My Stepmom Locked Me in So I’d Miss Her Wedding with My Dad — But She Didn’t Count on One Tiny Detail That Changed Everything
I should’ve known something was off when my stepmom, Lila, offered to let me “rest” before the wedding. She led me to the guest room with a weirdly sweet smile and said, “Why don’t you take a nap, sweetie? Big day ahead.” I nodded, too exhausted to question it. Planning a wedding with my dad had been chaotic, and Lila had insisted she wanted me to feel included.
I lay on the bed for maybe ten minutes before I heard a soft click. I sat up. The door wouldn’t budge.
Locked.
At first, I laughed. “Very funny,” I called. “Okay, you got me!”
No answer.
I jiggled the doorknob harder. Nothing.
Panic trickled in. I banged on the door, yelling louder. Still silence. I reached for my phone on the nightstand—gone. She must have taken it when I was dozing off.
Reality hit me like a punch. Lila didn’t want me at the wedding.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. She never liked that my dad and I were close. When she moved in last year, she gradually wormed her way between us. What started as subtle comments turned into full-blown guilt trips whenever he spent time with me. Still, I thought she was just insecure—not vindictive.
But now, here I was, locked in, dressed for the wedding but trapped.
I tried the window. Painted shut. The room was on the second floor, overlooking the side yard. Even if I could pry it open, there was no safe way down.
I paced in frustration. That’s when I noticed the air vent in the corner. I couldn’t crawl through it or anything—it was tiny—but it triggered a thought.
The smart speaker.
Lila, ever obsessed with her voice-controlled home, had smart devices in every room. Including this one.
I rushed over to the device. “Alexa, call Dad.”
Silence.
Ugh—she must have disabled the voice call feature. But then I remembered something even better.
“Alexa, announce: ‘Dad, Lila locked me in the guest room so I wouldn’t come to the wedding. Help.’”
There was a pause. Then the device responded, “Announcing…”
The message echoed through every speaker in the house.
I held my breath.
Thirty seconds later, I heard footsteps pounding up the stairs. My dad’s voice: “Emily?!”
“I’m here!” I shouted.
The lock clicked, and the door flew open. My dad looked furious—and not at me.
“What happened?” he asked, already turning toward the stairs.
“She locked me in,” I said, shaking. “Took my phone. I couldn’t get out.”
He didn’t wait. He stormed downstairs, and I followed. The guests were still arriving in the backyard. Lila stood in her wedding dress, laughing with her bridesmaids. She turned—and froze when she saw us.
My dad’s voice boomed, “Did you lock my daughter in a room to keep her from the wedding?”
Gasps rippled through the crowd.
Lila stammered. “I—she was tired—I thought—”
“No,” he said sharply. “You thought you could cut her out. This wedding is off.”
The color drained from her face.
I stood there, stunned. He looked at me and said, “Let’s go.”
We walked away from the stunned guests and shocked whispers, his hand gripping mine tightly. I don’t know what happened to Lila after that, and honestly, I didn’t care.
The tiny detail she hadn’t counted on was the smart speaker—and the fact that no matter how clever she thought she was, she’d underestimated the bond between me and my dad.
And that’s something no locked door could break.
