They Broke Me, I Hid His Son novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Two Hundred Witnesses
At the Wexley gala a forged recording plays, Quentin lets the jade bangle he was about to give her family drop, and Sabina walks out in front of two hundred people with a shard in her fist.
The recording started at nine o'clock, in front of two hundred guests at the Wexley Foundation spring gala.
It was my voice.
"The Wexleys are old money fools," my voice said, through every speaker in the ballroom. "Quentin has soft hands, and I plan to use them."
I stood at the foot of the stage in the green dress Quentin had picked out for me, size twenty, and I couldn't move.
Behind me, someone laughed.
He was on the stage with the microphone in his hand.
He had been about to announce our engagement.
That morning his mother had fastened a jade bangle on my wrist in her sitting room.
"Four generations of Wexley women have worn this," she said. "Wear it tonight and nobody will ever doubt where you belong."
She squeezed my hand. "Whatever you hear tonight, stay next to him."
I thought she meant the speech.
The recording kept going.
It called me a bookworm who had finally found a rich man who didn't mind my body.
It said I'd have the Foundation's money by Christmas.
Then the screens above the stage lit up with a bank page.
Four hundred thousand dollars had moved from the Wexley Foundation into an account in my name.
I had never seen that account in my life.
My stepbrother, Rocco Bellandi, stood up from table four.
He had called me names in his father's house since the week I moved in at fifteen. The Sack. Hippo. Dinner plate.
He walked to the stage with a black flash drive between two fingers and held it up to Quentin.
"There's more on this," Rocco said. "I only got it this afternoon."
His left hand moved to his cuff and twisted it with two fingers, the way it always did when he was angry.
On the stage, Quentin's left hand did the same thing.
I had seen him do it a hundred times and never thought about it.
He came down the steps. The guests parted for him. Phones were already up.
"Is it true, Sabina?" he asked.
His voice was so quiet that only the front tables heard it. The back tables would watch it on their screens.
"No," I said. "That's my voice, but I never said those words. I've never seen that account. Quentin, look at me."
He looked at me.
It lasted as long as one breath. I watched him decide.
Then he took my wrist, undid the clasp of the bangle himself, and opened his hand.
The jade hit the marble and broke into three pieces and a spray of green chips.
"Get out," he said.
Somebody near the bar said, "No wonder she needed the money."
Somebody else said, "Look at his face. He really loved her."
I crouched down in my green dress, with two hundred phones pointed at me, and picked up the biggest piece.
It was the curve of the clasp, as long as my thumb.
The edge was sharp.
I closed my fist on it and blood ran down my wrist.
"You can keep the rest," I said.
Rocco was smiling at the edge of the stage. I looked at him, then at Quentin, who was staring at the chips on the floor.
I had been bullied for seven years by one man and loved for one year by the other.
Both of them had just spent the same minute breaking me.
I walked the whole length of the ballroom.
Nobody stepped aside until a waiter with a tray moved out of my way.
Outside, rain was coming down on the hotel steps. My phone was already buzzing with the clip. A message from my department head said: Your fellowship is suspended pending review.
A black car pulled up at the curb and the driver got out with an umbrella.
"Mrs. Wexley asked me to give you this, Miss Brunner," he said.
It was a thick envelope.
Her pearl-grey stationery was folded inside.
There was a one-way ticket to Zurich, a stack of cash and a name written in her careful hand. The name belonged to the director of a research institute I had once written to and never heard back from.
The note said: Go tonight, dear. He won't look for you. I'm so sorry. I believe you. Constance.
She was the only person in that ballroom who had said it.
My stepfather's house was the only other place I could go, and Rocco would be there by midnight.
I thought about the three pieces of jade on the marble and about the man who had dropped them.
So I took the ticket.
I stood under the umbrella with blood on the envelope and read it through.
At the corner of the page, the airline's print said: Issued 6:04 a.m. today.
I was too cold to read it twice.
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