Chapter 4 - THE TRAP CLOSES
By five o'clock that evening, the autumn sky over San Antonio had turned the color of a bruised plum.
I was sitting in the living room reading a picture book to Sofie when the front doorbell rang. The little girl looked up from her crayons, her big dark eyes wide with sudden tension.
“Daddy’s home,” she whispered, her small shoulders tensing under her pink cardigan. “He’s going to be mad about the toys.”
“No, sweetheart,” I said, stroking her curls with a gentle, reassuring touch. “Daddy isn't going to be mad ever again. Come here, let’s go into the kitchen and get some apple juice.”
I led Sofie into the kitchen just as the front door swung open and Damian stepped inside.
He looked exhausted, his tie loose, his suit jacket slung over one shoulder. But as he slammed the front door shut, the sound of multiple footsteps echoed from the foyer.
Three men in sharp charcoal suits stepped out from the hallway into the living room, blocking the front exit.
Damian stopped dead in his tracks, dropping his briefcase with a loud thud.
“What the hell is this?” he barked, his face turning crimson as he stared at the strangers standing in his living room. “Who let you in? Get out of my house before I call the police!”
“You don't need to call the police, Mr. Reyes,” a tall, silver-haired man said calmly, stepping forward and flashing a leather badge and legal identification folder. “I am Julian Vance, senior counsel representing your wife, Lydia Reyes. You are being served with an emergency restraining order, an immediate asset freeze on all corporate and personal accounts associated with Reyes General Contracting, and a temporary injunction granting sole residential occupancy and child custody to Mrs. Reyes.”
Damian staggered backward as if he’d been hit in the chest with a baseball bat.
“My... my wife?” he stammered, his eyes darting frantically around the room before landing on me as I stood in the kitchen doorway holding a glass of apple juice.
“That’s impossible!” he screamed, his face twisting into an ugly mask of blind fury. “She was at the psychiatric hospital! She’s crazy! She doesn't even know what day it is! You can’t do this!”
He lunged forward past the lawyers, heading straight toward the kitchen with his fists clenched, his rage completely overriding whatever fear he had felt that morning.
“You bitch!” he roared, his voice cracking with hysteria. “You set me up! What did you do to her? Where is Lydia—”
He never finished the sentence.
I handed Sofie’s juice cup to her, whispered, “Stay right here, sweetheart,” and stepped out of the kitchen.
As Damian lunged at me with a wild, telegraphed right swing, I didn't dodge. I stepped inside his reach, ducked beneath his flailing arm, and drove the heel of my palm upward with every ounce of pent-up kinetic energy I had spent ten years storing in my body.
Crack.
The sound of his nose breaking echoed off the walls.
Damian let out a high-pitched, agonizing shriek, stumbling backward and clutching his bleeding face with both hands as blood poured through his fingers onto his expensive white shirt.
Before he could hit the floor, I grabbed him by the collar of his suit jacket, spun him around, and slammed his chest hard against the living room wall, pinning him there with my forearm pressed firmly across his throat.
The three attorneys stood frozen in the center of the room, their mouths slightly open, staring at the petite woman in the floral blouse who had just neutralized a grown man in three seconds flat.
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I leaned my face inches from Damian’s ear, my voice cold enough to freeze boiling water.
“Lydia isn't crazy, Damian,” I whispered, watching the blood drip onto the hardwood floor. “She was just waiting for someone strong enough to hold the door open while she walked out. And now? You’re the one who’s trapped.”
