Ana Ponyah Facebook ad: “New book online！ click here to read it first”

About this ad

Meta Ad Library ID

1111352144693675

Platforms

Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network and Threads

Relaunches

1

How we count

Ad text

By the time my husband and sister posted my breakdown over “losing my daughter” online, the adoption was one signature away from being final. The video’s title was even crueler than the fake email. *When your control-freak sister thinks you’re stealing her toy.* That so-called “toy” was a child I had cared for for three months, a little girl who would have become my daughter after one last confirmation. Just minutes earlier, I had been holding her, feeding her. Then an urgent email from the adoption agency popped into my inbox. The child’s birth mother had revoked her consent. They were coming to take her away immediately. My world went quiet. My mind went blank. All I knew was the instinct to clutch the baby tighter in my arms. I ran out to find my husband, desperate for him to call our adoption caseworker. Instead, my sister stood there holding up her phone, a smile playing on her lips. “Did you really think you were going to lose her?” she asked. “So? Is your heart broken enough?” The email was fake. She had used software to engineer it all—a staged separation—just to capture my breakdown on camera. My husband had known the whole time. He had even helped her pick the angle. On the other end of a video call, our family laughed, praising my sister for being “so funny.” Shaking, I begged them to delete the recording. My sister posted it right in front of me. My husband even stopped me from grabbing her phone. “She needs the content for her account,” he said. “Don’t make everyone miserable over something this small.” Soon, the family group chat became a trial. The adoption wasn’t finalized yet. I shouldn’t have cried. Shouldn’t have gotten angry. Shouldn’t have made myself look emotionally unstable. My husband said my reaction was more likely to ruin the adoption than my sister’s prank. And just like that, I understood. When they hurt me, it was a joke. When I felt pain, it was a crime. Whether I cried, raged, or begged them to stop, I would always be the one in the wrong. I carried the baby back to my room and quietly shut the door. No more arguments. No more begging. I just created a new folder on my computer and saved the fake email and the video link. They were all waiting to see my next breakdown. But next time, I wouldn’t be leaving only tears behind. … Late that night, I woke to crying on the baby monitor. It wasn’t normal fussing. The sound was sharp and broken, like something was lodged in Elsie’s throat. After a few desperate gasps, the crying suddenly cut out, leaving only faint, choking coughs. I threw off the covers and bolted barefoot from the bedroom. My toe slammed into the doorframe, but I didn’t even feel it. “Elsie!” I shoved open the nursery door and lunged for the crib. Elsie was lying peacefully inside, one tiny hand resting beside her face, her chest rising and falling in an even rhythm. Her eyes weren’t even open. But on the monitor, that near-suffocating cry was still playing. The closet door behind me creaked open. Sloane crawled out, holding a Bluetooth speaker, laughing so hard she could barely stand. “The way you ran in here—it was incredible!” She waved her phone. “I hacked the monitor. Downloaded a sound effect. So? Did it sound real?” I stared at her. My heart was still hammering against my ribs, but my hands and feet were going numb. Evan appeared in the doorway behind me. He was fully dressed, obviously having been awake for a while. He glanced at the sleeping Elsie and smiled. “A horror movie theme. The effect was definitely convincing.” They had all known. They knew exactly what a sound like that meant, and they had hidden in the dark, waiting to see how I’d react when I thought Elsie was dying. “Are you out of your minds?” I kept my voice low, afraid of waking the baby. “You joke about a baby suffocating? Are there any lines you won’t cross?” Sloane’s smile vanished. “Why are you mad again?” Evan frowned, too. “Elsie’s fine. Have you been under too much stress lately?” Sloane turned her phone screen toward me. On it, I was wild-haired and barefoot, charging into the room with a dead-white face and throwing myself at the crib. “This is even better than the last one,” she said, pleased. “I can cut it into ‘postpartum anxiety mom loses it in the middle of the night.’ Might even raise awareness about mental health.” “I do not have postpartum anxiety.” “That’s why I said a tendency,” she shrugged and, right in front of me, called our mother. After hearing the story, instead of scolding Sloane, Mom’s voice was laced with worry when she spoke to me. “Mara, if you’re this tightly wound, how are you going to take care of a child?” “Sloane was just helping you do a stress test. If there were a real emergency, you couldn’t just fall apart.” I looked at the three of them and suddenly remembered this was far from the first time. Before my LSAT, Sloane had swapped out my entire set of study materials for blank paper. Evan and my parents had played along, feigning ignorance as I tore the room apart in a spiral of panic. They only gave the books back after they’d had their laugh, saying they were helping me relieve stress. Not long ago, I had an important video meeting. Evan deliberately smeared one of Elsie’s used diapers on