Chapter 1: The Blood on the Marble
The sharp, terrifyingly crisp sound of the leather riding crop echoing off the vaulted, hand-painted ceilings of the grand hall was followed instantly by a searing, blinding heat across my shoulder blades.
Nineteen.
I bit down so hard on my lower lip that I tasted the sudden, hot rush of copper in my mouth. I refused to scream. I refused to give him the acoustic validation of my pain.
Twenty.
The final strike tore through the thin fabric of my cotton dress, biting deeply into the flesh of my back. My muscles gave out entirely. I collapsed forward, my palms slapping hard against the cold, imported Italian marble floor. The stark, terrifying contrast of my own bright red blood smearing against the pristine white stone looked like a macabre painting. I stayed on my hands and knees, my breath coming in jagged, shallow rasps, the agonizing fire radiating from my spine making the edges of my vision vibrate with dark static.
Above me, standing in the center of the palatial living room he falsely believed he owned, was my husband, Adrian Vale.
I heard the soft rustle of expensive fabric as he casually adjusted the cuffs of his bespoke, navy-blue Tom Ford suit. His breathing was completely steady. He wasn’t winded. He had executed the violence with the cold, detached, sociopathic rhythm of a man hitting a golf ball. He looked down at me not with the fiery rage of a crime of passion, but with the chilling, arrogant disgust of a god looking at a diseased peasant who had dared to track mud into his temple.
“Look at her,” a woman’s voice purred.
Vanessa stepped into my peripheral vision. She was wearing a stunning, champagne-colored silk dress—a dress paid for by the very credit cards I had quietly subsidized. She crouched down near my face. The sharp, cloying scent of her expensive Baccarat Rouge perfume aggressively mixed with the raw, metallic smell of my spilled blood.
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