“If you go back to the ballroom with that face, everyone will know you made me correct you.”
The music continued playing behind the doors of the country club—elegant, expensive, perfect. Inside, Ava Monroe’s younger sister had just tossed the bouquet amidst shouts and clinking champagne glasses. Outside, in the freezing November rain, Ava was on her knees on the wet floor, her bridesmaid dress ripped at the hip, her jaw burning with pain.
Richard Hale straightened his shirt cuffs as if he’d just spilled sauce on them, not his wife’s blood.
“I told you five minutes, Ava.”
She didn’t answer. Her mouth was full of that metallic taste she knew all too well. For three years, Richard had been everyone’s ideal husband: a successful architect in Boston, a hospital donor, a man with a clear smile and generous hands at family dinners. For Ava, however, he was a closed door, a staircase leading to the basement, a low voice saying that no one would believe her.
That night, at Claire’s wedding, he’d kept her seated beside him, his fingers digging under the table, squeezing her thigh every time she stopped smiling. When Ava asked to go to the restroom, he followed her to the smoking patio. He accused her of flirting with a waiter who’d only offered her water. Then came the blow.
It wasn’t a slap. It was a sharp, calculated punch, straight to the side of her face.
Richard glanced toward the illuminated doors.
“I’m coming in. You have 10 minutes to clean yourself up. If you’re not at the table when they cut the cake, we’re going home.”
Ava looked up. Fear rose in her throat like black water.
The house.
The house in the suburbs.
The cameras he controlled.
The basement where he said she “calmed down better.”
“And we both know what happens when we get home to people staring too much,” he added.
Richard went back into the living room. The music started for a second as the door opened, then faded away. Ava was left alone with the rain.
Trembling, she reached into the hidden pocket of her dress. She pulled out her cell phone with the cracked screen. She didn’t call the police. She’d already done that twice. Richard had cried in front of the officers, saying his wife had a drinking problem, that she fell down, that she refused help. And her own family had confirmed that Ava “always exaggerated.”
Only one number remained.
One she’d sworn to erase three years ago.
Damon Pierce.
