Chapter 1 - THE BRICK
“Let’s see if Wyatt still loves you after he sees your face,” my mother said with a cruel smile.
Then she laughed.
A cold, heartless laugh I knew I would never forget.
Before I could react, my father swung his arm.
A heavy brick slammed into my face.
One second earlier, I had been standing on the cracked sidewalk outside my parents’ house in Columbus, wearing a light blue dress I had bought especially for our family dinner.
Wyatt and I were finally going to announce our wedding date.
The next second, everything turned white.
The sound was not loud.
It was worse than that.
A sickening crunch, dry and wet at the same time, like something inside my head had shattered.
A wave of burning pain tore across my face.
Warm blood poured from my left eyebrow, ran down my cheek, and dripped onto my lips.
My knees gave way beneath me.
Just before my face hit the concrete steps, Wyatt Campbell caught me in his arms.
“Sadie! Look at me! Please, don’t leave me, Sadie!”
His voice was full of panic.
I tried to open my left eye.
I could not see anything.
Only darkness.
With my right eye, I looked across the yard.
My mother, Brenda, stood beside the old swing set.
She was not frightened.
She was not calling an ambulance.
She was not even coming to help me.
She simply stood there laughing.
My father, Gregory Davis, casually dropped the broken half of the brick onto the grass.
“I warned you,” he said calmly, as if he had just shut a door instead of smashing his own daughter’s face.
Wyatt slowly looked up at him.
“What did you just do?” he demanded.
No one answered.
The front door opened, and my younger sister, Melanie, walked outside.
She wore an expensive dress, her nails freshly done, her face more irritated than worried, as though my blood had interrupted her evening.
“I told you he wasn’t going to change his mind,” Melanie said, folding her arms.
My mother sighed and brushed off her clothes.
“We tried talking to him nicely,” Brenda said.
Wyatt carefully leaned me against one of the porch columns before standing to face them.
“You people are sick.”
My father smiled.
“No,” Gregory replied, pointing at Melanie. “You’re just engaged to the wrong daughter.”
Even through the pounding pain in my head, those words hurt more than the brick.
“What?” Wyatt asked.
“Melanie should have been the one you chose,” my mother said coldly. “Sadie has always been selfish.”
Melanie looked down at me with a cruel smile.
“And yet,” she said to Wyatt, “you still picked her.”
Wyatt pulled out his phone.
“I’m calling 911.”
Before he could dial, my father kicked the phone out of his hand.
It flew across the porch and crashed into the doorway, the screen shattering.
“No one’s calling anybody,” Gregory growled.
Wyatt shoved him backward.
My father exploded with rage and lunged at him.
The two men crashed into the rose bushes, wrestling violently.
Neither my mother nor Melanie screamed.
Neither tried to stop the fight.
They simply stood there and watched, as though everything was happening exactly the way they had planned.
Lying there in terrible pain, I suddenly realized something that made my blood run cold.
This was not a sudden burst of anger.
It was not a terrible mistake.
It had all been planned.
Everything had changed after Wyatt sold his construction company and became a millionaire.
My family started hunting him.
First came the dinners.
Then fake compliments.
Forced kindness.
Then Melanie began “accidentally” running into Wyatt everywhere.
His gym.
His office.
His favorite coffee shop.
Outside our apartment building.
Every single time, Wyatt rejected her.
Eventually, he blocked her everywhere.
Melanie told my parents I was manipulating him and keeping him away from the family.
As Wyatt struggled with my father in the bushes, Gregory shouted, “Either you marry Melanie, or you’re no longer part of this family!”
“I love Sadie!” Wyatt yelled back.
Melanie shrugged.
“It’ll pass.”
Just then, an electrician’s truck pulled up in front of the house.
A worker stepped out.
The moment he saw me lying in my own blood, his face turned pale.
He grabbed his phone.
“I’m calling an ambulance right now!”
My father marched toward him aggressively.
The electrician raised one finger.
“Take one more step, and I’ll tell the 911 operator you’re attacking me too.”
Gregory stopped.
For the first time that evening, someone had stood up to him.
Sirens came minutes later.
Paramedics rushed over and carefully lifted me onto a stretcher.
As the ambulance doors were about to close, I looked back one last time at my parents’ house.
A curtain moved in the living room window.
Standing behind the glass was an old man I had never seen before.
His hand trembled as he pressed it against the window.
Almost as if he wanted to warn me.
Or tell me something important.
May you like
Before I could understand who he was, the curtain slowly closed.
I had no idea that seeing him would change my life forever.
