CRACK.
The sound of cartilage tearing was loud in the cavernous room.
Garrett screamed—a high, pathetic wail—and dropped to the floor, clutching his shattered leg as the poker clattered across the marble hearth.
“Garrett!”Evelyn shrieked, her aristocratic poise vanishing into raw, ugly panic.
She lunged toward me with a silver carving knife she pulled from the roast platter.
I didn’t even turn my full torso.I caught her wrist mid-air, twisting the delicate bone until she cried out in pain, forcing the knife from her fingers.
It clattered uselessly against the china.
I pushed her back into her high-backed chair, pinned her shoulders to the velvet upholstery, and leaned down until my lips were inches from her ear.
“You held my daughter by her hair while your cowardly son broke her bones with a golf club,” I whispered, my voice completely stripped of rage, leaving only the hollow, dead vacuum beneath it.“You left a pregnant child in the rain because she didn’t shine your silver.”
