Chapter 4 - The Hallway of Glass
I pulled onto Crestview Lane at 2:28 p.m.
The street was lined with neat colonial houses, green lawns, and tidy mailboxes. It looked like the kind of neighborhood where people worried about lawn aeration and HOA paint colors. It looked completely incapable of housing the nightmare that had just unfolded.
My truck slid to a halt at an angle across the curb, tires chewing into the grass.
Ahead of me, Derek’s black Dodge Ram was parked crookedly in the driveway, its driver-side door still hanging wide open. On the front lawn, resting half-submerged in a bed of red mulch, lay the black baseball bat. Even from fifteen yards away, I could see the faint smudges on the lacquer.
My heart was in my throat as I tore out of the cab and sprinted up the brick walkway.
The front door stood wide open, its brass lock sheared away where Derek had kicked through the frame to clear the path.
The foyer was a disaster zone.
A decorative hall table with a glass vase of dried flowers had been overturned, shards of mirrored glass scattered across the hardwood like frozen rain. Sitting propped against the base of the staircase, his face buried in his knees, was Travis.
He looked unrecognizable.
His gray hoodie was torn down the center seam, his lip swollen to the size of a walnut, and a deep, purple hematoma was already spreading across his left cheekbone. But he wasn't bleeding out. Derek hadn't beaten him into a coma; he had dismantled him. Travis was clutching his right side, trembling uncontrollably, gasping for shallow sips of air with every rib twitch, completely broken in spirit.
He looked up as I crossed the threshold. His eyes were wide, glassy with shock, and filled with a raw, humiliating terror.
"Mark..." he rasped, his voice trembling like an old man's. "Tell him... tell him to stay away from me. He's crazy... he broke my ribs..."
I didn't stop. I didn't even look down at him.
The urge to kick him directly in the teeth was so overwhelming that my vision flashed red, but the sound coming from the kitchen pulled me away like an iron chain.
"Lena!" I shouted, rounding the corner past the dining room.
She was sitting on the kitchen floor, her back against the lower cabinets, wrapped in Derek’s heavy canvas work jacket.
Her face was deathly pale, covered in a cold sheen of sweat. Her right arm—her drawing arm, the arm she used to paint watercolors for her mother—was tucked rigidly against her chest, bent at an unnatural, sickening angle three inches above the wrist. Her forearm was swollen to nearly twice its normal size, the skin taut, shiny, and blooming with a hideous, mottled black-and-blue discoloration.
Derek was on his knees beside her.
He had retrieved a clean dish towel from the counter and a bag of frozen peas from the freezer, gently holding it against her forehead where a dark lump had begun to swell near her hairline. He was whispering to her, his voice low, steady, a human anchor in the middle of a hurricane.
"Dad," she choked out.
I dropped to my knees so hard the impact bruised my kneecaps through my suit trousers. I wrapped my left arm around her shoulders, careful not to jostle her injured side, and buried my face in her hair.
She smelled of dust, sweat, and copper.
"I've got you," I wept into her neck, the tears finally cutting through the adrenaline. "I've got you, Lena. You're safe. Daddy's here. Uncle Derek's here."
She leaned into me, her entire frame shaking so hard her teeth clicked together. "He said... he said he was going to break both of them, Dad. He said if I left him, I wouldn't be able to hold anything again."
Beside me, Derek’s jaw tightened. A single muscle in his temple twitched, but his hands remained completely steady as he kept the ice in place.
"He's never touching you again, Lena," Derek said. "Not in this life."
In the distance, the wail of sirens cut through the quiet neighborhood.
May you like
Two blocks away. Then one.
The high-pitched yelp of an ambulance air horn sounded as the vehicles turned onto Crestview Lane, followed by the heavy, rhythmic throb of emergency diesel engines pulling up to the curb outside.
