My dad (59) married Lucy (27) and keeps forcing me to “be friends” with her. I feel sick. At dinner, my dad started again, so I snapped:

“She’s closer to my age than you.

She can’t be family to me!”

Lucy smirked. The next day, I froze when she said,

“Since we aren’t family, don’t expect me to protect you.”

The thing is, I wasn’t trying to be disrespectful. I was just exhausted. My name’s Rhea. I’m 28, and I work full-time as a school counselor. I’ve been living with my dad temporarily since my apartment building had a pipe burst three months ago, and I’m saving to move out again. He offered. I thought I’d get a few months of peace. Instead, I got… Lucy.

Dad met her at a real estate seminar or something. He was speaking; she was an attendee. A month later, they were dating. Two months later, engaged. By the time I moved in, Lucy was already living here—feet on the coffee table, drinking kombucha she insists is “hand-brewed,” calling me “kiddo” even though I’m a year older.

At first, I kept it polite. But then she started rearranging the house. I came home one day, and she’d turned my dad’s study—where he keeps old photos of my mom, who passed away five years ago—into her “content room” with a ring light and pastel wallpaper. No warning. Just gone.

I said something to Dad. He said, “Rhea, she’s helping me feel young again.”

That dinner? The one where I snapped? Lucy had just suggested we do a “mother-daughter” spa day. While eating sushi. That she made herself. With canned tuna.

Anyway. The next day, she caught me in the kitchen, leaned in real close and said that thing—”Since we aren’t family, don’t expect me to protect you.” I didn’t even know what she meant. Protect me from what? I figured she was just being catty.

But the weirdness started immediately.

That afternoon, I got a call from work. Apparently, someone had emailed the school principal screenshots from my private Instagram. Just a few swimsuit photos from a beach trip in 2019. Nothing wild. But the email claimed I was setting a “bad example for students.”

My principal said he had to formally log it as a complaint. Not a big deal, but still. Embarrassing.

I made my account private, removed a few old posts, and tried to shake it off.

Two days later, my credit card got declined at a grocery store. I checked my app—my limit had been reduced. Strange. I called the bank. They said a “recent change of address” had flagged my account for review. I never changed my address.

The only place my mail goes is here.

Lucy had casually mentioned she used to work in digital marketing. She said it like, “Oh, just a boring job,” but I remembered seeing her laptop open once. She had tabs open for data scrapers, IP lookup tools.

I started getting paranoid. I checked my credit report. Sure enough—someone had tried to open two new cards in my name. Denied, thankfully. But the alerts were there.

I told my dad. He blinked and said, “You’re always so dramatic. Maybe lay off the true crime podcasts.”

Then Lucy walked in, wearing one of my old T-shirts like it was hers, and offered us both green smoothies. I said no. She grinned and said, “Suit yourself.”

So I did something I’m not proud of: I snooped.

I waited until she left for her “Pilates collab” with some local influencer and opened her laptop.

She’d left her email signed in.

There it was. An email to my principal. With those screenshots. Sent from a fake name, but it was in her drafts. She hadn’t even deleted it. There were more: one with a doctored photo of me with a beer bottle in a school parking lot—fake. Another with my full name and the words “potential misconduct” in the subject line.

I sat there, staring at the screen, heart thudding in my ears. Why would she go this far? Why me?

Then I clicked a folder called “Strategy.”

Inside? Notes. Literal notes. About me.

“Undermines relationship with C. = threat.”
“Goal: encourage independent housing by Oct.”
“Plan B: nudge for job relocation?”
“Leverage past roommate issue if needed.”

I’d had one roommate drama two years ago, when a friend left mid-lease. I vented about it once at dinner. That’s what she meant by “leverage.”

She was trying to push me out.

And Dad? He didn’t want to hear a word of it.

“You’re reading too much into things,” he said. “She’s just trying to set boundaries. Maybe you both are feeling territorial.”

“She’s stalking me,” I said.

He actually chuckled. “You millennials and your buzzwords.”

So I stopped trying to convince him.

Instead, I got strategic.

First, I moved my documents—ID, social security card, everything—into a lockbox at my friend Tavira’s place. I changed all my passwords. Two-factor everything.

Then, I started watching her.

Lucy would leave the house every Wednesday for two hours, always saying it was for a “brunch mastermind.” One time, I followed her. She didn’t go to brunch. She went to a tiny office space in a strip mall. The glass door read: “Modessa Digital Reputation Services.”

I googled it. It was one of those shady firms that scrub online histories and “optimize perception.” Basically: if you wanted someone to disappear online, they could help.

That’s when it hit me: maybe I wasn’t her first.

So I got even bolder.

I messaged a woman who’d commented on Lucy’s wedding photos—someone named Kalindi—who’d written, “You finally did it! So proud of you.”

I just wrote:
“Hey, I’m Rhea. Lucy’s stepdaughter. Can I ask you something privately?”

Kalindi replied ten minutes later.

Two hours after that, we were on the phone.

Turns out, Kalindi and Lucy (whose real name is Lucienne) used to work together at a small PR firm. Lucy got fired after allegedly manipulating a client’s ex-wife’s social media to make her look unstable during a custody case. Nothing proven, but sketchy as hell.

Kalindi also said something else:

“She has a pattern of going after people her partners care about. If someone threatens her standing in the relationship, she turns them into a problem to solve.”

I wanted to scream. I was the problem she was solving.

So I finally did what I should’ve done from the start. I stopped playing defense.

I printed every email draft. Every fake profile I found. I compiled it into a folder and mailed it—not to my dad, but to my aunt, his sister, who lives in Vermont and doesn’t trust Lucy either.

Aunt Mireille flew in within a week.

She didn’t say much. Just asked Dad to dinner. No Lucy. They talked for three hours. I wasn’t there.

But two days later, Dad knocked on my bedroom door.

His eyes were puffy. He handed me the folder I’d made—now full of sticky notes and highlighter marks.

He said, “I didn’t know. I should’ve protected you.”

Lucy denied everything. Said I had “hacked” her laptop. Claimed I was trying to ruin her life. Dad told her to leave.

She screamed. Cried. Packed in a fury. Called me “a snake with a victim complex.”

I didn’t respond. I just watched her go.

Two months later, Dad apologized again—this time with action. He sold the house. Got a small condo. Helped me with a deposit on my own apartment, just a few blocks from where I used to live.

We’re still rebuilding. It’s not perfect.

But last week, he came over for dinner. Just the two of us. We talked about Mom. About trust. About what happens when people see only what they want.

I asked him if he missed Lucy.

He said, “I miss the idea of being seen. But I don’t miss being blind.”

Sometimes love makes us overlook too much. Sometimes wanting to start over leads us into worse places than the ones we left behind.

But here’s what I’ve learned:

You don’t have to burn down your boundaries just to keep someone else warm.

And if someone tries to make you feel crazy for trusting your gut—dig deeper. You might just be the only one seeing things clearly.

If this hit home, share it. Someone else might need the reminder. ❤️
Like + drop a comment if you’ve ever dealt with a toxic “step-anything.”