Judith pointed a stiff, manicured
finger toward the swinging kitchen door. “Move.”
I turned, my vision swimming with dark, creeping spots of static. Every single step I took sent a shockwave of agony radiating up my spine. I breached the kitchen archway, desperately reaching out to grab the edge of the marble island just to keep from collapsing onto the tile.
Behind me, I heard the rapid, heavy clicking of Judith’s heels. Her voice was suddenly right at my ear, louder, vibrating with unhinged malice. “I told you to move!”
I didn’t even see her hands. I only felt the brutal, concussive force of them slamming into my upper back. She shoved me with her entire body weight, striking hard enough to physically lift me off my feet.
My rubber-soled shoes lost all traction on the freshly waxed tile. Gravity seized me. The world tilted violently upward, and my body slammed backward against the sharp, unyielding edge of the marble island.
The initial impact sent a sickening, electric shock directly through my spinal column. But what followed was an explosion of white, blinding heat that wiped the kitchen from my vision entirely.
I was falling, but I couldn’t scream. I couldn’t do anything but wait for the floor to rise up and break me.
Chapter 2: The Color of Silence
My skull connected with the ceramic tile with a hollow, sickening crack that echoed over the gentle hum of the refrigerator.
For several agonizing seconds, my brain could not process anything beyond the blinding ring of tinnitus and the catastrophic, crushing agony radiating from my shattered lower back. I lay there, blinking up at the recessed lighting, trying to remember how to pull air into my lungs.
And then, I felt it.
A sudden, massive gush of unnatural warmth spread rapidly beneath me, soaking violently through the thick fabric of my maternity dress. It was a heavy, metallic flood, entirely unstoppable, pooling against the cold tile. Utter, primal terror seized my throat.
Footsteps rushed into the kitchen. Aaron appeared in my inverted field of vision, with Paul lingering nervously in the doorway behind him.
“She slipped,” Judith announced instantly, her voice miraculously calm, practically coated in boredom. “She was dizzy. Always so terribly clumsy on her feet.”
Aaron looked down at me. He didn’t drop to his knees. He didn’t scream for help. He simply frowned at the rapidly expanding pool of crimson spreading around my thighs, looking at my blood exactly the way one might look at a spilled glass of cheap wine on an expensive rug.
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