Chapter 2 - The Attack and the Unintended Call
He didn’t budge. And then, from the corner of my eye, I saw Eleanor move. She walked calmly to the dining table. She didn’t reach for my printed pages; she reached for the two silver flash drives—my only backups of the final data models.
With a chillingly casual stride, she walked over to the gas stove. She turned the dial. A ring of blue fire flared to life. She held the plastic flash drives just inches above the flame.
“Eleanor, no!” I screamed, thrashing against Julian’s grip.
“Quiet,” Julian hissed, his breath hot against my cheek. With his free hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. A second later, the opening strings of Vivaldi’s Winter blasted from the smart speakers in the living room at a deafening volume. The manic, soaring classical music drowned out my frantic protests.
“You’re going to sit still, Clara,” Eleanor said, raising her voice over the violins, her eyes devoid of any human warmth. “Or your eight years of work melts into the grates.”
I stopped thrashing. I froze, my eyes locked on the flash drives hovering over the fire.
Then, she picked up a pair of heavy, stainless-steel kitchen shears from the counter block.
I felt the cold, blunt metal press against the back of my neck before I fully comprehended the violation. The first thick strand of my auburn hair hit the linoleum floor.
The scream that tore out of my throat was raw and primal, but Vivaldi’s frantic strings swallowed it whole.
“Let’s see if this helps you understand your place,” Eleanor whispered, stepping closer, the scissors snapping with a terrifying, rhythmic precision. Another lock fell. Then another.
Julian held me with suffocating force. I kicked, I cried, I tried to twist my head away, but the sheer exhaustion of my academic marathon was no match for a man determined to break me. In my desperate thrashing, my face jerked sideways just as Eleanor brought the blades down again.
The cold metal bit into the flesh of my cheek. A sharp, stinging line of fire traced my jawbone, and a drop of warm blood welled up, trickling down my skin.
“Oh, stop squirming,” Eleanor scolded, annoyed by my blood on her handiwork. “No serious committee will ever look at you now. Tomorrow, you stay locked in this house. Where you belong.”
When Julian finally released me, I collapsed to the floor, gasping for air as if I had just surfaced from a drowning. The flash drives were tossed onto the counter, safe but used as the ultimate weapon of compliance.
I scrambled backward, crawling toward the hallway bathroom. I slammed the door, locking it, my hands shaking violently. I collapsed against the tiles, my chest heaving. The classical music was still playing out there.
I dragged myself up to look in the mirror. My stomach violently churned. My chest-length hair was hacked into jagged, uneven patches. One side was practically shorn to the scalp. A thin, bleeding scratch ran down my left cheek. I looked like a woman who had been utterly destroyed.
I sank to the floor, weeping silently into my hands. I reached into my pocket for my phone to call the police, to call anyone.
But when I pulled the screen up, my heart stopped.
During the struggle in the kitchen, my frantic grip on the phone in my pocket had bypassed the lock screen. The emergency speed-dial had been triggered.
An active call was in progress. The timer read: 04:12.
The contact name glowing on the screen was Arthur—my father. A man I hadn’t spoken to in three years because he had warned me that marrying Julian was a fatal mistake.
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He had been on the line. He had heard the music. He had heard my screams. He had heard the scissors.
As I stared at the screen in pure shock, the call disconnected. A second later, a single text message popped up from Arthur. It read: “I heard everything. Pack your bags. Leave now.”
