Chapter 4

The wind howled past the rusted metal of the bus stop shelter.

Hazel stood shivering, her fingers wrapped tightly around the strap of her duffel bag.

Her phone vibrated violently in her pocket.

She pulled it out. The screen flashed Benton. Her stomach churned, but she swiped to answer.

"What do you want?" Hazel asked, her voice flat.

"There is a family dinner tonight," Benton's voice came through the speaker, sickeningly smooth. "You and your new... husband are required to attend."

"I don't live there anymore," Hazel said, preparing to hang up.

"That's fine," Benton replied. "But your mother's new prescription is sitting on my desk. It would be a shame if it got lost in the trash."

The threat wrapped around Hazel's throat like a wire. Her lungs seized.

"Eight o'clock," Benton said, and the line went dead.

Hazel closed her eyes. Her fingers gripped the phone so hard her joints ached. She opened WhatsApp and typed a message to Brennan.

Family emergency. Need you at a dinner tonight. Please.

She waited. The screen stayed dark.

By 7:30 PM, Hazel stood alone in front of the massive oak doors of the Cook estate. Her phone finally buzzed.

Servers are still down. I can't leave the office. I'm sorry.

The brief text made Hazel's heart sink like a stone. She shoved the phone into her bag, took a deep breath, and pushed the heavy doors open alone.

The dining room was blindingly bright. The long table was packed with relatives dressed in designer clothes.

When Hazel walked in by herself, the low chatter stopped. A collective, malicious smirk spread across the room.

Her uncle Cody leaned back in his chair, looking past her shoulder.

"Where's the groom?" Cody mocked loudly. "Couldn't afford the bus fare to this zip code?"

Her aunt Prudence covered her mouth, giggling. "Maybe the poor IT boy saw the front gates and ran back to his basement."

The sharp, cruel laughter bounced off the walls.

Hazel kept her face completely blank. She walked to the empty chair at the far end of the table and sat down. She kept her spine rigid.

Mildred sat at the head of the table, slicing a rare steak. Blood pooled on her white plate.

"You married a coward to escape Rudy," Mildred said without looking up. "You're a disgrace to this family."

Hazel's fingers tightened around her silver fork.

"Brennan works for a living," Hazel shot back, her voice cold. "He earns his own money. That makes him better than the parasites in this room."

Cody slammed his fist onto the table. His wine glass tipped, spilling dark red wine across the pristine white tablecloth like blood.

"Watch your mouth!" Cody yelled, pointing a thick finger at her. "I know people in tech. I can make one phone call and ensure your little husband never writes a line of code in this state again."

Hazel's heart hammered against her ribs. The threat was real. Cody had the connections to ruin a regular engineer's life.

To protect Brennan, Hazel swallowed the burning anger in her throat. She lowered her eyes to her empty plate and stayed silent.

Her silence fed their cruelty. The insults rained down on her, calling Brennan a loser, a beggar, a mistake. Hazel's chest ached with a deep, suffocating humiliation.

Niamh walked up beside Hazel, holding a silver teapot filled with boiling Earl Grey.

As Niamh poured the tea, her wrist suddenly jerked.

The scalding hot liquid splashed directly onto the back of Hazel's hand.

"Ah!" Hazel cried out, jerking her hand back.

The skin instantly turned furious red. The burning pain seared through her nerves. She glared up at Niamh.

"Oh, my apologies," Niamh said, her tone entirely flat and unapologetic.

No one at the table stopped laughing. No one asked if she was okay.

Mildred dropped her fork. "Look what you've done, Hazel. Making a mess. Go up to the guest room and deal with it. You're ruining dinner."

Hazel gritted her teeth against the pain. She pushed her chair back, stood up, and practically ran out of the dining room.

As she walked down the dim, quiet hallway upstairs, hot tears finally blurred her vision. She felt a crushing guilt for dragging an innocent guy like Brennan into this nightmare.

At that exact moment, on the top floor of a towering glass skyscraper in Silicon Valley.

Brennan sat at the head of a massive glass conference table. His face was carved from ice as he listened to a vice president present a billion-dollar acquisition.

His executive assistant stepped quietly up behind his chair and slid a sleek tablet onto the table.

It was a live intelligence feed. The text read: Target (Hazel) is currently at the Cook estate. Attending alone. Subjected to verbal abuse and physical injury (burn).

Brennan stared at the words attending alone.

The temperature in the boardroom seemed to drop ten degrees. His jaw clenched so hard a muscle ticked in his cheek.

He slammed the file folder shut. The loud thwack made the vice president flinch and stop talking mid-sentence.

Brennan stood up. "Meeting adjourned," he ordered, his voice lethal.

He grabbed his suit jacket off the back of his chair and strode out of the room, leaving a dozen terrified executives in dead silence.