Chapter 1 - The Blue Dress and the Crimson Stain
“Let's see if Wyatt still loves you with that face,”
my mother said,
laughing in a way I'll never forget.
The brick hit me before I even saw my father's arm swing,
cutting through the humid afternoon air with a weight that felt like a death sentence.
One second earlier,
I had been standing on the cracked sidewalk outside my parents' house in the neighborhood where I grew up in Columbus,
wearing the light blue dress I'd bought to announce our wedding date during a family dinner.
It was a silk dress,
the color of a summer sky,
purchased with the hope that maybe,
just maybe,
my happiness would finally be enough to earn their love.
The next second,
everything turned white,
a blinding flash of agony that erased the world and replaced it with a roaring silence.
It wasn't a loud sound,
not like the movies,
where bones snap with a theatrical pop.
It was worse,
a dull,
sickening crack,
like a heavy stone breaking deep inside a hollow cave.
I felt warmth running down my left eyebrow,
thick and viscous,
crossing my cheek,
and pooling over my lips with the metallic tang of copper.
My legs gave out,
the strength leaving my knees as if my very bones had turned to sand.
My fiancé,
Wyatt Campbell,
caught me before my face hit the concrete porch steps,
his strong arms the only thing keeping me from the dirt.
“Sadie,
look at me,
stay with me!
Sadie!”
His voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of a well,
distorted and frantic.
I tried to open my left eye,
but it felt heavy,
sealed shut by something warm and sticky.
Nothing,
only darkness on that side of my world.
With my right eye,
blurred and stinging,
I saw my mother,
Brenda,
standing beside the old porch swing that creaked in the wind.
She wasn't scared,
nor did she reach out a hand to steady her falling daughter.
She didn't run toward me with motherly instinct,
nor did she scream for an ambulance.
She was laughing,
a high,
reedy sound that scraped against my nerves like a rusted blade.
My father,
Gregory Davis,
dropped the broken half of the brick onto the yellowed grass with a thud.
“I warned you,”
he muttered calmly,
adjusting his shirt as if he had just finished a minor chore.
Wyatt stared at him in pure,
unadulterated disbelief,
his hands trembling as he held my head against his chest.
“What have you done?”
No one answered him,
the silence of the neighborhood swallowing his question.
Then my younger sister,
Melanie,
stepped out of the front door,
the screen door whining on its hinges.
She wore an expensive dress,
one that I knew she couldn't afford on her own,
with freshly manicured nails that glittered in the sun.
She had an irritated expression,
as though my blood had ruined her appetite for the dinner I had paid for.
“I told you she wouldn't move,”
she said,
folding her arms over her chest with a huff.
My mother sighed,
shaking her head as if I were a disappointment that had finally reached its limit.
“We tried talking to her nicely,”
she added,
her eyes cold and devoid of any humanity.
Wyatt gently leaned me against one of the porch columns,
his face pale with a mixture of terror and rage.
“You're all sick,”
he whispered,
his voice shaking with the weight of his realization.
My father smiled,
a predatory grin that revealed the rot beneath his suburban facade.
“No,
you're just engaged to the wrong daughter,”
he replied.
The ringing in my head was unbearable,
vibrating through my skull,
but those words hurt even more than the impact of the brick.
“What?”
Wyatt asked,
his breath hitching.
“Melanie should have been the one you chose,”
my mother said,
stepping closer to the edge of the porch.
“Sadie is selfish,
she always has been,
keeping all that success to herself.”
Melanie looked down at me lying on the ground,
contempt etched into every line of her face.
“And you still chose her,
even after I made it so easy for you to leave,”
she sneered.
Wyatt pulled out his phone to call 911,
his fingers fumbling with the screen.
But my father was faster,
lunging forward and kicking the device out of his hand.
The phone flew through the air,
the screen shattering against the front steps into a spiderweb of glass.
“No one's calling anybody until we finish this conversation,”
my father growled.
Wyatt shoved him back,
the two men clashing near the rose bushes my mother used to tend so carefully.
Even though my father was already in his sixties,
he fought with a desperate,
feral energy.
They crashed into the thorns,
but neither my mother nor Melanie moved to stop them.
They just watched,
their eyes gleaming with a sick anticipation.
That's when I realized the truth,
a truth that chilled me more than the blood loss.
This wasn't a sudden outburst of anger,
it was a coordinated strike.
Ever since Wyatt sold his construction company and became a millionaire,
my family had been circling like vultures.
I was no longer a daughter or a sister,
I was an obstacle to the wealth they felt they deserved.
As the world began to fade into gray,
I saw a movement in the attic window,
the curtain fluttering.
An elderly man was standing there,
his hand pressed against the glass in a silent,
shaking warning.
May you like
Then the sirens began to wail in the distance,
a high-pitched scream that promised a reckoning.
