He Laughed While I Was Hit novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Five Slaps
Britta is held and slapped five times while her husband laughs, then she walks out, revokes the license that runs his company, and finds a rival at her kitchen counter.
My sister-in-law slapped me five times in the Venturi boardroom, and my husband laughed at every one.
Two of Rocco's bodyguards stood behind me and held my arms.
I could not step back, and I could not raise a hand.
Fiorella Venturi had small hands, and she hit hard.
The first slap landed on my left cheek, and my head snapped sideways.
The second landed on my right.
Rocco sat at the head of the table with one ankle on his knee, and he laughed.
"Fiorella found you in her room again, Britta," he had said, before it began. "That's twice this month. She needs to get it out of her system."
I had gone through her room twice, because I thought she was sleeping with my husband.
I still thought so.
The third slap made my ears ring.
The fourth split my lip.
Fiorella stopped and shook out her wrist.
Rocco lifted his phone and took a photo of my face.
Then he nodded at her, and she gave me the fifth.
Two department managers sat at the far end of the table with their eyes on the wood.
Neither of them said a word.
When it was over, Rocco opened a bottle of water and put it in Fiorella's hand.
"Feel better?" he asked her, and his voice was gentle.
Her phone buzzed on the table.
The lock screen showed a small boy in a school sweater.
Rocco picked the phone up, looked at the boy, and slid it into his jacket pocket.
Fiorella watched his hand go into the pocket, and her face went still.
Then she looked at me over the bottle.
She did not look angry or glad.
She looked sorry for me, and that was worse than hate.
"Did you hurt your hand?" Rocco asked her, and he took it and turned it over under the light.
Nobody had looked at my face yet.
"Britta," he said at last, in the voice he used on waiters. "Stay out of Fiorella's things. Do you hear me?"
The bodyguards let go.
I tasted blood and did not wipe it.
I looked at my husband until he shifted in his chair.
"That's enough," he said. "Go home. Don't make a scene."
A scene.
I took my coat from the hook by the door.
Fiorella stood right beside the hook and did not move, so I had to reach past her.
Her sleeve brushed my coat pocket.
I did not look at her again.
I walked out past the managers, past the receptionist, and into the elevator.
The doors closed on my face in the mirror.
My left cheek was swollen and my right was blotched red.
A thin line of blood ran from the corner of my mouth.
I was Britta Solheim, twenty-eight years old, and I had been married to Rocco Venturi for three years.
Rocco had stood beside me at a hundred dinners and called me the smartest woman he knew.
Today I learned what he would pay to keep me from being hurt, and the price was nothing.
The elevator opened on the lobby.
I walked out onto Sixth Avenue and the wind stung my lip.
I did not cry.
I stood on the curb and took out my phone with a hand that was perfectly steady.
The first call went to my patent lawyer.
"Britta? What's wrong with your voice?"
"Revoke it," I said. "The sterile-fill license, every plant, effective now."
Three years ago, on the morning of our wedding, I had licensed my process to Venturi Packaging for one dollar.
My lawyer had made me keep one clause, and Rocco had called it silly.
The clause said I could end the license on any day I chose, for any reason.
"You understand every Venturi line runs on it," my lawyer said. "They'll stop by morning."
"Send it to my phone. I'll sign with my thumb."
The second call went to Brennan Doyle.
His grocery chain bought sixty percent of everything Venturi's plants put out, and he had asked me to dinner twice, and twice I had said I was married.
He picked up on the first ring.
"Britta."
"The license is gone as of tonight," I said. "If you stop taking Venturi's shipments, Rocco has nothing to sell."
He was quiet for a moment, and then I heard a car door.
"I've seen the photo," he said. "Somebody on their board sent it around the office an hour ago, as a joke."
My stomach turned over.
"Where are you?"
"Sixth Avenue."
"Don't move. I'm eight blocks away."
The third call went to the super of my old building in Brooklyn.
I had kept my studio there for three years and never told Rocco it was still mine.
"Change the lock on 4C tonight," I said. "Don't give anyone the new key but me."
Brennan's car pulled up.
He got out, took one look at my face, and went very still.
He did not say anything stupid. He took off his coat and put it around my shoulders.
That night I did not go back to the Venturi house.
I slept in my old bed, in my own place, with a bag of frozen peas on my cheek.
At seven the next morning, Brennan came back with coffee and my lawyer's signed papers.
At eight, someone knocked on my door.
I opened it.
Rocco stood on my landing with a bouquet of red roses in one hand and his phone in the other.
The phone was on speaker, and half a dozen men were shouting from it.
"Your wife pulled the license! Every line is down!"
"The chain won't take a single pallet! We're finished, Rocco!"
He gave me his best smile.
"Britta, baby. Tell them it was a misunderstanding."
"No," I said.
His smile slid.
Then he looked over my shoulder, into my apartment, and saw Brennan Doyle standing at my kitchen counter with a coffee cup.
For the first time in three years, my husband was not laughing.
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