Two massive security guards grabbed Blair by the arms. She was dead weight between them, sobbing and gasping as they dragged her out of the dusty attic and down the hall into the brightly lit upstairs sitting room. Drops of red bloomed across the Persian rug, dark against the cream wool.
The butler rushed in with a heavy medical kit and slammed it onto the glass coffee table.
Arla followed, her hand wrapped firmly around Caden's. She guided him behind the large leather sofa, positioning his small body in its shadow. "Stay right here, baby," she whispered. "Keep your eyes on the wall. Don't turn around."
Caden pressed himself into the corner, his knees drawn up, his hands over his ears. He had learned long ago how to make himself invisible.
Arla walked around the sofa and stopped in front of the coffee table. She snapped open the metal latches of the medical kit and scanned the rows of bottles and bandages with cold, methodical precision.
Blair slumped against the cushions, her eyes tracking Arla's every movement. The gash across her cheek had stopped bleeding freely, but the wound was still raw, the edges angry and swollen. "Don't... touch me..." she slurred through clenched teeth.
Arla ignored her. Her gaze settled on a large bottle of high-concentration medical alcohol, and beside it, a smaller vial of astringent meant for deep wound irrigation.
She picked up both.
"Blair," she said, her voice pitched to carry to the servants hovering near the doorway, "this wound is serious. If it isn't thoroughly cleaned right now, the risk of infection is extremely high. Sepsis. Permanent scarring. The kind of damage that no surgeon can fully repair."
The word 'permanent' landed like a slap. Blair's protests died in her throat. Her eyes—already glassy with pain—sharpened with a new and visceral terror. For a woman whose entire value in this household had been measured by her face, the threat of irreversible damage was a language she understood better than any other.
Arla saw the fear take hold. She had counted on it.
She soaked a large sterile cotton pad with the alcohol, then added a generous amount of the astringent. The sharp chemical scent cut through the air.
The butler's eyes flickered toward the dripping cotton pad. He opened his mouth, then closed it. The fear of being blamed if Blair's face was ruined kept him silent.
Arla stepped forward. Her left hand closed on Blair's shoulder, pinning her against the back of the sofa with surprising force.
With her right hand, she pressed the soaked cotton firmly against the open wound.
Blair's body arched off the cushions. A sound tore from her throat—raw, animal, nothing like the calculated cruelty of her usual voice. "You're—stop—!"
"Hold still," Arla said, her grip on Blair's shoulder unyielding. "This is going to sting. It has to, or it won't work. I'm doing this for your own good."
She worked with steady, methodical pressure, her wrist turning in small circles as she cleaned the wound. Blair's thrashing grew weaker, her screams dissolving into wet, hitching sobs. The guards held her arms, their faces pale, their eyes averted.
When Arla finally stepped back and dropped the soiled cotton onto the tray, Blair was slumped against the cushions, her chest heaving, tears cutting tracks through the blood on her unbroken cheek. She looked, for the first time since Arla had known her, utterly broken.
The inferno that had been raging in Arla's chest since she had seen the needle in Blair's hand cooled—just slightly. Just enough.
She picked up a fresh cotton pad, soaked it again.
Blair's eyes tracked the motion. She shook her head, a small, frantic movement. "No more," she gasped. "Please—"
Arla leaned in close, her body blocking the servants' view. Her face was inches from Blair's, her voice dropping to a register meant for no one else.
"If you ever go near my son again," she whispered, "what happened in that attic will seem like mercy compared to what comes next. Do you understand me?"
Blair stared at her. Something shifted in her expression—the dawning, terrible realization that the woman standing over her was not the Arla she had tormented for years. The Arla who had cowered, who had apologized for existing, who had taken every cruelty in silence.
That Arla was gone.
The woman looking down at her now had eyes like winter.
Blair understood. She nodded—a tiny, jerky motion of her head—and then squeezed her eyes shut, as though she could make the truth of what she had just seen disappear by refusing to look at it.
Arla straightened. She set the cotton pad aside and turned toward the medical kit to begin dressing the wound.
