Chapter 1 - The Boiling Point
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The coffee struck Skylar Bennett before her husband finished saying the word obey.
It came across the breakfast table in a glittering brown arc, so hot that for one stunned second she did not understand what had happened. Then the liquid slapped against her left cheek, ran beneath the collar of her white blouse, and turned every nerve from her jaw to her shoulder into fire.
Skylar screamed and knocked her chair backward. The ceramic cup shattered against the kitchen wall behind her, scattering white fragments across the floor like broken teeth.
She stumbled to the sink, twisted the faucet open, and bent beneath the cold stream. Her hands shook so violently that she could barely hold her hair away from her face. Water spilled down her neck and soaked her clothes, but the pain kept spreading, deep and vicious, as though something alive had crawled beneath her skin. The smell of dark roast coffee mingled with the terrifying scent of searing flesh.
Behind her, Derek Foster did not apologize.
He did not rush to help her, call an ambulance, or even ask whether she could see out of her left eye.
He remained beside the breakfast table with his phone in one hand and his empty fingers still curled in the shape of the cup he had just violently thrown.
"You see what you made me do?" he said.
Skylar stared at his reflection in the dark kitchen window. His blue dress shirt was neatly pressed. His tie was draped over one shoulder because he had not finished getting ready for work. He looked less like a man who had just attacked his wife and more like a salesman irritated by a difficult customer.
"My face," she gasped, her voice sounding ragged and unfamiliar to her own ears. "Derek, you burned my face."
"You should have listened the first time."
He picked up his car keys from the granite counter, completely unbothered by her agony.
"My sister is coming here this afternoon," he continued, his tone chillingly conversational. "When I get back, you’re giving Suzanne your bank card, the security code, and whatever else she needs to clear the payment. You’re also letting her choose one of your handbags because you embarrassed her last weekend."
Skylar pressed a dish towel filled with ice against her cheek. The fabric hurt so badly that she nearly dropped it.
"I told you no."
Derek’s expression hardened into something ugly and cold.
"And I told you I wasn’t asking."
"That’s my account. My salary goes into it. My mortgage comes out of it."
"You’re my wife. There is no your money and my money."
May you like
"There seems to be when your paycheck disappears every single month."
For a moment, the kitchen became completely still. The only sound was the dripping of the faucet and Skylar's ragged breathing.
