My screaming brought my father and mother rushing back, and the instant they pushed open the door, their faces changed all at once.
My father's normally steady face went to frost in a heartbeat.
"Denys Hughes, you bastard."
He barked the words as he lunged forward, seized him by the collar, and drove a fist into his face.
"Zoe is your own sister, and you did something this vicious. Throwing acid to ruin her face. Is this how a big brother behaves?"
In a fury, my father kicked Denys into the corner.
He roared,
"Stuart Lambert, bring the family disciplinary rod. Today I'll beat this cold-hearted, ruthless son of mine to death."
Denys had his own stubborn backbone. He dropped to his knees on the floor with a thud, craned his neck, and said,
"Today, even if you beat me to death, I'd still throw this bottle of acid."
"She's not my sweet little sister anymore. She's just a selfish, greedy country girl. Look at what she's driven Madge to. Do you want her to destroy this whole family?"
My father froze. For a second his eyes wavered, then the rage surged up again, and he brought the rod down hard across Denys's back.
"That still doesn't give you the right to throw acid. She is your own sister."
The rod cracked, and Denys let out a muffled grunt, yet he kept his spine straight and never begged.
My father's brow knotted. He raised the rod high again and struck.
"Still won't admit you were wrong? Still won't apologize to your sister and beg her forgiveness?"
The rod came whistling down, and just as it was about to land on my brother's back again, my mother screamed and threw herself over Denys, clutching him tight in her arms.
Heedless of the pain, she cried and wailed,
"Burton, stop, stop hitting him. One of our children is already in the hospital. Do you mean to beat the other one to death too?"
She wept until she came apart, her whole heart aching for Madge, aching for the son who had brought down this disaster, and from beginning to end she never once saw me curled on the floor, my face streaked with blood, wishing I were dead.
My father stopped, breathing hard, and let out a heavy sigh.
My mother only held my brother and sobbed as if her heart were being torn out.
A long while later, Burton threw down the rod, turned, and looked at me with guilt and helplessness. He gently helped me up, an apology in his voice.
"Zoe, it's my fault for not raising your brother right. In this, we've wronged you."
He was silent a moment, as if weighing it all carefully, before he made his promise.
"Tomorrow I'll set up a card for you and transfer two hundred thousand dollars as compensation."
"Once this has all blown over, once Madge has fully recovered and she and Benjamin are married, I'll send you abroad right away to find the best doctors. I promise you, I'll have your face made even prettier than before, without a single scar left."
As the words fell, my sobbing mother let go of my brother, hurried over to me, reached out and held me tight, her tears dropping one by one onto my neck.
"Zoe, my good child, I'm sorry, I'm truly sorry. Mama never thought it would come to this. It's Mama's fault, I didn't protect you."
Crying, she apologized and explained over and over.
"Zoe, you'll understand your mother. They're all my flesh and blood. On one side is a child we raised for twenty years, on the other is your brother. Your mama truly had no choice."
"Just forgive your brother this once, all right? Even if your face really does scar and isn't pretty anymore, your mama will never think any less of you. Your father and I will take care of you for the rest of your life, provide for you always, never let you suffer the slightest wrong."
Her warm tears fell onto my raw, festering wound, sending wave after wave of fine, splintering pain through it.
I leaned in her arms, listening to these hollow words of comfort, the searing pain in my face long since numb, while that last thread of hope I'd held for family love shattered, finally, completely into nothing.
Father called the butler to fetch a doctor for me. I let them lift me onto the bed and work over my face however they wanted.
Under the heavy anesthetic, I slowly drifted into unconsciousness.
When I woke again the room was pitch black. The sharp pain in my face had faded, leaving only a dry, stinging soreness in my throat.
I sat up slowly and felt my way out to find water.
Standing at the bend of the second-floor landing, I looked down into the great room below. Burton sat on the sofa, his face dark, while Mother tended the wounds on Denys's back with aching tenderness, crying and complaining as she worked.
"Burton, how could you be so cruel to your own son? He did it for Madge. His heart was in the right place."
Burton let out a breath, his face iron-hard.
"Right place or not, he had no business hurting her that badly."
"If I hadn't come down hard on Denys to give that girl her due and calm her down, if she'd run out today and called the police, tomorrow the Hughes name would be splashed across the headlines. And then do you think the Sanchez family would still let Madge marry in?"
