Chapter 1
My husband hurled a dinner plate at my head because I refused to give his mother my apartment and pay her $1,200 every month.
The small black device beside my handbag was no bigger than a lipstick tube.
For one terrible second, nobody moved.
Then Genesis’s face drained of color.
It was strange, almost unreal, seeing the woman who had spent an entire evening speaking about my life as if it were furniture suddenly lose control of her own expression. Her fingers hovered in the air where the carving knife had been. Her eyes fixed on the object by my bag, widening not with confusion, but recognition.
Jackson saw her reaction and his anger faltered.
“Elaine,” he said.
My name came out low, warning and pleading at the same time.
I kept the phone pressed to my ear.
“Yes,” I said into it, my voice steadier than I felt. “I’m at 1482 Briar Hollow Road in Hidden Hills. I’m bleeding from a head injury. My husband threw a plate at me during dinner.”
A woman on the other end of the line asked if I was somewhere safe.
I looked around the dining room.
Twenty adults. Crystal glasses. Gold-rimmed plates. A chandelier glittering above us as if this were a normal family gathering and not the moment my marriage finally cracked open for everyone to see.
“No,” I said. “I’m not sure.”
Jackson pushed his chair back. The scrape of wood against marble made several people flinch.
“Don’t be dramatic,” he snapped, but the words didn’t carry their usual force. His gaze kept sliding back to the little black recorder.
Genesis recovered first.
“Jackson, sit down,” she said sharply.
May you like
He froze.
That was the first time I noticed it—not the first time it had happened, only the first time I truly understood what I was seeing. Jackson could tower over me, shout until veins stood out in his neck, throw things, accuse and belittle and demand. But when Genesis spoke in that clipped tone, he became a boy waiting to be punished.
