Chapter 4 - The Emergency Room
I picked up the phone. Chloe shrank back into the cushions, her eyes wide with terror, shaking her head. *Don't answer, Mom. Please.*
I swiped the green button, put it on speaker, but did not say a word.
"Chloe?" Lewis’s voice came through the speaker. Smooth. Reasonable. But beneath the veneer was a terrifying, cold edge. "Stop playing games. You made a scene in the suite. You embarrassed my mother, and you scratched my arm. Do you have any idea what kind of legal trouble you're in for domestic assault?"
He paused, waiting for a response. When only silence answered, he dropped the act.
"Listen to me, you stupid bitch," he hissed. "You're my wife now. You don't walk out on this family. Bring your ass back to the St. Regis right now, or by tomorrow morning, I’ll have the police arrest you for battery. And don't bother running to your mother. That broke schoolteacher can't protect you from my firm."
I leaned in close to the microphone. "Lewis."
A dead silence fell over the line.
"Sarah?" he said, his tone instantly shifting back to polite charm. "Sarah, thank God. Chloe is having an emotional breakdown. She attacked my mother—"
"If you ever come within a hundred feet of my daughter again," I said, every word measured, razor-sharp, and dripping with venom, "I won't call the police. I will take everything you, your mother, and your fraudulent family own. I am taking Chloe to the hospital now. Every bruise, every drop of blood, every scrap of DNA under her nails will be documented. You're not a lawyer anymore, Lewis. You're a felon."
I hung up before he could reply and blocked the number.
Twenty minutes later, I walked Chloe through the sliding glass doors of Mount Sinai Hospital’s emergency department. The triage nurse took one look at Chloe’s torn wedding dress, her bloody collarbone, and her swollen wrist, and bypassed the entire waiting room.
"Domestic violence protocol," the nurse said into her headset.
Within minutes, two female doctors and a social worker were in the room. They photographed every inch of Chloe’s injuries: the ligature-like bruises on her wrists, the finger-shaped hematomas on her upper arms, the lacerations on her scalp, and the swelling on her jawline.
A forensic nurse carefully swabbed Chloe’s fingernails for DNA.
"Your wrist has a hairline fracture," the attending physician said grimly, sliding the X-ray onto the lightbox. "The pressure applied was immense. Whoever did this twisted the joint while pinning it."
While the nurse wrapped Chloe’s arm in a rigid splint, I stepped out into the hallway and dialed a number I hadn't called in seven years.
The line rang twice before a deep, gravelly voice answered.
May you like
"Sarah? It's four in the morning. What's wrong?"
"Robert," I said, my voice finally breaking as the adrenaline gave way to raw maternal anguish. "Our daughter is in the ER. Her new husband and his mother tried to beat her into signing over the condo. You need to get on your plane right now."
