I didn't expected it to end this way :(

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I was "kidnapped" for three days when I was 12, but it wasn't a stranger who took me. It was my own father, who'd been legally banned from seeing me after the divorce. He picked me up from school claiming there was a "family emergency," then drove me to a cabin four states away where he spent 72 hours trying to convince me my mother was the villain. The FBI found us because he forgot to turn off his phone's location sharing.

My parents had a brutal divorce when I was 10. The kind where lawyers get rich and kids get traumatized. Dad had been drinking heavily and became unstable showing up at my school drunk, calling my mom dozens of times a day, even breaking into our house at 3 AM. My mom found him standing over my bed "just watching me sleep."

After that, Dad was only allowed supervised visits twice a month. He hated it, complaining the entire time about how the system was rigged against fathers, how my mom had poisoned me against him. I hadn't been poisoned-I'd witnessed everything firsthand.

Two months later, he disappeared completely. Mom was relieved but worried he was planning something She changed our locks and had my school add his photo to their "do not allow list.

Then one Tuesday afternoon, the school secretary called me out of math class. "Your father is here to pick you up. There's been a family emergency

Dad looked normal showered, dressed nicely, completely sober. He showed them official-looking paperwork about my grandmother being in a car accident. I didn't question it because Grandma was 89 and it seemed plausible.

"Mom's already at the hospital," he said as we got in his truck. "She asked me to get you immediately

For the first hour, everything seemed legitimate. He was driving toward the hospital, talking normally about Grandma's condition. But then he passed the hospital exit and kept going. When I asked why, he said they'd transferred her to a different hospital in the next city, Then the next state. Then he stopped making excuses

"We're going somewhere we can talk without your mother's influence," he finally admitted around hour three. "You need to hear the truth about what really happened."

By then, I was terrified but trapped in a moving vehicle. He'd taken my backpack with my phone in it. We were on back roads I didn't recognize, and it was getting dark

The cabin was in the middle of nowhere-no neighbors, no cell service, no landline. Dad had clearly planned this for weeks. There was food stocked, clothes in my size, even my favorite books. He'd created thes weird alternate reality where we'd live together and I'd eventually understand why he'd "rescued" me.

For three days, he subjected me to this twisted propaganda campaign about my mother. How she'd lied to the courts about his drinking, manipulated me into being afraid of him, stolen me away from him forever. He had printed emails, legal documents, recordings of phone calls, all organized in binders like some deranged PowerPoint presentation.

"I'm not the monster she made me out to be he kept saying. "I'm your father. I love you more than anyone ever will

The scariest part wasn't the isolation or even the kidnapping itself-it was watching him genuinely believe his own version of reality. In his mind, he was saving me, not traumatizing me. He'd convinced himself that I'd thank him once I understood the "truth."

Meanwhile, Mom had called the police within an hour of me not coming home. The school realized they'd been tricked when she arrived panicking about the "emergency they'd never heard of. An Amber Alert went out immediately. The FBI got involved because he'd crossed state lines.

What Dad didn't realize was that he'd never turned off his iPhone's location sharing. Mom still had access to his Apple ID from when they were married, and she'd never removed herself from his family sharing plan. The FBI tracked us through his location history and found the cabin on day three.

I was doing homework at the kitchen table when I heard helicopters. Dad's face went white as he realized what was happening. "They don't understand," he kept repeating as agents surrounded the cabin. "I was trying to save you."

The FBI agents were incredibly gentle with me, but I could see them exchanging glances when they surveyed Dad's "evidence" room with printed documents and photos of Mom with red X's drawn cover her face.

Dad was arrested for kidnapping, violation of a restraining order, and child endangerment. He got eight years in federal prison.

He's been out for two years now. I'm 24 and he still sends me letters from across the country, still trying to convince me that he was right all along.