I never told my sister-in-law that I was a Colonel in Army Intelligence!

In the kitchen, Emily stared at the police report like it was written in a foreign language. Then she looked at me, eyes red but steady.

“I thought you didn’t care,” she said quietly. “When she insulted you, you never reacted. I thought you were… passive.”

“I don’t fight battles that don’t matter,” I said. “Words are noise. But Lily isn’t noise.”

Emily nodded slowly, grief and anger hardening into something sharper. “I should have stopped it. I let her stay. I made excuses.”

“You wanted to help your sister,” I said. “That wasn’t wrong. Keeping her here after she showed you who she was—that would have been wrong.”

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