Chapter 3 - The Ice King Awakens
|
A bright red line spilled down Maisie’s pale face, instantly staining the front of her ruined birthday dress.
Something deep inside my soul went completely silent.
I wasn't angry. I wasn't hysterical. I was just silent. It was the eerie, deafening silence that comes right after a bridge collapses and the rescue crews realize there are no survivors left to save.
Grant froze. For one fleeting second, genuine, paralyzing fear flashed across his handsome features.
Then, Brooke gasped loudly, rushing to his side and grabbing his arm.
"Grant, your hand! She bit you! Oh my God, you’re bleeding!"
Maisie had left a tiny, insignificant scrape on his wrist when she tried to hold him back. Brooke pressed her silk handkerchief against it as if he had suffered a gunshot wound.
That was all it took. Grant's fleeting moment of paternal fear vanished, replaced instantly by cold revulsion. He looked at our bleeding, sobbing daughter on the floor, then up at me hanging from the rack.
"Look what you’ve raised," he sneered, his lip curling. "A wild, rabid little animal. Just like her mother."
I stared at him through the sweat and blood dripping into my eyes. For six long years, I had made myself painfully small to fit into this man's ego. I had hidden the name Whitaker. I had walked away from international boardrooms, billion-dollar investments, and a legendary family fortune that could buy and sell his entire company before breakfast.
I had learned his favorite meals, hosted his tedious corporate dinners, smiled through Brooke’s passive-aggressive insults, and pretended not to notice how fiercely he protected her while leaving me to the wolves.
I had foolishly believed love was patience. Now I realized I had confused patience with self-destruction.
"Untie me," I said, my voice eerily calm.
Grant let out a sharp, humorless laugh. "You are in absolutely no position to give orders."
"My daughter needs a doctor," I replied, ignoring him.
"She needs discipline. And so do you. No food. No water. No doctor. Not until she learns humility."
The cellar door slammed shut. The deadbolt turned.
With numb, bleeding fingers, I finally managed to slip out of the loose ropes. I crawled to Maisie, holding a torn piece of my dress to her bleeding head.
"Mommy," she whispered, shivering in my arms. "Are we bad?"
That question hurt worse than the leather crop.
"No, baby," I whispered back, pulling out a cracked, hidden phone from my skirt pocket. "We just lived in the wrong house."
I dialed a number I had blocked five years ago. My eldest brother, Nathaniel Whitaker. The man Wall Street feared and called the Ice King.
May you like
He answered on the first ring. "Evelyn?"
"Nate," I said smoothly. "I’m done pretending. I want out. And I want every brick of Grant’s life brought to the ground."
