Chapter 4

Brittany and Jake stared at me, stunned. The red mark on Brittany's cheek bloomed like a toxic flower.

Then Jake moved. He shoved me back, hard, sending me stumbling against the wall. He wrapped a protective arm around Brittany, pulling her behind him.

"Are you out of your mind?" he roared, his face contorted with rage.

Brittany started to cry, soft, pathetic sobs. "It was an accident, I swear. I'll buy you a new one, a better one!"

"A new one?" I whispered, my eyes fixed on the soggy, ruined sketchbook. Pages of my work, my ideas, were bleeding into an inky mess. "That was five years of my life."

Jake sneered. "It's a book of scribbles, Chloe. Get over it." He looked down at the sketchbook with contempt. Then he looked at the closed door of his study. A cruel idea sparked in his eyes.

He strode into the study and came back out holding my mother' s sunflower painting.

"You want to talk about value?" he said, his voice dripping with malice. "Let's talk about this piece of junk."

My blood ran cold. "Jake, don't."

He held it up, his fingers digging into the canvas. "She painted this when she could barely hold a brush, right? So much sentimental value." He laughed, a horrifying, empty sound. "It's just paint on a board. It's worthless."

And then, with a deliberate, brutal motion, he snapped the wooden frame over his knee. The crack of the wood was the loudest sound I had ever heard. The canvas ripped, a jagged tear straight through the heart of the sunflowers.

He threw the two halves of my mother's soul onto the floor at my feet.

I didn't scream. I didn't cry. I just fell to my knees, reaching for the destroyed pieces as if I could somehow put them back together. The splintered wood cut into my palms, but I didn't feel it.

Jake grabbed my hair, yanking my head back. "Now, you are going to apologize to Brittany."

The pain was a distant thing. All I could see were the ruined sunflowers. All I could feel was a black, bottomless pit opening up inside me.

He shook my head. "Apologize, Chloe. Say you're sorry."

I looked up at him then, my eyes meeting his. I saw the rage, the entitlement, the absolute certainty that he had won. That he had broken me.

And I started to laugh.

It was a strange, broken sound, bubbling up from the emptiness inside me. I laughed until tears streamed down my face.

He let go of my hair, taking a step back as if I were a venomous snake. "What's so funny?"

I looked at the destroyed painting, at Brittany hiding behind him, at his furious, confused face.

"You really don't get it, do you?" I said, my voice thick with a combination of laughter and grief. "You have nothing left. There is nothing you can take from me anymore."

Brittany, ever the instigator, whispered, "Jake, she' s lost it. Maybe you should call her doctor. Or her mother... oh, wait."

I shot to my feet. "You," I spat, pointing a bleeding finger at her. "You have no idea what my mother went through. She was in a trial for a new drug. It was working. It was giving her more time."

Jake frowned. "That's not what the doctors told me."

"Because you never bothered to ask!" I screamed. "You just saw the bill and decided it was too much to pay for the woman who raised the person you claimed to love."

He stood there, silent, his arrogance finally cracking.

He pulled out his phone. "I'll handle this," he muttered, turning away from me. "I'll call the hospital. I'll sort out the insurance."

I just watched him, my heart a block of ice.