They met in a small, anonymous cafe downtown. Anna, nervously twisting a coffee cup in her hands, finally told her everything. She spoke of the man Marcus pretended to be, and the monster he was behind closed doors. She detailed the escalation from verbal abuse to physical violence.

Catherine listened, her expression growing harder with each word. When Anna finished, she asked, “Do you have proof?”

Anna slid a small flash drive across the table, along with medical reports from discreet visits to an urgent care clinic, where she had invented clumsy stories about falls and accidents to explain her injuries.