Chapter 3
The buzzing steel teeth of the clippers were inches from Lucy’s forehead when Maya moved.
Her movement was not the frantic lunge of a frightened parent; it was the explosive, surgical strike of a trained assassin. Her left hand shot forward like a steel trap, locking onto Elaine’s wrist with bone-grinding pressure.
Elaine gasped in shock, her breath hitching in her throat as Maya twisted her wrist downward. With a single, fluid pull, Maya wrenched the vibrating clippers cleanly from Elaine’s grip. She didn't let go of the older woman’s arm. Instead, she used Elaine’s forward momentum to spin the sixty-four-year-old matriarch violently around, slamming her back against the diagnostic counter.
The medicine jars rattled on their glass shelves.
Before Elaine could scream, Maya raised the clippers in her right hand.
With one brutal, deliberate stroke, Maya drove the buzzing blades straight through the center of Elaine’s immaculate, salon-styled silver hair.
The motor whined as it chewed through the lacquered locks. A thick, six-inch swath of hair was severed instantly, tumbling through the air like winter brush before cascading across Elaine’s pearl necklace and scattering across the linoleum floor. A jagged, chalk-white bald streak stretched from Elaine’s temple all the way back to the crown of her head.
The room went dead, terrifyingly silent.
Maya pulled the clippers away, flicked the power switch to off, and let the device dangle at her side.
Elaine froze. Her manicured hands flew up to her head, her fingers trembling as they brushed the bare, exposed skin above her ear. Her fair, rosy face turned the color of raw dough, her mouth working soundlessly in sheer, paralyzed disbelief.
Maya stepped back, placing her broad, silk-draped frame directly between her weeping child and the two adults. She stood with absolute, imperial authority, her dark gown shimmering beneath the clean white lighting.
Slowly, Maya turned her grey eyes upon her husband.
Andrew stood frozen by the door, the pink backpack slipping from his fingers to hit the floor with a soft thud. The color had drained completely from his face, his pulse visibly hammering in the hollow of his throat.
May you like
Maya’s voice was dead calm—a whisper carved from glacial ice that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
"You said 'good' when she threatened our daughter," Maya said, every syllable measured with terrifying finality. "Say it again."
