bathtub.” But the moment the doctor caught sight of the bruises on my face, he picked up the phone and called 911.

The day my stepfather snapped my arm, my mother lied faster than I could scream. She gripped my good wrist in the hospital lobby and murmured, “Cry the wrong way, and you’ll never see daylight again.”

I was seventeen—small enough for them to write me off as weak, old enough to understand the difference between a home and a cage. My stepfather, Thomas Vance, liked to work me over after dinner. Not because I mouthed off. Not because I was failing school. He did it because he liked watching the fear rearrange my face.