The sharp, stinging CRACK of her palm against my cheek sounded like a gunshot in the quiet room.
My head snapped to the side. A hot, blinding pain bloomed across my cheekbone. I gasped, a choked, ragged sound of pure shock, as tears of sheer, unadulterated humiliation sprang to my eyes. I instinctively curled my body around my baby to protect her from the physical violence.
I slowly turned my head to look at my husband. I waited for Mark to drop his phone, to jump out of his chair, to scream at his mother for hitting his wife hours after she gave birth to his child. I waited for him to protect us.
Mark finally looked up from his glowing screen. He looked at my red, stinging cheek. He looked at his mother, who was glaring at me triumphantly.
He let out a heavy, incredibly irritated sigh.
“Mom, please, keep your voice down, I’m in a ranked match,” Mark whined, completely ignoring the physical assault he had just witnessed. He turned his annoyed gaze to me. “Move to a regular room, Chloe. She’s right, this is a waste. Save the money so I can top up my game. I need to buy a new upgrade package to beat this level.”
He looked back down at his phone, his thumbs resuming their frantic tapping.
The world around me went completely, terrifyingly silent. The man I had promised to love and honor had just watched his mother violently assault me in a hospital bed, and his only reaction was to demand I downgrade my recovery room to fund his video game addiction.
Mark thought he had won. He believed his mother’s physical dominance and his own sociopathic indifference had firmly established my place at the bottom of their toxic hierarchy.
He had absolutely no idea that standing in the deep shadows of the suite’s entryway, obscured by the privacy screen, were Arthur and Eleanor.
My parents.
They had just walked in. They had witnessed the entire, horrific atrocity from the doorway. And their eyes were burning with a cold, absolute, and highly calculating murder.
Beatrice stood over my bed, a smug, victorious sneer twisting her features. She raised her hand again, preparing to deliver a second, punishing slap to silence my crying.
She didn’t get the chance.
A massive, incredibly powerful hand clamped down brutally around Beatrice’s raised wrist. The grip was so sudden, so terrifyingly strong, that I could actually hear the delicate bones in her forearm grind together in protest.
Beatrice let out a sharp, high-pitched shriek of surprise and pain, her head snapping around to see who dared touch her.
It was my father, Arthur.
Arthur was a tall, imposing man in his late fifties, dressed in a sharp, bespoke charcoal suit. He was not a man prone to violence or dramatic outbursts. He was a highly successful, brilliantly strategic corporate litigator who commanded boardrooms with silence.
