En zo tekenden ze, met trillende handen, hun thuis weg.
Then She Told Them to Run
After the fraudulent “bail” was supposedly paid, she warned them:
“Scammers now know where you live. You must leave the house immediately. Don’t tell your son — they might target him too.”
My parents believed every word.
Claudia moved them across the city into a room so small they could barely lie down without touching opposite walls. She handed them cash in envelopes — just enough to survive but never enough to ask questions.
Meanwhile, she stood beside me every day, smiling, asking how my parents were, reassuring me that they were “doing fine.”
She would update me with details — meals they supposedly ate, stories she claimed they told — while in reality she hadn’t seen them in weeks.
She was selling their house.
She was draining my accounts.
And she was looking me in the eyes while doing it.
The Truth Came From the Last Place I Expected
My father kept an old, cracked phone — the kind he never updated. Every time he felt unsure about something, he pressed “record” without thinking. He had recordings of every conversation with Claudia.
The fear in his voice.
The manipulation in hers.
The threats disguised as concern.
A neighbor near their old house recognized Claudia meeting strangers and turning over documents. Out of suspicion, he saved a copy of the transaction papers.
By the time I pieced it together, my parents had already fled the room they rented — too afraid to stay — and ended up on the street, hiding from dangers that didn’t exist.
That was how I found them on that rain-soaked night.
My mother had a plastic bag over her hair.
My father sat beside her, shielding her with his coat.
Both were trembling from cold… and shame.
When I knelt beside them, they wouldn’t look me in the eyes.
“We didn’t want you involved,” my mother whispered. “She said they would hurt you.”
And something inside me broke irreversibly.
The Unmasking
When I confronted Claudia, her voice dropped the sweetness like it was a mask she no longer needed.
