Chapter 8 - The Line in the Dust
Emily looked at her husband—at the man who had promised to love, honor, and protect her, but who had spent his entire life cowering beneath his mother’s psychological thumb.
"Look at your son, Richard," Emily commanded, her voice dropping into a low, thunderous tone that stopped Richard in his tracks. "Look at Leo’s legs. Look at his arms."
Richard paused, his gaze dropping down to the three-year-old child clinging to Emily’s neck. For the first time since entering the room, he actually looked at his son’s exposed skin.
He saw the thick, purple finger-marks wrapped around Leo’s small forearms. He saw the yellow-green contusions across his shins. He saw the faint red ring around the boy’s neck where the silver chain had been pulling against his fair skin.
Richard’s face drained of color. "Leo... baby... what happened to you?"
"She put a dog chain around his neck, Richard," Emily said, tears finally overflowing her lower eyelids and streaming down her cheeks. "She had him locked to the floor, forcing him to eat out of a pet tray like an animal. And when I confronted her, she told me—to my face—that I don't want to know what happens when I'm not home."
Richard turned his head slowly toward his mother, his jaw slack, his dark eyes wide with horror. "Mom... tell me she's lying... tell me you didn't do that..."
Diane’s tearful facade instantly vanished. Finding herself backed into a corner, she dropped the performance of the victim and resumed her cold, terrifying authority.
"Don't you take that tone with me, Richard!" Diane snapped, her voice ringing out like a whip. "I raised you! I built your life! That child was misbehaving, and your pathetic wife is incapable of installing proper discipline! I did what was necessary to teach him respect!"
Richard stumbled back a step, looking at his mother as if seeing her for the very first time in his thirty-four years of life.
May you like
"You... you chained my son?" Richard whispered, his voice trembling with a horrific, belated realization. "You hurt my baby boy?"
"I did what was needed for this family!" Diane yelled, her eyes flashing with rage. "And if you have any backbone at all, Richard, you will order your wife to hand over that phone, delete that video, and keep her mouth shut before she ruins everything we've built!"
