My sister went to my rich boyfriend’s place and told him to “try it,” so I exposed her.

I drove home taking a different route than usual, checking my mirrors constantly. I didn’t stop shaking until I was inside with the door locked.

Two weeks after that, mom called and finally admitted what had been going on at their house. Mia had moved back into her childhood bedroom, refusing to look for work, and spent most of her time on her phone or laptop.

Mom had noticed Mia obsessively checking Adam’s company website multiple times a day, refreshing his bio page and staring at his professional headshot. She’d also been researching apartments in his neighborhood and had printouts of listings within a three-block radius of his building.

Two days after mom told me about the apartment printouts, I got a Facebook message from a name I didn’t recognize at first. Derek Matthews had dated Mia back in college for about 8 months before they had what she called a messy breakup.

His message was short but it made my stomach drop. He’d seen some posts from mutual friends about what was happening and wanted to warn me that she’d done something similar when they broke up.

After he dumped her for cheating, she started showing up at his new girlfriend’s workplace, calling his boss with fake complaints about him, and even made a fake dating profile using his photos to message random women horrible things. I called him right away.

What he told me next made everything so much worse. He opened his email while we were on the phone and sent me scanned copies of police reports from 2019 that I couldn’t believe were real.

The first report showed that Mia had keyed “liar” into the side of his car after he started dating someone new. The second one detailed how she left dead roses on his doorstep every morning for two weeks straight.

The third one, the worst one, described how she broke into his apartment while he was at work and cut up all his girlfriend’s clothes that she’d left there. The charges got dropped because Mia agreed to get counseling.

Derek just wanted it over with, but she never actually went to any therapy sessions. She just told everyone she did and moved back home, claiming Derek was abusive and she needed to heal.

I forwarded everything to my parents within minutes of getting off the phone with Derek. Dad called me back so fast I barely had time to process what I just learned.

His voice was shaking as he told me he was driving straight to the bank to freeze the emergency credit card they’d given Mia. Then he was going to demand receipts for all the therapy sessions she claimed she needed money for last month.

Mom texted me asking if I could meet her for coffee the next morning while Mia would be at what she claimed was a job interview. I met mom at the coffee shop near their house, and she looked like she hadn’t slept in days.

Her hands were shaking as she held her cup, and she started crying before I even sat down. She told me she’d always known Mia was jealous of me, even when we were little kids, but she kept hoping Mia would grow out of it.

She admitted she’d seen the signs—the way Mia would copy everything I did but try to do it better, the way she’d get angry whenever I succeeded, the way she’d always try to take my friends or my things. Mom said she and dad had tried to get Mia into therapy when she was 16 after she destroyed my prom dress the night before the dance.

But Mia had screamed and threatened to hurt herself if they made her go. They gave up because they were scared, and mom said that was the biggest mistake they ever made.

That night Adam called me while I was making dinner and his voice sounded weird. Building security had just contacted him about an incident in the parking garage.

Someone had tried to use an old key fob that was reported lost 6 months ago to access the resident area. When security confronted the person, they ran to their car and sped off, but the cameras got everything.

The license plate matched Mia’s car perfectly. Security pulled the footage and showed a woman in a baseball cap and sunglasses, but the way she walked, the way she held her shoulders—it was definitely her.

Three days later, Adam and I went to the police station to file a report about the parking garage incident. The officer at the desk seemed bored at first, like this was just another domestic dispute he didn’t want to deal with.

But then I pulled out the folder I’d been keeping with everything documented—Derek’s old police reports, the screenshots from Sophia, the security footage from Adam’s building, printed copies of all the threatening texts. Everything was in chronological order with dates and times highlighted.

The officer’s expression changed completely as he flipped through the pages. He called over his supervisor who looked through everything again and asked us to wait while they made copies.

They gave us a case number and said a detective would be in touch within the week. I decided I needed professional help to deal with all the stress, so I made an appointment with a therapist.

During that first session, I laid out everything that had happened, and the therapist’s eyes got wider and wider. She told me Mia’s behavior was escalating in a dangerous pattern and we needed to create safety plans.

We spent the rest of the hour going through what to do if Mia showed up at my work, at Adam’s apartment, or tried to approach me in public. She gave me a list of security measures to implement immediately and told me to document absolutely everything.

While I was in therapy, my phone buzzed with texts from Sophia. She sent me screenshots of messages Mia had been sending to their entire friend group claiming I was having a mental breakdown and that Adam was worried about my stability.

Mia told them I was paranoid, making up stories about her, and that she was concerned I might hurt myself or someone else. Some of the friends were buying it and asking Sophia if they should reach out to me.

Mia’s going from roses to restraining orders faster than a bad first date spirals into blocked numbers. Her fake recruiter act reads like someone tried to copy LinkedIn’s style guide while having a fever dream about corporate speak.

Sophia told them all it was lies, but Mia kept pushing her narrative. She even created a group chat called “Supporting Emma through her crisis” where she played the concerned sister.

I started changing my routine immediately after reading those messages. Different routes to work every day, going to the gym at random times, eating lunch at different places.

I was never posting on social media about where I was or where I was going. The constant vigilance was exhausting—checking my mirrors while driving, scanning every room I entered.

I felt like I was living in a spy movie, except the villain was my own sister. About a week later Adam was getting home from work when he noticed something shiny on the hallway floor outside his apartment door.

He picked up a single silver earring with a small pearl, something neither of us recognized. He took it down to security to see if anyone had reported losing it, and that’s when things got weird again.

The security guard pulled up the footage from earlier that day and there was someone matching Mia’s description talking to one of the maintenance workers. She was wearing the same baseball cap from before, but this time with a medical mask.