my suit while Sloane hid nearby, filming me frantically trying to clean it off. I almost lost a major project because of it. They said the way I ran into the bathroom in a dirty suit was comedy gold. Every time before, I had forced myself to laugh with them. I thought if I could just learn their sense of humor, maybe I wouldn’t be the killjoy, the outsider in my own family. It wasn’t until tonight that I finally admitted the truth: they didn’t fail to realize I would suffer. They set up the camera because they knew I would. The sharp pain in my chest didn’t return. There was only a spreading cold. I took the speaker from Sloane’s hand, noted the model number, and saved the link to the video she had just uploaded into the folder labeled “Evidence.” So that was all it meant when they accused you of being crazy. Your pain had ruined their fun. … As the family left the restaurant, a torrential downpour hit without warning. The Uber XL Evan had called pulled up, and my parents climbed into the back. Sloane slid smoothly into the front passenger seat, then turned and stopped me as I stood on the curb, holding Elsie. “Wait.” She set her brand-new VR camera and stabilizer into the last empty seat and carefully buckled them in. “Precision gear,” she said. “It can’t get jostled, and it definitely can’t get wet.” I looked at the seat taken up by her equipment. “I can hold the gear. Evan can hold Elsie.” Sloane shook her head immediately. “You’ve been carrying the baby this whole time. Your hands are probably sweaty. What if moisture gets into the electronics? This setup cost three thousand dollars.” Rain ran from my hair into the collar of my shirt. I looked at Evan. He was silent for a few seconds before making a decision for everyone. “Just call another car,” he said. “In this weather, with a baby? No driver will take that ride.” Evan frowned, as if I were creating problems on purpose. “Book a Luxe or a Black. Pay more. Someone will take it.” He pointed into the car. “Your parents are older; they can’t stand out here waiting. Sloane’s equipment is for work. And Elsie’s asleep—passing her back and forth will just wake her up.” By the end, impatience had crept into his voice. “Mara, you’re an adult. Figure it out. Don’t make this hard on everyone.” My father urged from inside the car, “Let’s go. The rain’s only getting worse.” The door shut in my face. At the last second, Evan rolled down the window. “Text me when you get home.” Then the car vanished into the sheet of rain. I held Elsie close, covering her with my coat. The wait times on Uber and Lyft were both over half an hour, and drivers canceled one after another. Rain soaked through my clothes. The cold wind knifed straight to the bone. Elsie stirred in my arms. I immediately looked down to check on her. Only after confirming she was still sleeping peacefully did I let myself keep waiting. Nearly an hour later, an Uber Black finally arrived. The woman driving took one look at me, immediately got out with an umbrella, and opened the door for us. She turned the heat all the way up, then went to the trunk and brought back a clean towel, gently draping it over the part of Elsie’s blanket that had gotten damp. “Taking a baby out in a storm like this—no wonder you look exhausted,” she said. She didn’t ask where my family had gone. She just handed me another towel. “At least you’re safe now.” The instant the warm air hit my face, my nose stung with the threat of tears. Even a stranger knew this much: You don’t leave a baby—and the person carrying that baby—out in a downpour. I wiped my phone screen dry and opened my email. Two weeks earlier, a Boston executive search firm had sent me an offer for a senior position. I had never responded. I opened it, paused on the acceptance page for a beat, then hit send. Once the adoption was finalized, I would take Elsie and leave Chicago. For the first time, I was planning a future for myself and my child. A future that had no Evan, no Sloane, and no parents in it. Evan had no idea. In the future he had planned for everyone, there was no longer any place for the Mara who had once thought she was the heroine of the story.By the time I got home, my clothes were still dripping. Elsie’s nose was stuffy, and she sneezed twice in a row. I took her temperature, then wrapped myself in a blanket and sank onto the couch, a wave of dizziness washing over me. When Evan came back and saw the thermometer on the coffee table, his face tightened. “I told you to text me when you got home. Why didn’t you?” “I took them back and then drove around looking for you. Do you have any idea how worried I was?” He sounded angry, but his hands were gentle. He picked up Elsie, expertly slipped her out of her slightly damp sleeper, changed her into dry pajamas, and used the nasal aspirator to clear her congestion. When Elsie squirmed in discomfort, he supported the back of her neck and soothed her in a low voice. “It’s okay. Daddy’s here.” After settling her, he went into the kitchen and made ginger soup, setting it down in front of me. “Tonight went too far,” he said. “I’ll talk to Sloane. I’ll tell her not to take up seats with her gear anymore, and not to keep making you the punchline.” He touched my forehead. “Don’t worry about anything. Just get some sleep.” Steam rose from the bowl, blurring his face. For a fleeting moment, I almost believed the old Evan had come back. When we first started dating, I had gotten sick after being caught in