Each of them wore thousand-dollar business suits along with luxury watches that gleamed beneath the unforgiving fluorescent lights inside the hospital room.
Their faces carried those polished, superior smiles belonging only to people convinced they owned everyone around them.
Patricia adjusted her sparkling diamond earrings before looking directly at me with a smirk carefully designed to make me feel unimportant.
“Colonel Gardner, I am afraid your daughter has had another one of her little emotional episodes tonight,” she said, her voice sounding like ice.
She lazily gestured toward Abigail, whose trembling fingers were gripping the front of my uniform jacket with every ounce of strength remaining.
“She simply fell down the stairs in our foyer, and nobody in this room touched her,” Patricia continued, lying as effortlessly as someone who had never heard the word no.
Abigail clung to me even tighter before lifting terrified eyes toward my face.
“That is not true Mom, they locked me inside the basement guest suite for three days without food,” she sobbed.
“They took my phone away and told me that if I ever tried to leave Nicholas, they would ru!n my reputation in the press,” she added.
Nicholas rolled his eyes before releasing an exhausted sigh, as though dealing with a spoiled child throwing another fit.
“Abigail has always been way too sensitive about every little thing,” he said, turning toward his brother for agreement.
Gregory laughed briefly before casually leaning his shoulder against the doorframe.
“Some women just simply lack the class and strength required to marry into a family of our stature,” he said with a grin.
I never released my daughter for even a moment, remaining exactly where I stood while staring straight at all three of them.
Patricia stepped forward, lowering her voice into a dangerous whisper filled with quiet menace.
“Let us not make this situation any more unpleasant than it already is, Rachel,” she threatened.
“Our family has very powerful friends in the high courts, the local media, and the state government offices,” she added.
She invaded my personal space, carrying the unmistakable scent of expensive perfume mixed with something strangely rotten.
“Your military rank and your fancy ribbons do not impress people like us,” she said with a sneer.
Gregory flashed me another smug smile while casually adjusting his polished cufflinks.
“Just take your daughter home and be grateful that we are not currently suing her for total defamation of our family name,” he said.
I studied each one of them in silence, my expression staying perfectly blank and impossible to read.
I remained silent, composed, and unsettlingly still, wearing the same expression I gave an enemy moments before authorizing an airstrike.
They mistook my silence for weakness, and that became the greatest mistake they would ever make throughout their pathetic lives
