Chapter 3
Elena’s head lolled slightly against the intricate patterns of the Persian rug. She swallowed hard, her throat painfully dry. With an agonizing, slow effort, she lifted her right hand. Her fingers were trembling so violently they looked like leaves caught in a storm. She reached out and weakly gripped Arthur’s wrist, her skin icy cold against the warmth of his suit sleeve.
She turned her head slightly, her glazed eyes glancing past Arthur’s shoulder toward the massive, untouched feast spread across the long mahogany table. The bright, cinematic lighting of the room seemed to mock the sheer physical toll it had taken to create the spread. Dozens of plates, complex side dishes, and the perfectly carved roast chicken—all of it made from scratch by a woman whose body was still actively bleeding and healing from childbirth.
"She..." Elena began, her voice cracking, breathless with exhaustion and a deep, primal fear. She squeezed his wrist, anchoring herself to the only safe person in the room. "She worked me to death, Arthur. She wouldn't let me sit down... she wouldn't let me feed Leo... she said... she said I was useless."
Arthur’s heart stopped. The words hung in the air, heavy and suffocating. He looked at the relatives sitting around the table—his aunts, his uncles, his cousins. They all shared the same fair, rosy skin, the same polished American aesthetics, and yet, they were monsters.
"You all sat here?" Arthur asked, his voice dropping into a low, terrifying register. He didn't shout. The quietness of his voice was infinitely more dangerous. He looked at his Uncle Richard, who was nervously adjusting his napkin. "You sat at this table, drinking my wine, while my wife, who just gave birth a week ago, cooked an entire feast for you? You watched her collapse on the floor, and you did absolutely nothing?"
"Now, Arthur, be reasonable," Uncle Richard stammered, his American accent wavering. "Margaret said Elena insisted on doing it all herself. She said Elena was trying to prove she was a good wife. We didn't know she was feeling ill."
"She was crying, Richard!" Elena sobbed weakly from the floor, tears finally spilling over her pale cheeks. "I begged her to let me stop. I was bleeding through my clothes. She locked the nursery door so I couldn't get to the baby until the chicken was done."
A collective gasp finally rippled through the room. A few of the cousins looked genuinely horrified, while others simply stared at their plates, too cowardly to challenge the matriarch.
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"That is an absolute fabrication!" Margaret snapped, slamming her wine glass down onto the table. Her fair skin flushed a deep, angry crimson. "I closed the nursery door so the baby could sleep! I was trying to help her! This is exactly what I warned you about, Arthur. She is unstable. Postpartum psychosis, clearly. She is making up lies to turn you against your own mother."
Arthur looked back down at Elena. Her eyes were rolling back into her head again, the sheer effort of speaking draining the last reserves of her energy. She was slipping back into unconsciousness. The time for arguing was over. His wife was in critical medical danger, and the woman who caused it was currently picking up her carving knife again as if nothing had happened.
