Chapter 5 - Thirty Blows of Silence
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The first blow struck the left side of my jaw, filling my mouth with the warm, metallic taste of blood.
The second blow hit my cheekbone, sending dark spots dancing across my vision.
The third landed square on my shoulder as I tried to cover my face.
I stopped counting after that.
I lay on the marble floor of the Bel Air mansion, taking blow after blow from the boy I had cradled in my arms when he was feverish, the boy whose scraped knees I had bandaged, the boy for whom I had worked eighty-hour weeks until my fingers bled.
Yet, through every strike, I never screamed.
I never cried out.
I never begged him to stop.
With every heavy strike that hit my bruised body, another piece of my motherly heart turned to ash. Each blow didn't shatter my spirit; it simply erased every single excuse I had spent twenty years making for his arrogance, his greed, and his cruelty.
I turned my head slightly through the haze of pain and looked toward the grand staircase.
Vanessa was sitting comfortably on a plush velvet sofa, a crystal glass of champagne resting in her hand. A small, cruel smile sat on her lips as she watched her husband beat his sixty-eight-year-old mother. She looked as though she were watching a mildly entertaining television show.
Around the room, two hundred powerful men and women stood frozen. Not a single person called out. Not one man stepped forward to pull him off me.
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They were cowards, every last one of them, bound by the fake polite society of wealthy shadows.
When Victor finally stopped, his breathing was heavy and ragged. He stood over me, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his blood-stained sleeve.
