When Beth woke, the back of her skull throbbed like it was splitting apart.
She was lying on the ground, hands bound behind her, the restraints biting into her wrists. A few yards away, Jeanette was tied up too, duct tape over her mouth, eyes rimmed red, muffled whimpers spilling out nonstop.
A bald man with a knife scar across his face stood in the center of the room. Melvin was at the door, chest heaving, eyes bloodshot.
The man held a knife, staring at Melvin with something unhinged in his gaze:
"Melvin Henson! You put me away for five years. My wife left. My mother died, and I never got to see her one last time! Today, I'm going to show you what it feels like to wish you were dead!"
Melvin raised his hands, voice hoarse and thin: "Whatever you want, take it out on me! Let them go!"
The man laughed, wild and unrestrained:
"Attorney Henson, one of these women is your wife, the other's your little sweetheart. You only get to take one. Don't say I didn't give you a chance! Whoever you pick walks out alive. The other one? I'll make her wish she'd never been born. That's what you owe me!"
Melvin's face went white. His fists clenched at his sides.
Beth watched him. She saw his eyes dart between her and Jeanette, back and forth, back and forth. His lips trembled. His throat worked. Sweat beaded across his forehead.
She waited. She told herself he would choose her.
They were husband and wife. She was the woman he'd married before God and everyone. She'd fought her own family for him, helped him build his firm from nothing, stood beside him through every lean year until they reached this point. He had to remember that.
Beside her, tears streamed down Jeanette's face. She shook her head frantically, choking out garbled sobs through the tape:
"Mr. Henson, I don't want to die! I still want to stand by your side and fight for justice for all those victims!"
Melvin flinched. He turned to Jeanette, and his eyes filled with something that looked like anguish.
He closed his eyes. The words scraped out of his throat: "I choose Jeanette."
Those three words were three knives, each one driving into Beth's chest, one after another, until she couldn't breathe.
Her ears rang. Her mind went blank. She thought she would scream, thought she would cry, but nothing came.
She just looked at him. Like she was looking at a stranger.
No. A stranger wouldn't have been able to hurt her like this.
Melvin's voice grew more urgent, as if he were trying to convince her, or maybe trying to convince himself:
"Beth, I'm sorry. Jeanette is a rising star in the legal world. You can't imagine her talent. The cases she'll take on, the people she'll help, there are so many. If she lives, she can put more monsters like this behind bars! You don't want these criminals walking free either, right?"
"Beth, you're the Cox family heiress. You have money, resources. Even if you get hurt today, you'll be fine. But Jeanette is different. She has nothing. All she has is me. I can't just abandon her!"
Beth listened to every word. A bleak smile spread across her face.
She bit down on her lower lip, hard, until she tasted blood, just to keep herself from falling apart completely.
Jeanette's ropes were cut. She threw herself into Melvin's arms, sobbing so hard her whole body shook.
He held Jeanette and walked toward the exit. When he passed Beth, he stopped.
"Beth, I'll come back for you. I promise. Just hold on."
Beth looked into his eyes. There was guilt in them, and reluctance, but not a shred of hesitation.
The heavy iron door of the warehouse slammed shut.
The bald man crouched down in front of Beth, a sickening grin on his face:
"Mrs. Henson, your husband picked her. How does it feel to be thrown away? The lawfully wedded wife, and you still lost to some little assistant. Looks like your husband thinks of you as garbage, tossed out without a second thought!"
Beth closed her eyes. She said nothing.
The man kicked her square in the chest. Her body flew backward, her spine slamming into the wall. The fractures from before tore open like fresh wounds, and the pain turned her vision black.
He walked over, knife in hand, and pried her right pinky finger open:
"Five years in that hellhole, they broke two of my fingers. I'm only taking one of yours. Count yourself lucky, and tell that bastard Henson he got off easy!"
The knife came down.
Beth felt the blade bite into skin, slice through muscle, scrape against bone. The agony ground through her inch by inch. Her body convulsed. Tears and sweat ran together down her face, and a raw, ragged scream tore from her throat.
Before she blacked out, only one thought crossed her mind.
Back in design school, her professor had told her that the right pinky was what steadied your grip on the pen. Without it, your lines would shake. Your stone settings would be crooked.
Did this mean she would never be a designer again?
In the darkness of despair and pain, her consciousness slipped under.
When she woke again, Beth found herself in a VIP suite at a private hospital.
The man sitting at her bedside was the last person she expected: her father, who had been managing the family business in Australia all this time.
The moment he saw her eyes open, Irvin Cox's face crumpled with heartache:
"Beth, why didn't you tell me you'd been suffering like this? Your finger's been reattached. It's going to be okay, sweetheart. Someone dared to do this to my daughter. I will make sure they pay for every last bit of it."
Her father stroked her hair gently. She had so much she wanted to tell him, so many grievances bottled up inside, but the pain and exhaustion pulled her under, and before she knew it, she had drifted off again.
Early the next morning, Beth was jolted awake by a door slamming open.
Melvin stormed in, face twisted with rage, and hurled a stack of documents onto her hospital bed:
"Beth Cox, you vicious woman! Is using your family's power to crush people the only thing you know how to do?!"
