Chapter 5
The standoff in the brightly lit doorway felt like an eternity, though it lasted only seconds. Elena groaned softly against Arthur’s chest, a weak, pathetic sound of absolute defeat. She was failing, and the heavy burden of her weight was beginning to strain Arthur's back. Leo continued to cry, a sharp, piercing wail that fueled the burning inferno of rage inside Arthur’s chest.
Margaret stood tall, her chin raised, expecting absolute obedience. She had ruled the Bennett family with an iron fist for four decades. No one had ever defied her. She fully believed that Arthur would fold, hand over the baby, and apologize for raising his voice.
She was wrong.
Arthur’s eyes went completely dark. The loving son, the polite corporate executive—that man died right there in the dining room. He shifted Elena’s weight entirely onto his left arm and hip, an incredible feat of desperate strength. He freed his right hand.
Without a single word of warning, Arthur suddenly swung his right hand forward with explosive, devastating force.
He slapped Margaret squarely in the face.
The sound of the impact was a deafening, sickening crack that echoed like a gunshot over the baby’s cries. The sheer kinetic force of a thirty-four-year-old, fully grown man striking with absolute fury lifted the sixty-four-year-old woman entirely off her sensible flats.
Margaret spun violently backward, a spray of spittle flying from her lips. She crashed hard into the solid oak doorframe before collapsing into a crumpled heap on the hardwood floor of the hallway. The silver carving knife clattered loudly across the floor, spinning away into the shadows.
A collective, horrified scream erupted from the dining room. The relatives leaped from their chairs, chairs scraping violently against the floorboards. The bright, festive atmosphere of the American luncheon was entirely shattered, replaced by the chaotic, violent reality of a family tearing itself apart.
Margaret lay on the floor, gasping for breath, her fair, rosy skin now bearing a massive, rapidly swelling red handprint across her left cheek. Her perfect hair was disheveled, her cardigan twisted. She looked up at her son, her blue eyes wide with a mixture of absolute shock and primal terror. She raised a trembling hand to her face, unable to process what had just happened.
Arthur did not step back. He did not apologize. He stood towering over her, holding his dying wife and his screaming child, his business suit rumpled and his chest heaving with adrenaline.
"You want to call the police?" Arthur roared, his angry tone and shouting shaking the very walls of the house. "Call them! Tell them you locked a bleeding, postpartum mother out of her nursery and worked her until she collapsed! Let's see who they arrest!"
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Margaret began to sob, a pathetic, manipulative wail designed to garner sympathy from the shocked relatives. "You struck your own mother! You animal!"
"Then it’s you who has to go!" Arthur screamed, his voice breaking with the sheer magnitude of his hatred for her. He stepped over the dropped carving knife, kicking it further down the hall. "Get out of my house. Now! If you are still on my property when the ambulance arrives, I will press charges for attempted murder! Get out!"
