Chapter 1 - The Boiling Point
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The scream that escaped my mouth after I hit the floor didn’t sound like my own.
One moment I was standing by the stove, protecting my father’s last gift to me, and the next, Julian’s hands sent me crashing toward a boiling stockpot. The soup spilled across my face, neck, shoulder, and arm, scalding my skin instantly.
I curled my body around my eight-month pregnant belly, fighting through the unbearable, agonizing heat.
“My baby,” I cried, my voice raspy and broken. “Please, someone save my baby!”
Julian stood above me, his chest heaving, his face flushed with unbridled rage. Beside the kitchen table, his mother, Evelyn, sat calmly, taking a slow sip from her tea. She didn't even flinch.
“Maybe now she’ll stop being selfish,” Evelyn said, her voice completely devoid of warmth. “A dutiful wife obeys her husband. She brought this on herself.”
“Julian, please!” I begged, weeping as blisters began to form rapidly across my chest and arms. “Call an ambulance! I can’t feel her moving!”
Instead of reaching for his phone, Julian stepped toward me, his boots clicking against the linoleum floor. He reached up, unhooked the visible security camera mounted above the pantry, and shoved it deep into his coat pocket.
Evelyn stood up slowly. She took my cell phone off the counter, dropped it into her purse, and took a damp dish rag to wipe down the edge of the stove where the soup had splashed.
“Accidents happen in wet kitchens,” Evelyn instructed her son coldly. “Make sure you sound distraught.”
Julian took a deep breath, dialed emergency services on his own phone, and forced a frantic sob into the receiver.
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“Help! Please hurry!” Julian shouted into the phone. “My pregnant wife slipped on the tile! It was an accident! She pulled a pot of boiling soup down on herself!”
I lay there on the floor, burning, praying for my unborn child, while my husband and his mother engineered a lie to cover up their crime.
