Annette's lips parted, but the words wouldn't come. It was as though an invisible hand had closed around her throat.
Nathan crossed the room in long strides, bending first to check Naomi's injury, then straightening and turning to Annette, his eyes dark enough to frighten.
"What is wrong with you?"
The tone was pure rebuke.
"Naomi's health has never been good. You know that. She made you that soup out of kindness, asked you to stay for dinner, and you give her attitude? Causing a scene like this. What is the matter with you?"
Annette stared at him blankly. "I told you I had somewhere to be. She was the one who grabbed me—"
"She grabbed you, so you couldn't just speak to her properly?"
Nathan cut her off.
"Do you know who she is? She's my sister-in-law. The woman my brother entrusted to my care on his deathbed. With you flailing around so recklessly, if anything had happened to her, how would I face him?"
Nathan pinched the bridge of his nose, visibly forcing his anger down.
"Come here. Apologize to her."
Annette's pupils shrank.
She looked down at her own arm.
Blood had soaked through half her sleeve, dripping down one drop at a time.
The wound burned, raw and searing, but the deeper pain sat in her chest, as if someone were carving at it with a dull blade, stroke after stroke.
"Nathan," she said. "I'm in pain."
He lowered his gaze, saw the ugly gash across her arm, and his brow twitched.
He pressed his lips together. "I know you're in pain."
But then, at once, he added:
"But wrong is wrong. Apologize first. Once you do, I'll take you to get it treated."
That faint spark she'd just felt was doused, cold and clean, all at once.
In the haze of it, Annette remembered how things used to be.
She had been the bright, imperious little princess of New York's elite circles. At a reception once, after someone said two cutting words too many, she'd been too furious to bear it and smashed a bottle over the man's head.
The scene had dissolved into chaos. Nathan arrived late, unhurried.
The man went straight to him, complaining.
"Mr. Henson, you came at the right time. Look at what your wife has done. She apologizes today, or I call the police and charge her with assault."
Nathan didn't say a word. He slapped the man across the face, and afterward had his bodyguards deliver a hundred more.
He stayed perfectly unruffled.
"And so what if my wife is in the wrong?"
"My woman does nothing wrong. Whatever she does is right."
"Anyone with a problem can come say it to my face."
No one dared make a sound.
The pain dragged Annette back from the memory.
She looked at the man in front of her, frowning, ordering her to apologize, and no matter how she tried, she could not lay him over the Nathan who once slapped a hundred faces for her sake.
"Nathan," she said softly, her voice flat. "Do you remember something you once said?"
He frowned. "Said what?"
"You said your woman does nothing wrong. Whatever she does is right."
His expression stalled for a single instant.
Annette smiled faintly. "So it turned out that line came with a condition."
"The condition was that I never touch Naomi James."
The air froze again.
Nathan said nothing. Richard crouched at Naomi's feet, watching Annette warily, as if afraid she might hurt his Aunt Naomi again.
A strange flicker of amusement rose in Annette.
A sour ache spread from her chest through every limb, swelling, raw.
One was ice that would never thaw. The other, an ungrateful child she had raised who would never be tamed.
Annette looked straight into his eyes. "I won't apologize. I did nothing wrong."
Nathan's brow knotted tighter.
This woman was off today, nothing like the Annette he knew, the one who would coax and sulk and wait, red-eyed, for him to soothe her.
But he had no mind to dig into it now.
Naomi was badly hurt.
"Impossible," he said coldly, dropping the word like a verdict, then bent and lifted Naomi into his arms.
"I'm taking her to the hospital first. Wait here. I'll have the driver come for you. Go get that wound treated yourself."
With that, he didn't spare Annette another glance. He carried Naomi out of the private room in long, sweeping strides.
Naomi lay against his shoulder and looked back at Annette once.
It was entirely the pity of a winner.
Her own son, Richard, went after them too.
Annette let out a self-mocking laugh and looked down at the savage wound, and somehow it didn't seem to hurt so much anymore.
Next to the hole in her chest, what was a little broken skin worth?
Her phone buzzed with another message:
【Ms. Butler, the appointment window for cancellation of your identity records will close in 30 minutes. Please arrive as soon as possible.】
She didn't wait for the driver Nathan had promised. Annette called a car herself.
She really did have somewhere urgent to be.
This time, truly, truly, she was done with Nathan.
The driver flinched at the sight of her injuries.
"Miss, that's a bad wound. Shouldn't I take you to a hospital first?"
"No need," Annette said quietly. "The nearest police station."
