Chapter 2: The Screams of the Innocent
Victoria’s head snapped toward the bedroom door, her arrogant supremacy instantly startled by the sudden, unauthorized disruption inside her home. Before she could even lift her metal heel from Clara’s bleeding hand, the double doors of the master suite were violently kicked inward, splintering against the drywall.
Standing on the threshold was Leo Sterling-Colby.
His custom Italian suit was wrinkled, his tie torn away, his hair wild from running through the airport terminal. But it was his face that caused the atmosphere inside the room to instantly plummet to absolute zero. His features were distorted with a terrifying, protective rage that turned his eyes into two pieces of burning, lethal arctic ice.
The moment Leo’s eyes traveled across the ivory carpet, bypassing the scattered pills and the broken glass, and locked onto his bruised, weeping wife pinned beneath his mother’s black high heel, the color completely and permanently drained from his face.
"WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY WIFE?!" Leo demanded, his voice erupting like a physical shockwave, a raw, trembling roar of pure, unmitigated rage that shook the crystal chandelier above.
Victoria completely froze, her face turning a sickening, translucent shade of ash-grey as her son closed the distance between them in two massive, explosive strides. For the first time in her thirty-year reign over the banking empire, the cruel matriarch looked up, her heart hammering against her ribs in pure, unadulterated terror.
Before Victoria could manufacture a single lying, manipulative corporate explanation, Leo reached forward with his powerful hands, grabbed his mother by the shoulders of her tailored suit, and violently hurled her away from his wife.
BAM.
The sheer physical kinetic velocity of the shove sent Victoria flying backward four feet before her body crashed brutally against her own antique marble fireplace mantle. Her pearls caught on the stone edge, the high-tension string snapping instantly, sending hundreds of multi-thousand-dollar white gems cascading across the floor like a hail of ceramic shrapnel. She collapsed onto her side on the hard floor, gasping for air, her tailored suit covered in ash and soot as her son stood between her and the woman she had tortured.
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The furious son and the abusive mother stood face to face, the twisted, violent, and predatory reality of their pristine family completely and permanently exposed to the light.
"Leo... Leo, my son, listen to me!" Victoria shrieked, her voice rising into a high-pitched, pathetic howl as she clutched her bruised ribs, her pristine social status completely vaporized in under ninety seconds. "She’s a fraud! She was trying to destroy herself to frame me! She’s unstable, Leo! I was just trying to manage her medication! I am your mother! I built this empire for you!
