Chapter 3

3: 3

In the drawer, Grandma's death certificate and household registration lay where I'd left them.

I had just tucked them into the backpack on my shoulder.

Adam came back.

"Rosamond left her pregnancy meds here. She can't handle any strain right now, so I came back for them."

His voice carried in from the living room.

He didn't even glance at me, just headed for the kitchen to fill a cup with warm water.

Now it was only me and Rosamond in the living room.

She dropped her voice, low enough that only the two of us could hear.

"Monica, do you know where that twenty thousand Adam just took off you went?"

I looked at her and said nothing.

She arched a brow, pleased with herself.

"The VIP twin-delivery suite at the private hospital. The deposit came to exactly twenty thousand."

"As for that grandmother of yours, just dig a hole out in the hills somewhere and bury her, that'll do."

"She was a worthless old woman with no one left anyway."

I couldn't hold back. I raised my left hand and slapped her across the face.

"Adam! Help!"

She let out a shriek, and then.

She snatched the sharp half-piece of broken jade I'd set on the table.

At the very moment Adam came rushing out of the kitchen.

She dragged the jade across her own forearm, opening a streak of blood.

Then she let her whole body tip backward.

Rosamond dropped down into the shards of glass, clutching her belly.

"Monnie, I know you hate me, but you can't take broken jade and try to kill my baby!"

"Rosamond!"

Adam threw down the cup in his hand and ran over.

His eyes went to the blood on Rosamond's arm, then swung to me.

"Monica, you vicious bitch!"

His eyes went red as he strode up to me.

Before I could get a word out, he clamped a hand around my right wrist.

The hand already cut open by the jade, the one I'd only just bandaged up any old way.

He put every ounce of his strength into it and wrenched it back behind me.

The pain blacked out my vision, my knees buckled, and I was forced down onto the floor.

The wound split open, and blood ran down my wrist.

"Adam! Let go!"

I ground my teeth, cold sweat soaking through the back of my shirt, my voice shaking.

"That's my right hand."

I'm a web novelist.

For five years I sat in front of a computer every single day and typed out tens of thousands of words.

I typed out our down payment with this right hand.

I typed out his respectable suits, typed out every last brick and tile of this home.

And now, for the sake of a mistress, he was breaking the tool I lived by.

"You think you have any right to talk about your hand?"

Adam didn't let go. He drove his knee down into my back instead.

Grinding my right hand into the glass shards on the floor.

He looked at me, disgust filling his eyes.

"You actually took broken jade to a pregnant woman's belly?"

"Do you have any idea what Rosamond's baby means to her!"

"If she loses that baby, I will ruin this hand of yours today, no question!"

The broken glass drove deep into my palm.

Rosamond leaned against the side of the couch, pretending to sob.

While she watched me pinned under his foot.

Her eyes were full of a winner's gloating.

"Adam."

I gave up struggling and let the blood spread across the floor.

"You'd better just kill me outright today."

"Otherwise, you'll pay a price you can't afford for what you've done."

Adam glanced at the frail-looking Rosamond and kicked me aside.

"Lunatic. You can sit here and think about what you've done."

"The day you kowtow and apologize to Rosamond is the day you get to stand up again!"

He took out his phone and dialed 911.

The ambulance arrived downstairs soon after.

Adam scooped Rosamond up sideways in his arms, a woman with nothing but a scratch on her arm.

Before he left, he locked the front door, shutting me in with the wreckage all around me.

With my left hand, I opened the playback of the living room security footage.

The whole thing, Rosamond's little performance and Adam's violence.

I exported it in full and backed it up to the cloud.