Chapter 5
By the time we pulled into the parking lot of The Sterling Grille, an upscale steakhouse on the edge of the mall property, my hands had stopped shaking. The frantic, desperate mother had died down in the basement of Level B3. In her place, a cold, calculating protector had taken the wheel.
Lily was wrapped in David’s heavy wool coat, sleeping the exhausted, twitchy sleep of the deeply traumatized in the backseat. The car heater was blasting, but she still felt cold to the touch.
David held his phone in his hand. On the screen was the MP4 file the mall security supervisor had silently, grimly transferred to him after watching the footage from B3. The supervisor had actually vomited in his wastebasket when he saw the white van approach our daughter.
“She’s inside,” David said, his eyes fixed on the restaurant’s glowing sign.
“Are you ready for this?” I asked, unbuckling my seatbelt.
David didn’t answer immediately. He looked in the rearview mirror at our sleeping daughter, then looked at me. “I’ve spent my entire life making excuses for her cruelty. Thinking it was just her generation, or her personality. Tonight, that ends.”
May you like
I gently scooped Lily into my arms, letting her head rest heavily on my shoulder. She whimpered in her sleep, burying her face into my neck. I stepped out into the crisp autumn air, David a silent, imposing shadow at my side.
As we approached the private dining room Eleanor had booked for her “post-shopping family dinner,” the sound of muffled weeping drifted through the heavy oak doors.
