Chapter 4 - The Truth in the Dark
While Victoria paced the living room, plotting her defense, Ethan returned to the study. Dr. Cho was just wrapping up her examination.
“How is she, Helen?” Ethan asked, his heart heavy.
Dr. Cho looked at him with a mixture of pity and anger. “She’s severely malnourished, Ethan. Her blood sugar is dangerously low, and she has signs of mild dehydration. But the physical abuse is what worries me. She has defense wounds on her forearms—bruises that match the grip of someone violently shaking her. And there are older, healed burn marks on her palms.”
“Burns?” Ethan’s blood ran cold. “From what?”
“They look like steam burns. Perhaps from hot water, or a hot iron,” Dr. Cho said softly. “She wouldn’t tell me how she got them. She kept saying she was clumsy. But she’s terrified of your wife, Ethan. Every time the door opened, her heart rate spiked to dangerous levels.”
Ethan closed his eyes, fighting back the urge to destroy the room. I did this, he thought. I trusted the wrong person, and my mother paid the price.
He walked over to his mother’s side, kneeling beside her. Margaret was sleeping now, her breathing shallow but steady under the influence of a mild sedative.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” he whispered, kissing her rough, scarred hand. “I’m so sorry.”
He stood up and walked out to the hallway, where Marcus was waiting.
“Marcus, I want the security footage from the last six months,” Ethan commanded.
Marcus hesitated. “Sir... Mrs. Victoria ordered the security team to delete all backyard and kitchen footage every forty-eight hours. She said it was for privacy.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “And did they?”
Marcus smiled, a cold, professional smirk. “Our security team is paid by you, Mr. Cole, not her. We kept a secret, encrypted backup of all servers on a private cloud. We have every single second of footage from the day you married her.”
“Get it,” Ethan said. “Set up a monitor in the study. Let’s see what my wife has been doing while I was building our empire.”
An hour later, Ethan sat in the dark study, watching the monitor.
The footage was a horror movie.
He saw Victoria slapping his mother across the face when Margaret accidentally spilled a drop of tea. He saw Victoria forcing his mother to scrub the marble floors on her knees while Victoria poured dirty water over her head, laughing with her maid. He saw Victoria locking Margaret in the tiny, windowless laundry room overnight, leaving her in the dark without food or water.
And the most sickening part: Victoria’s voice playing through the speakers.
“You’re nothing but a dirty peasant, Margaret. Your son is a billionaire, but you’ll always be trash. If you tell him one word, I will make sure his company goes bankrupt. My father can ruin him in a day. Do you want to see your precious son on the street again?”
Margaret had stayed silent to protect him. She had suffered through hell so her son wouldn’t lose his dream.
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Ethan slammed his fist onto the mahogany desk, cracking the polished wood.
“Marcus,” Ethan whispered, his voice shaking with a terrifying, absolute fury. “Begin Phase One. I want Victoria’s father ruined by tomorrow morning. And as for my wife... make sure she can’t leave the estate.”
