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.
Chapter 2: The Silent Executioners
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.
But looking at the red welt on his daughter’s face, the corporate lawyer entirely vanished, replaced by an apex predator defending its young.
