Chapter 4

"She died by suicide, Ethan," Eleanor' s voice trembled, but she stood her ground. "Because of you. Because of what you and that woman did to her."

Ethan' s face darkened further. "Suicide? Don't be ridiculous. She wouldn't have the guts. She was always weak."

Weak. That' s what he' d always called me.

My spirit recoiled. The pain of his words, even now, was a fresh wound.

"She left a note," Mike grunted, wiping blood from his lip. "The police have it."

"A note?" Ethan scoffed. "Easily forged. She' s alive, and you' re hiding her. Probably waiting for me to offer enough money."

He thought of my father, David Miller. A kind, hardworking man. Ethan' s predatory business tactics, the smear campaign he orchestrated, had ruined him. Driven him to a fatal heart attack.

All to isolate me, to make me dependent on him early in our relationship.

I remembered Dad' s face, grey and drawn, before he collapsed. The hardware store, his life' s work, gone.

And Mike. His football dreams shattered by that "accident" on the construction site. His leg mangled. Ethan' s associates, subtle in their cruelty, ensuring Mike would be too broken to protect me, too burdened to be a support.

Ethan had systematically destroyed my family, piece by piece.

Now he stood in the ruins, demanding the whereabouts of the woman he' d already killed.

"The facility said she left with a man," Ethan' s voice was a low growl. "Who was he? Some local trash you set her up with?"

The lie from Director Thompson, fueled by Jessie' s venom, was working its poison.

"There was no man," Mike insisted, his good leg braced, ready. "She was broken, Ethan. You broke her."

Ethan' s security detail, two large, impassive men, moved closer, flanking him.

"I' m losing my patience," Ethan said. "Tell me where she is, or I' ll tear this hovel apart, and you with it."

He grabbed Eleanor by the arm, his fingers digging into her thin flesh.

"Let go of her!" Mike lunged, but one of the security men blocked him, shoving him hard against the wall. Mike' s injured leg buckled. He cried out in pain.

Sarah' s spirit thrashed, a storm of helpless fury.

"Stop it, Ethan! Please!" Eleanor begged, her eyes wide with fear, not for herself, but for Mike.

"Then tell me!" Ethan shook her.

I saw the raw fear in Eleanor' s eyes, but also a flicker of something else – a mother' s pain, watching her son become a monster.