With that, he hung up.
I was stunned. The plan had failed at the most critical step. Not only had Clara not escaped, but she had been brutally beaten and was now being held captive. All contact was cut off.
She was in mortal danger.
I was truly panicked. I immediately dialed Mr. Lou’s number.
“Mr. Lou, Mr. Lou, something’s happened.”
My voice was shaking.
“My son, he found out. He hit the girl, and he’s locked her in the room. We have to do something. We have to get her out now.”
The fight for Clara’s freedom had entered its most difficult and dangerous phase. This was no longer a legal battle on paper, but a real-life rescue mission.
After that terrifying phone call with Julian, Mr. Lou and I took immediate action. We reported him to the police for domestic violence and unlawful imprisonment. With official intervention, my son was forced to open the door, and they rescued a terrified Clara, her body covered in fresh bruises.
She was taken to the hospital to have her injuries documented, and Mr. Lou arranged for her to stay in a safe, temporary location.
The plan was exposed. The war had moved from the shadows into the open.
I knew it was only a matter of time before Julian came looking for me. Sure enough, two days later, he appeared at the retirement community. He had lost his usual calm and composed demeanor, though still dressed in an expensive suit. His face was haggard, and his eyes were bloodshot from rage and lack of sleep.
He looked like a cornered animal.
He stormed up to me as I was reading in the garden, not even bothering with a greeting, his voice dripping with accusation.
“Mom, what are you doing? You’re this old, and you still want to stir up trouble? My family’s happiness. My happiness. How could you bear to destroy it with your own hands?”
I calmly closed my book and set it aside. The fear inside me was gone, replaced by a cold disappointment.
“Happiness?”
I looked him straight in the eye.
“You call the hell you created for Clara happiness? You call your fists and your insults happiness? Don’t you dare use that word. You don’t deserve it.”
“That’s my private family business,” he roared, causing a few people nearby to turn and stare. “I was teaching my wife a lesson. You have to keep a woman in her place, or she’ll get out of control and walk all over you. You’re a woman. You should have understood and taught your daughter-in-law her place. Instead, you incited her to make trouble.”
Hearing those words, I knew my son was beyond saving. His father’s toxic, misogynistic ideology had seeped deep into his bones, becoming even more twisted and cunning.
“You’re wrong, Julian.”
My tone was firm.
“Violence isn’t discipline. It’s a crime. Controlling and trampling on someone isn’t how you maintain happiness. It’s a sign of weakness and sickness. I have been silent for too long. If you can feel any remorse now, if you can recognize your mistakes and go ask for Clara’s forgiveness, maybe things can still be saved. Change before it’s too late.”
I gave him one last chance, a faint hope that some humanity remained in him, but he scoffed at it. He let out a bitter laugh.
“Change? What mistakes have I made that I need to change? I’m successful. I make money. I gave her a life of luxury. All she had to do was stay home, have children, and obey. It was you helping her behind my back who gave her these delusions. You ruined everything.”
Our argument grew louder. I no longer held back.
“The one who ruined everything is you. It was your brutality that killed Clara’s love. It was your selfishness that pushed this family to the brink of a cliff.”
“Fine, just fine.”
He seethed, his eyes wide with fury.
“Since you’ve chosen to side with an outsider against your own son, then you listen to me.”
He pointed a finger at my face, his voice sharp as a knife.
“If you continue to help her, if you agree to this divorce, then from this day forward, the bond between us as mother and son is severed. From now on, I will consider myself as not having a mother.”
My heart ached as if it were being squeezed in a vice, but I didn’t back down. I had already lost my son the night I saw him torturing his wife. The person standing before me now was just a stranger wearing my son’s face.
“Fine,” I said, my voice terrifyingly calm. “If that is what you wish.”
“And don’t think a divorce will be that easy,” he spat. “I will never agree to it. I’ll hire the best lawyers. I’ll prove to the court that she’s mentally ill, incompetent. She won’t get a single penny, and she can forget about ever getting custody of any child.”
With that, he turned and stormed off, leaving me alone in the curious and sympathetic gazes of the people around me.
I knew the real war had just begun.
The legal battle unfolded exactly as Julian had threatened. He spared no expense, hiring a team of shrewd, aggressive lawyers who specialized in twisting the truth. Every piece of evidence we presented, they countered.
The audio recordings, they claimed, were edited or were just normal arguments between a married couple. The photos of the bruises, they argued, could have been self-inflicted by Clara to frame her husband. The medical report documenting her injuries, they said, was the result of a fall.
They even submitted a falsified medical record, signed by some unscrupulous doctor, attesting that Clara suffered from a psychological disorder with a history of self-harm and persecutory delusions, causing her to fantasize about being abused.
Everything slowly ground to a stalemate.
Clara, after the trauma of being held captive and her husband’s shameless tactics in court, was on the verge of a breakdown. She began to doubt herself, terrified she would actually lose the case and, just as her husband had threatened, lose her child and be left with nothing.
The flame of hope we had just kindled was slowly being extinguished.