“Get out of my sight.”
She shoved her.
Chloe stumbled over the rug and fell backward. Her spine struck the sharp marble edge of the coffee table.
The pain stole her breath. She screamed.
Blood soaked through her white shirt.
Vanessa froze—shock flashing across her face. Then calculation replaced it.
“Get up,” she said flatly. “Stop acting dramatic.”
“It hurts,” Chloe sobbed.
“If you tell your father I pushed you, I’ll say you were running and fell. Who do you think he’ll believe?”
Chloe was eight. Terrified of losing her father too, she nodded through tears.
Vanessa cleaned the blood with paper towels, slapped oversized bandages over the wound, and ordered, “Change your shirt. And don’t say a word.”
Chloe stayed silent.
The wound didn’t.
After a week, the pain intensified.
After two weeks, it began to ooze.
After three, fever came.
By the fourth, the skin was swollen and angry red.
“I think I need a doctor,” Chloe whispered one night.
“It’s a scratch.”
“It burns.”
“Do you want me to tell your father you broke his table?”
Chloe shook her head.
“Then be quiet.”
Eight months passed.