Chapter 7 - Daniel’s Phone Call Breaks Through
As if summoned by the sheer weight of Thomas’s threat, my cell phone began vibrating violently against the counter next to the sink. I glanced down at the illuminated screen and saw my husband’s name flashing: Daniel - Working Out of State.
I pressed the accept button and put the call on speaker so everyone in the room could hear every single syllable. “Lila? Thank God you picked up,” Daniel’s voice rushed through the speaker, breathless and laced with absolute panic.
“Daniel,” I said evenly, keeping my eyes fixed on Arthur sitting in handcuffs across the room. “Where are you right now?”
“I’m boarding a red-eye flight out of Chicago right now; my company meetings got canceled early,” Daniel explained rapidly. “My mother just called me screaming that the police are at the house and Arthur is in handcuffs. What on earth is happening?”
“Your parents locked our nine-year-old son out in a blizzard because Mason framed him for stealing a watch,” I stated plainly into the receiver. There was a sickening, heavy silence on the other end of the line that lasted for nearly ten endless seconds.
“Lila... are you telling me the truth?” Daniel’s voice dropped into a terrifying, icy register that I had rarely heard in our ten years of marriage. “Did my father actually put Noah out in that storm?”
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“Ask him yourself,” I replied, gesturing toward Arthur with a flick of my wrist. “He’s sitting right here in Treatment Room Four in handcuffs while Officer Ruiz processes his felony arrest paperwork.”
“Put him on the phone right now,” Daniel commanded, his voice shaking with a rage that completely eclipsed my own. Officer Ruiz hesitated for a moment before leaning over and holding the cell phone directly up to Arthur’s ear.
