Chapter 1 - The Command
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"Crawling will do you good, Natalie. You need the exercise."
Lucinda Wexford’s voice was light, coated in that sickeningly sweet tone she used when pretending to offer harmless, matronly advice to a nervous young mother. That very sweetness was what made the command so unfathomably cruel.
I pushed open the heavy double oak doors of the Meridian Hall ballroom, the air immediately hitting me with a suffocating wave of white lilies, overly sweet buttercream frosting, spilled champagne, and fresh-cut roses. Nearly two hundred people turned to look at me in unison. They were bankers, corporate attorneys, charity patrons, aggressive real-estate investors, old family friends, and the exact sort of people who never raised their voices in public because they firmly believed polished, polite silence made them inherently respectable.
Pink and gold mylar balloons floated lazily above silk-covered tables. A professional string quartet played softly, almost mockingly, near the main stage. Every single detail in that massive room had been meticulously designed to make the afternoon look utterly, flawlessly perfect.
My daughter should have been sitting comfortably in the plush velvet chair positioned beneath the elaborate flower arch. She should have been opening gifts, laughing, and eating cake while people genuinely celebrated the baby she had waited years to have.
Instead, Natalie was on her hands and knees in the exact middle of the ballroom floor.
She was eight months pregnant.
Her pale blue, expensive maternity dress had darkened significantly at the knees from a mixture of spilled red wine and harsh cleaning solution. Her hair, which had been carefully pinned up by a stylist that morning, had fallen loose and hung across her flushed, exhausted face. Her ankles were visibly swollen over her shoes. Her shoulders shook violently every single time she leaned forward to aggressively scrub at a deep, blooming red stain on the expensive ivory Persian carpet.
The stain spread wider with every frantic movement of her sponge.
So did the profound, suffocating humiliation.
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Lucinda Wexford sat comfortably on the curved white sofa right beside the massive gift table, holding court like a cruel queen. Real diamonds hung heavily at her throat. Her silver-blonde hair had been set in rigid, immovable waves. In one hand, she held a delicate crystal champagne flute.
With her other hand, she was actively opening the gifts that had been beautifully wrapped specifically for Natalie’s baby.