the rain. He had run through half of Chicago in a downpour just to find a pharmacy that was still open. The next day, one of his friends joked that I was weak, that getting a fever from a little rain was probably just an excuse to keep Evan there taking care of me. Evan’s face had gone cold on the spot. “She’s sick. She’s not content for your amusement.” “Don’t you ever joke about her like that again.” Back then, he wouldn’t even let a careless joke land on me. Now, he stood behind Sloane again and again as she turned my fear into content. My phone suddenly started vibrating nonstop. Sloane had posted a new video. The title was: *My Drama Queen Sister: An Immersive Postpartum Anxiety Experience* It opened with the broken, choking cries coming through the baby monitor. Then it cut to footage of me running barefoot into the nursery, trembling as I threw back the blanket and checked Elsie’s breathing. Sloane had edited out the part where she hid in the closet with the speaker. She kept only the footage of me, wild and out of control, demanding answers from everyone. Elsie’s face was blurred, but the apartment layout, the nursery, and my name were all perfectly clear. Less than an hour after posting, the video had already passed a million views. The comments were full of laughter. *This is so over the top. The baby’s sleeping just fine.* *Is she really fit to be a mom? She seems emotionally unstable.* *Sloane is hilarious. A family with someone like her must be so much fun!* Some people even screen-capped my pale, terrified face and turned it into a meme. Not long after, the placement social worker called. Her voice was serious, with no room for negotiation. “Mara, we’ve seen the video. Even with the child’s face obscured, using a child in placement for public content creation is a violation of the confidentiality agreement.” “This is your second warning.” “If anything similar happens again, the agency will immediately begin an evaluation for termination of placement.” After the call ended, the formal warning email arrived. I held the phone out to Evan. “Make her delete it. Now.” He read the email, then immediately called Sloane. The moment she answered, she started crying. “I didn’t know the agency would be this sensitive.” “But I just signed a brand deal, and this video is one of the deliverables. If I delete it now, I’ll owe them a hundred thousand dollars, and they can still sue me for breach of contract.” “Evan, I really wasn’t trying to hurt my sister.” He held the phone in silence for a long time. I stared at him. At last, he said, “Don’t delete it yet. Leave it up for twenty-four hours. Once the heat dies down, I’ll talk to the brand.” At that moment, the cold inside me seemed to flood my chest, freezing everything in its path. “Twenty-four hours?” “The agency has already sent a formal warning, and you want to gamble Elsie’s future so Sloane can squeeze another twenty-four hours of traffic out of it?” Evan ended the call and pinched the bridge of his nose wearily. “The video’s already out there. Deleting it now won’t change anything.” “Of course it will. At the very least, it proves we’re protecting Elsie instead of letting her be treated like a commodity!” “‘Protecting,’ again.” He suddenly looked up at me. “Mara, why do you always have to blow every little thing into a catastrophe?” I froze. He seemed to have finally found the outlet he’d been looking for. “Everyone likes Sloane. Nobody wants to get close to you. Have you ever stopped to think about why?” “She makes people happy. What do you do? You bring problems and pressure.” “It was a joke. One video. And you have to make it impossible for the whole family to show their faces. If you really are this unstable, then the agency’s concerns aren’t coming out of nowhere.” Then he picked up his phone and left a public comment under Sloane’s video: *My wife just loves kids so much and gets a little nervous. Don’t mind her—we’re just a fun family like that!* One sentence. He turned Sloane’s cruelty into humor and my terror into a personality flaw. Evan lifted the bowl of ginger soup again and handed it to me. “Drink this and get some sleep. It’ll all blow over.” I knocked the bowl from his hand. Soup splashed across his sleeve. The porcelain shattered on the floor. “Get out.” He stared at me in disbelief. “Mara, you want me to leave over this?” “Yes. Get out.” His face went completely cold. He grabbed his coat and slammed the door behind him. But before he left, he still set a bottle of children’s fever medicine on the table. He remembered that Elsie might be running a fever. He just didn’t care that he was trampling on my right to become her mother. After the door closed, I pulled a suitcase down from the top of the closet. Passport, academic records, work documents, and the Boston offer I had just accepted—I packed them one by one. Evan said it would all be fine once the heat died down. I thought so, too. He and this toxic relationship would both become my past.Three days before the final ruling, the doorbell rang. Two strangers stood outside, both wearing dark blue vests with DCFS printed on them. One of them flashed an ID and handed me a stamped document. “We received an anonymous report. Someone has accused you of emotional instability and abusive tendencies toward the child in your care.” “We need to remove Elsie immediately for an emergency safety assessment.” A loud ringing filled my ears. “That’s impossible. Our social worker