Chapter 4

Wren had both hands around my throat. I struggled to breathe as I tried to pull them away.

"W-What are you talking about?"

Wren shoved me aside angrily and kicked at the coffee table. "Xavier told me everything! You attacked him like a lunatic earlier! He'd just taken Leo to the pharmacy to get his wound treated, and the next thing he knew, Leo was gone!"

"Who else would kidnap a kid if not you?!"

Amidst my violent coughing fit, I stared at the furious woman before me in disbelief. "I didn't even leave the house! Wren, are you crazy?"

"You're the crazy one!" Wren's eyes were bloodshot as she growled at me. "You've been spraying me with alcohol every day for the past six months. Your mind is twisted. Now, you're even going after an innocent kid too! Call back the people you hired. Now!"

I gritted my teeth and backed away. "I told you, I haven't seen him! If you can't take it, then divorce me!"

I turned toward the table to grab the divorce papers.

Wren suddenly grabbed me by the back of my collar. "You're not going anywhere today until you tell me where Leo is!"

Years of intense training had left her frighteningly strong. One hard tug tore my shirt open, sending the buttons flying across the floor, and my upper body was immediately exposed to the cold air. She dragged me toward the bathroom.

I panicked and tried to break free. "Wren, what the hell are you doing? Let go of me!"

For one awful second, the hands of those women in the alley felt exactly like Wren's.

"I'm going to knock some sense into you since you won't tell me where Leo is." Wren kicked the bathroom door open and threw me into the cold bathtub. Then she turned on the shower, and freezing water came crashing down over my head.

I choked on the water and struggled to get out. "Help…"

Wren yanked the belt from around her waist, pulled my hands behind my back, and tied them tight to the metal bar on the side of the tub.

I thrashed around in the icy water, my whole body trembling uncontrollably as Wren turned and grabbed the large bottle of rubbing alcohol from under the sink. She twisted off the cap and poured the sharp-smelling liquid over my head.

"You love using alcohol to torture me, right? Tell me! Where is Leo?"

The strong smell of alcohol hit me so hard I could barely breathe, and my eyes burned from the fumes.

But Wren didn't care. She grabbed my head and forced me under the water.

I choked, barely able to make a sound. My stomach, which had always given me problems, cramped up hard.

"Ouch…"

A sharp, stabbing pain tore through my stomach. Then a bloody, metallic sweetness rushed up my throat. I coughed up a mouthful of blood, and after all the struggling and hitting against the tub, I felt something warm spreading beneath me.

The warmth mixed with the cold bathwater, staining it bright red. I just stared at it. The pain was so bad I forgot to struggle.

Just then, Wren's phone, which she'd tossed onto the sink, rang.

The police officer's helpless voice came through the phone. "Hi, Ms. Sinclair, your kid isn't missing. He went up to the top floor of the mall by himself to play on the slides. When we found him, he was eating ice cream.

"You lost track of your own kid, then made us chase around investigating a kidnapping and murder that never happened. Aren't you just wasting our time?"

For a moment, the only sound in the bathroom was the water spraying from the shower.

The phone and the bottle slipped from Wren's hands and hit the floor at the same time. She turned toward me, her face pale.