Sayla stirred and I glanced at her again.
Her eyes were still closed.
Her face was at least four different colours.
Sayla Lawder. Daughter of Nada Dagher and Declan Lawder. Middle child of three. When I’d first had her looked into I couldn’t believe how clean the report came back. I remembered turning the page over, checking for more, finding the file simply—empty. Nothing. Not even a speeding violation.
I smiled at that.
I’d thought perhaps she might be the thing that shifted something in Gabe. When Helena and I had married young I’d had nothing but hunger and intention. The responsibility of a family had focused me, sharpened everything. I’d hoped the same might be true for him.
Now here she was. Broken and bruised on a bed in my house.
And she was still as tempting as she had been two years ago.
With a sigh, I stood.
I’d let them marry and play house for a while.
It was time for Daddy to clean up everyone's mess, including my own.
???
Every step she took was laboured. The bruising would have set in overnight—the punches alone would have seen to that, but it was the fractured rib from the kicking that would make every breath a negotiation. There was no fever. She hadn’t been coughing up anything concerning. That was something at least.
I waited until I heard her reach the ground floor before I went to retrieve her. She’d slept over twenty hours and would be hungry. It was the perfect time to interrogate her.
She took a moment at the bottom of the stairs to straighten her back and breathe. Her hand moved to her abdomen, favouring her right side. Her black eye was to the left. The full inventory of what my son had done to her was laid out in front of me without apology.
The brutality of her beating was uncontested.
She wasn’t at a police station.
She hadn’t travelled back to her parents.
Sayla Kersey had come to me.
“Mrs Davis will have your food ready soon, but I believe we need to have a conversation first,” I said.
She startled. Her head jerked up.
Eye contact didn’t last.
Her eyes fell to the floor before she moved forward. Quietly. Carefully. The way something does when it has learned that stillness is safer than movement.
The next six weeks would be difficult for her.
She shuffled past me into the drawing room and I almost reached out to touch her dark hair. Almost.
That was the problem with playing the long game. When the noose was set to tighten, impatience was detrimental. It would do no good to spook her.
Not when I was so close.
Her movements were slow. She winced as she lowered herself onto the couch, one hand braced against the armrest, the other pressed instinctively to her ribs.
“The rib will take four to five weeks to heal,” I said, taking a seat across from her.
Hair fell over her face as she glanced up.