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My six-year-old nephew dragged his broken leg across seven blocks of pavement to reach my porch, with his starving three-year-old sister clinging to his shirt. I was fixing a loose hinge when I heard scraping on the steps and turned to see Drew crawling toward me, pale, shaking, and whispering, “She locked us downstairs again.” I called 911 before I even understood the whole story. But when he told me about Reena’s punishment room, I knew my brother had died believing a terrible lie.

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into my house?”

“Once they were settled, you would have seen it was manageable.”

“You planned to make it too difficult for me to say no.”

His face hardened. “You always assume the worst about my family.”

“No, Aaron. I kept assuming the best. That was my mistake.”

Upstairs, a soft mechanical hum came through the ceiling—the white-noise machine Dad had installed continue reading …

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