The basement lock turned slowly, and for one terrified second I wondered if Barrett had come back to finish whatever lesson he thought I needed.
I tried to push myself upright.
Pain ripped through my ribs so violently that my arm gave out beneath me.
The door opened.
Light flooded down the concrete steps.
A broad silhouette appeared at the top.
He didn’t speak immediately.
Neither did I.
Twenty years is a long time to avoid your father.
Long enough to convince yourself that a childhood voice will become unfamiliar, that a face will fade, that blood can be negotiated away if you build enough distance around it.
Then Dominic Romano came down those stairs, and I knew him before the light reached his face.
He was older.
His hair had gone mostly silver.
The shoulders I remembered seemed heavier rather than weaker.
He wore a dark overcoat over an open-collared shirt, and behind him stood Rocco, the name I had heard him shout over the phone.
But my father saw only me.
His expression changed when he reached the bottom step.
He looked at the way I was curled around my side.
At the bruise forming along my arm.
At my bare feet against the dirty concrete.
“Mallory.”
There was no menace in his voice then.
Only horror.
I tried to say, “I’m okay.”
The lie barely came out.
He crouched several feet away instead of grabbing me.
“Don’t move,” he said.
“Paramedics are coming in.”
That surprised me.
Some part of me had expected twenty years of whispered stories to explode through my front door in the form of violence.
Instead, Dominic had called emergency services before reaching the house.
Rocco stayed on the stairs while two paramedics came down with equipment.
My father stepped aside and let them work.
One of them asked where it hurt.
I touched my left side.
“He kicked me.”
The words changed Dominic’s face.
Not dramatically.
That was what made it frightening.
His jaw tightened once.
“And I fell down three steps,” I added.
“He pushed me into the basement.”
The paramedic told me not to move unnecessarily.
They checked my breathing, stabilized me, and prepared to take me upstairs.
When they lifted me, I screamed.
I couldn’t help it.
Dominic turned away for half a second.
When he looked back, whatever emotion had crossed his face was locked down again.
At the top of the stairs, Barrett was standing in the hallway.
Taryn hovered several feet behind him in my robe.
My housekeeper stood near the kitchen entrance with both hands clasped tightly in front of her.
Two police officers had arrived with the paramedics.
And suddenly the house Barrett had controlled an hour earlier did not belong to his voice anymore.
“This is insane,” he said.
“She’s making this sound worse than it was.”
One officer looked at me on the stretcher.
