Chapter 10
I asked Isabella what she wanted.
Not what punishment Grant deserved.
What she wanted.
She stared as though I had asked a language she no longer spoke.
“I don’t know.”
“Fine.”
That answer was allowed.
“I want Noah with me.”
“Done.”
“I don’t want Vanessa near him.”
“Done.”
She hesitated.
“And Grant?”
I waited.
“I don’t want him near me tonight.”
“Done.”
Not forever.
Not marriage dissolved by my command.
Tonight.
Her choice.
Grant hated that.
“You’re letting her decide everything because she cried to Daddy.”
I turned.
“No.”
“She’s turning you against me.”
“You punched me.”
“That was between us.”
“You bruised my daughter.”
His face hardened.
“That is marriage.”
I almost laughed.
“No.”
“What would you know? Your wife worshipped you.”
That hit differently.
My late wife, Lucia, had challenged me almost every day.
That was one reason I loved her.
“She argued with me in rooms full of armed men.”
Grant scoffed.
“And?”
“I never made her hide her wrists afterward.”
Silence.
I stepped closer.
“Disagreement is not disrespect.”
He looked away.
“That is the lesson you never learned.”
Maybe because Vanessa never taught him.
Maybe because his father did worse.
I did not care yet.
May you like
Background explains behavior.
It does not clean it.
