Anna tried to pull away. “Marcus, let me go,” she pleaded softly.

“I said, let’s go!” he roared, and in that moment, his hand flew up.

The slap was sudden and hard. A sharp, explosive pain erupted on her cheek, and the world swam before her eyes. She staggered, barely catching herself on the back of a chair. The room fell into a dead silence. Arthur and Eleanor both looked away, their complicity a familiar, suffocating blanket. They never intervened. They never judged. They simply pretended nothing had happened.

But Anna’s reaction was not what they expected.