Chapter 1 - SIX SLAPS
The sixth slap sent me sideways into the console table.
A crystal bowl struck the marble floor and shattered beneath the chandelier. Eighteen members of Ethan’s family stood inside our foyer, but not one moved toward me.
Rain blew through the open front door. My cheek burned, my green cardigan had torn near the shoulder, and the cracked phone in my purse kept vibrating from unanswered business calls.
Ethan stood over me in his charcoal blazer, chest rising beneath his black shirt.
“Six slaps,” he shouted, “and you still haven’t learned where you belong.”
Behind him stood Vanessa Cole, the woman he had been sleeping with for almost a year. Her gold satin dress caught the chandelier light. She did not look embarrassed to be discovered inside my home during what Ethan had called a family reconciliation dinner.
She smiled.
“Leave her in the gutter,” she said. “She always comes crawling back.”
Ethan shoved me through the doorway.
I lost one shoe on the front path. He kicked the other into a puddle and told me the house, vehicles, cards, company and Bennett name were his.
His mother folded her arms. His cousins looked away. Vanessa slipped one hand around Ethan’s arm as though she had already replaced me.
I crawled toward my phone beside the curb.
Rain soaked my hair and navy dress. Ethan laughed when he saw me dialing.
“Who are you calling? Your father?”
“Yes.”
Richard answered before the second ring.
“Claire?”
I looked at the man standing beneath the porch light, the mistress behind him and the relatives silently rewriting what they had witnessed.
“Dad,” I whispered, “show him no mercy.”
My father remained quiet for several seconds.
Then he asked the only question that mattered.
“Are you safe enough to speak?”
“Yes.”
“Then don’t warn him when the first door closes.”
Ethan and Vanessa turned toward the house, still laughing.
I tightened my hand around the brass key hidden in my palm.
The front door locked before they reached it.
May you like
Every exterior light went dark.
Then Ethan’s phone began vibrating inside his jacket.