hasn’t contacted me.” I pulled out my phone, about to call, when the elevator doors opened. My parents, Gail and Richard, stepped out carrying gifts, as if they had just happened to stop by for a visit. “What’s going on?” my mother asked. “They’re taking Elsie.” I turned and ran for the nursery. But Gail suddenly grabbed me around the waist from behind. “For the child’s sake, just calm down!” “Let me go!” Richard got there ahead of me and blocked the nursery door. “Mara, cooperate with the investigation. If you act like this, you’ll only prove them right.” I stared at them in disbelief. “The final ruling is in three days. Do you have any idea what this means?” No one moved. Inside the nursery, Evan bent over and picked up Elsie. She had just woken up. One little hand clutched at his collar as she looked around in confusion. “Evan, don’t hand her over.” My voice broke. “Please.” He wouldn’t look at me. He just carried the baby straight toward the front door. Sloane was standing beside it. She held up her phone, comments flying across the screen. When she saw Evan approaching with Elsie, she lowered her voice in excitement. “See that, guys?” “Here comes the climax!” The two so-called investigators laughed. That was when I understood. This wasn’t an investigation. It was a trap. I drove my heel down hard on Gail’s foot, broke free from her grip, shoved Richard aside, and lunged for the door. “Sloane, give me my child!” But Evan stepped out first and slammed the door shut, locking it from the outside. I threw myself against it, wrenching the handle wildly. From the other side came stifled laughter, and then Sloane’s voice, deliberately loud. “She’s definitely going to lose it now!” “Mom, please, tell them to open the door.” I pounded on the wood, my voice cracking. “Elsie’s congestion isn’t gone. She can’t be taken outside. Please stop filming and give her back!” Through the door, Gail said, “Just cooperate a little. Once they’ve got enough footage, it’ll be over.” They could hear me begging. But the camera was still rolling. I grabbed my phone and dialed 911. “Someone came into my home pretending to be from DCFS and took my child.” My hands were shaking so hard I could barely hold the phone. “They’ve locked me inside. Please, send police immediately.” The hallway outside went dead silent. A few seconds later, the lock frantically clicked open. Evan rushed in, carrying Elsie. “You called the police?” Even Sloane had gone pale. “Are you crazy? It was a joke!” The two actors yanked off their vests and turned to leave, only to run straight into the police arriving in the corridor. The officer’s body camera was pointed directly at all of them. Sloane hurried to explain. “We were just filming a family prank. She’s my sister. The baby was never in any danger!” The elevator opened again. Our placement social worker stepped out, moving fast, her face like stone. “Someone sent me the livestream link,” she said. The hallway was crowded with neighbors. Fake IDs and forged paperwork lay scattered on the floor. The two actors were being questioned by the police. My parents admitted they had physically prevented me from reaching the baby. And Evan, my co-applicant, openly admitted he had hidden Elsie outside the apartment to cooperate with the livestream. “It wasn’t hiding,” Evan said, his voice shaking. “We were just playing a joke.” The social worker looked at him. “You used a child in placement to create public content, fabricated a government investigation, obstructed the primary caregiver from reaching the child, and caused a police response.” She paused. “This is not a joke.” I grabbed her arm. “I wasn’t part of this. I called the police. I was trying to stop them the whole time.” “Please, don’t take Elsie. Give me one more chance. I can take her and leave here right now.” She was silent for a moment before gently removing my hand. “You are a co-applicant. The agency evaluates the placement household as a whole.” “Because of severe deception, repeated violations of confidentiality, and the fact that the child is now in an uncontrollable risk environment, the agency has decided to terminate the placement immediately.” All the color drained from Evan’s face. “Terminate it?” “The ruling is in three days!” The social worker didn’t answer. With a police officer beside her, she took Elsie from Evan’s arms. Elsie recognized me and began reaching for me, crying. I lifted my own hands, trying to hold her one last time. But suddenly my legs gave out. The last thing I saw before everything went black was her tiny hand, getting farther and farther away. When I woke up, I was in the guest room at a friend’s house. There were more than a hundred missed calls on my phone. Evan said he was sorry. Gail said they never knew it would get this serious. Richard asked me to come home so we could talk. Sloane kept insisting she had only wanted everyone to have fun. I didn’t reply. At the very top of my inbox was an official email from the adoption agency, a formal PDF attached. I opened it and stared at Elsie’s name for a long time. I didn’t cry. I just blocked them, one by one, and put my phone on silent. Before the screen went dark, two notifications sat side by side. *Sloane’s livestream: Ultimate prank! We “sent away” my sister’s child!* *Official notice from the adoption agency: Elsie Bennett’s placement has been terminated.*

Where the ad sends people

h5.reelshortnovel.com

New book online！ 🔞🔥click here to read it first👉