Chapter 2

She dropped to her knees in front of Mom, in the basement filth, putting on a face of mock concern for the men watching.

She had knelt like this before. In the hospital. When Mom woke up with fifteen stitches across her stomach.

Her eyes were red back then, leaking tears.

“You saved me, Joanna,” she had sobbed. “You’re my sister now.”

Now, those same hands grabbed Mom’s knuckles. Yet her sharp nails sank into Mom's knuckles.

“Joanna, just hit me,” Vivian whispered, Her voice was like honey poured over glass.

“I should have told you Julian was only faking his death. It’s my fault you suffered for three years.”

Then, without warning, Vivian’s eyes flashed with a cold, predatory light.

She grabbed Mom’s limp, unresponsive hand and violently yanked it against her own cheek.

SLAP.

The sound was sickeningly loud in the small room.

A massive shock rocked Mom's body.

A fountain of dark, thick blood burst from her mouth, staining her chin.

I lunged forward to catch her.

Dad’s hand clamped onto my shoulder like an iron trap.

He didn't even look at the blood pouring from Mom's lips. He turned a blind eye to all of this.

Mom's face twisted in excruciating pain. She gave a weak, desperate pull, trying to free her hand.

“Ah!” Vivian shrieked, hitting the floor like a sack of flour.

Dad let go of me instantly. He was there in a heartbeat.

He scooped Vivian up, holding her as if she were a piece of fine porcelain.

“You haven’t changed, Joanna,” Dad said, his voice a low, dangerous vibration.

“Vivian comes here to apologize, and you attack her?”

“Three years wasn't enough,” Dad continued, his hand tightening around Vivian’s waist as if shielding her from a monster.

“Since you won't learn, Joanna, I’ll find a place where your malice can’t reach anyone.”

He turned his gaze to the guards standing in the shadows.

“Take her back to the estate. Lock her in the cold storage. Don’t let her out until she learns how to beg for Vivian’s forgiveness.”

Two guards lunged forward.

They didn't treat her like the mistress. They grabbed her by her matted hair and her bruised shoulders, dragging her across the rough concrete.

Mom’s thin shirt tore away, exposing the network of cigarette burns and whip marks to the dim gray light.

Not one man in the room flinched.

Not my dad, not my uncle.

To them, those scars were just part of the ‘act’ she was putting on.

Mom didn't fight. She didn't scream. Instead, she laughed.

It was a wet, rattling sound that seemed to bubble up from the blood in her lungs.

“Julian. Lucas,” she said, her glassy eyes flitting between her husband and her brother.

“You are both... so incredibly stupid. You think you’re the masters of this game?”

“Do you want to know why I really cancelled her credit card three years ago?”

Her voice was getting weaker, but the edge in it was still sharp. “Because—”

CRACK.

A blow suddenly caught Mom across the face, snapping her head back.

The sound was like a whip.

A shadow moved from the corner. My grandfather stepped forward.

He didn't look like a grieving parent, he looked like a god passing judgment.

He didn't look at Mom’s blood on the floor. He just wiped a smudge of Mom’s blood from his thumb with a silk square.

“Enough, Joanna!” Grandfather hissed.

“You’ve been spoiled too long. You lie. You hurt the only person who cares about you.”

He looked at Vivian, cradled in Dad’s arms, then back at Mom, who was barely holding onto consciousness.

“You are no daughter of mine anymore,” Grandfather said, his voice cold and final.

“From today on, Vivian is the only daughter of this family.”

Mom’s eyes went flat. The light didn't just fade; it vanished.

She stopped looking at Grandfather. She stopped looking at any of them.

It was the look of someone who had already left the room.

The guards lunged, dragging her toward the stairs like a bag of trash.

Her lifeless feet kicked the empty green bottle.

Clink. Clink. Clink.

It rolled into the darkness. None of them looked down.