Chapter 5

 

The sound of that slap bounced off every wall in the dining room like a gunshot. Jazmin stumbled sideways, her hand flying to her cheek, her eyes so wide they looked like they were about to fall out of her skull. A bright red handprint was already blooming across the left side of her face, and her mouth hung open in a silent scream that took a full three seconds to find its voice.

Then she screamed. Loud, shrill, and so full of disbelief it barely sounded human.

I wasn't in control. I could feel my own body moving, feel the sting in my palm, but none of it was me. Xiomara was running the show, and she was enjoying every second of it.

The rest of the Montero family was on their feet in an instant. Chairs scraped against marble. Every pair of eyes in the room was locked on me with the kind of shock that comes from seeing something you never thought was possible.

Because I had never hit anyone. Not once in all the years I had lived under this roof. The old Mia would have cried in the bathroom and pretended everything was fine.

But Xiomara was not the old Mia.

"What... what did you just..." Fernanda's voice came out in broken pieces, her face drained of color, her fingers gripping the edge of the table so hard her knuckles had gone white.

Xiomara turned my head toward her slowly, deliberately, and fixed her with a stare so cold it could have frozen the chandelier above our heads. Fernanda's mouth snapped shut like a trap, and she sank back into her chair without finishing the sentence.

I watched it all from somewhere behind my own eyes, half terrified and half fascinated. Xiomara didn't rush. She didn't raise her voice. She simply pulled out a chair, sat down, crossed my legs, and folded my hands in my lap like a queen settling onto her throne.

"Now," Xiomara spoke through my mouth, her voice coming out low and smooth and completely unrecognizable as mine. "Is dinner being served, or are we just going to stand around staring at each other all night?"

Silence. Total, suffocating silence.

Then Veronica let out a sharp scoff from the far end of the table. Alejandro's younger sister, the famous actress. She sat with her arms crossed and her chin lifted, looking at me with smug superiority.

"And who might you be?" Xiomara turned toward her with a look of polite confusion that was so convincing even I almost believed it.

Veronica's jaw dropped. Her perfectly penciled eyebrows shot up toward her hairline, and a flush of angry pink spread across her cheeks. "Excuse me? You don't know who I am? I'm Veronica Montero. I'm on television. My face is literally everywhere."

"Is it?" Xiomara tilted my head, studying Veronica the way you study a stain on a tablecloth you're about to throw away. "Funny. It doesn't ring a bell."

"You're playing games!" Veronica's voice pitched higher, her composure cracking at the edges. "You're doing this for attention, aren't you? Slapping Jazmin, pretending you don't know me. This is all some desperate little act to make yourself relevant."

Xiomara didn't bother responding to that. She simply turned back to the table and reached for the water pitcher.

That was when Jazmin made her move.

I felt it before I saw it. The rush of movement from the left, heels clicking fast against marble. Jazmin was charging toward me with her hand raised, her eyes blazing with fury, every line of her body screaming that she was going to return that slap with interest.

But Xiomara was faster. Without even looking, she caught Jazmin's wrist in midair. For a moment they stood frozen, Jazmin's arm suspended, her face twisted with shock.

Then Xiomara squeezed. Jazmin's knees buckled and a whimper escaped through her teeth.

"Let me make something very clear." Xiomara's voice dropped to barely above a whisper, and somehow that was worse than if she had screamed. "You will never raise your hand to me again. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever. Because the next time you try, I won't just catch it. I'll break it."

She released Jazmin's wrist with a shove that sent her stumbling backward into the edge of the table. Glasses rattled. Silverware clinked. Nobody moved.

"And while we're at it," Xiomara continued, straightening the napkin on my lap, "let me remind all of you of something you seem to have forgotten. I am the wife of Alejandro Montero. That makes me the only woman at this table who actually matters. The rest of you are guests eating food paid for with my husband's name. So unless you want to find out what happens when I stop being polite, I suggest you sit down, shut up, and eat your dinner."

A young girl at the far corner of the table, no older than eight or nine, broke the silence with a tiny, enthusiastic nod. "She's right, you know." Her small voice carried clearly across the room. "Tia Jazmin was the one who started it."

Jazmin whipped around toward the child with murder in her eyes, but before she could say a word, Xiomara fixed her with another look that stopped her dead in her tracks.

"Smart girl," Xiomara murmured with the faintest trace of a smile, glancing at the child before turning her attention back to Fernanda. "Now, you. The one who stutters."

Fernanda flinched so hard her chair screeched against the floor. "I... I didn't... I wasn't going to..."

"Oh, I think you were." Xiomara rose from the chair, and every person in the room stepped backward. She moved toward Fernanda slowly. "I saw the way you looked at me when I walked in. The eye roll. The whisper to your sister. You think I didn't notice?"

Fernanda's lips were trembling, her eyes darting toward the doorway like she was calculating whether she could outrun me.

Xiomara raised my hand.

And then... nothing.

The hand stopped. My eyes went blank. The coldness drained out of my face like water through a crack, and suddenly I was blinking, confused, standing in the middle of the dining room with my arm raised and no idea why.

Xiomara was gone. The shift had reversed without warning, and I was back in full control of a body that was standing in a room full of people who looked like they had just watched me commit a crime.

"Why..." I lowered my hand slowly, my voice coming out small and bewildered. "Why is everyone staring at me?"

Nobody answered. Jazmin was clutching her wrist against her chest, her face streaked with tears. Fernanda was pressed against the back of her chair like she was trying to melt through it. Veronica's mouth was hanging open so wide I could count her molars.

"I don't understand," I whispered, looking around the room with genuine confusion that I couldn't fake even if I tried. "I don't remember coming downstairs. I don't remember any of this. Did something happen? Why is Jazmin crying?"

"Oh, please!" Veronica slammed her palm on the table, her voice shaking with barely contained rage. "Don't you dare stand there and pretend you don't remember! You slapped her! You threatened her! You insulted all of us! And now you're going to play the innocent victim?"

"She's faking it!" Fernanda found her voice at last, her words tumbling out fast and high. "She's obviously faking it to avoid the consequences! Nobody just forgets something like that!"

I opened my mouth to defend myself, but the words died on my lips because I knew how insane it would sound. My heart was hammering. Every face in the room was turned toward me with suspicion and anger, and I could feel the walls closing in.

Then a deep, heavy voice cut through the chaos like a blade through silk.

"That is enough."

The sharp crack of a walking stick against marble rang through the dining room, and every single person in the room went rigid. Slowly, with the kind of authority that doesn't need to be loud to be terrifying, the formidable patriarch of the Montero family stepped into the room. Jazmin broke away from the group instantly, rushing to his side with fresh tears pouring down her face.

"Grandpa! Grandpa, she hit me!" Jazmin clung to the old man's arm, her voice dissolving into sobs. "Alejandro's wife slapped me in front of everyone! She threatened to break my hand! She called us all nobodies! You have to do something!"