Chapter 2 - The Aftermath of the StormThe silence that followed the slap was heavy enough to crush a man.
Tatum sat frozen, her hand pressed firmly against the left side of her face where red finger marks were blooming across her pale skin. Her mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water, but no sound came out.
"YOU HIT MY DAUGHTER!" Loretta finally shrieked, her voice shattering the stillness like glass breaking on marble. She lunged forward across the table, knocking over a gravy boat that spilled dark brown sludge across the white linen tablecloth. "In my own home! At my table!"
"She struck me first," I said, my voice completely level, holding up my right hand to show the deep crimson welt left by Tatum's fork. "I merely returned the favor with equal interest."
"That was a lesson in respect!" Loretta screamed, her face contorting with rage. "Vance! Look at what this woman did! Do something!"
Vance scrambled out of his chair, his face entirely drained of color. He stood between me and his mother, his hands shaking violently in the air.
"Sloan, what is wrong with you?!" Vance yelled, his voice cracking under the pressure. "You can't just slap my sister! Apologize right now! Please, just apologize so we can fix this!"
I looked at Vance, really looked at him, for the first time since we had walked through the front door of this house. The man I had married—the ambitious, charming executive who had spent two years convincing me he was a partner in every sense of the word—looked small. Weak. Frightened of his mother's glare and his sister's tears.
"Apologize?" I asked, a bitter smile touching my lips. "For defending myself against assault? I don't think so, Vance."
"She's a guest in our home!" Harlan grunted from the end of the table, though his voice lacked conviction. He kept his eyes fixed firmly on his napkin.
"I was invited here as your daughter-in-law," I corrected him sharply. "Not as your punching bag, and certainly not as your unpaid servant. If this is how the Rinaldi family treats its members, you can keep the title."
Tatum suddenly burst into dramatic, echoing wails, throwing herself into her mother's arms. "Mom! She hit me! She threatened me! Make her leave! Vance, get her out of here!"
"Sloan, get in the car," Vance commanded, trying to sound authoritative, though his trembling lower lip betrayed him. "We're going home. We'll deal with this later."
"Oh, we're definitely going home," I replied. "But you might want to think very carefully about whose car you're getting into."
Without another word, I picked up my designer handbag from the back of my chair, turned on my heel, and marched out of the dining room. I didn't look back as Loretta's shrill insults and Tatum's loud sobbing followed me down the long, carpeted hallway.
I opened the heavy mahogany front door and stepped out into the cool October air. My heart was hammering, adrenaline surging through my veins like liquid fire. I walked straight to my Audi parked in the circular driveway, unlocked it, and slid into the driver's seat.
I didn't start the engine immediately. I sat there, clutching the leather steering wheel, my breathing heavy and uneven. My right hand throbbed where the fork had hit me.
Less than two minutes later, the front door of the mansion burst open, and Vance came hurrying down the stone steps. He looked around frantically before spotting my car and rushing to the passenger side. He pulled the door open and climbed in, slamming it shut behind him.
"Are you insane?!" Vance exploded the second the door clicked. "What the hell was that, Sloan?! You hit my sister! In front of my entire family! Aunt Marilyn and Aunt Jolene are in tears!"
I turned to him slowly, my eyes cold and unyielding. "Your sister hit me with a silver fork because I reached for a piece of crab, Vance. Where was your outrage then?"
"She was just being Tatum!" Vance shouted, waving his hands in the air. "She's younger! She's spoiled! We all know how she is! You're 30 years old, Sloan, you're supposed to be the mature one! You could have just let it go for one night!"
"Let it go?" I laughed dryly. "She laid out a manifesto of how I'm expected to surrender my paycheck, clean your parents' house, cook every holiday meal, and let her walk into our home whenever she pleases! And your mother sat there smiling like a warden handing down a prison sentence!"
"They were just talking!" Vance argued, his voice high-pitched. "They're traditional! That's how my family operates! You knew what my family was like!"
"I knew your parents were traditional, Vance. I didn't know they were running a cult where the daughter-in-law is treated like a domestic slave," I snapped, leaning toward him. "And what disgusted me most wasn't Tatum or Loretta. It was you."
Vance blinked, shrinking back against the passenger door. "Me?"
"You sat right beside me," I said, my voice dropping into a dangerous whisper. "You saw her strike my hand. You saw the welt. And instead of standing up for your wife, you tugged my sleeve and begged me not to make a scene. You prioritized your sister's temper tantrum over my basic dignity."
"I was trying to keep the peace!" Vance pleaded, his tone shifting from anger to desperation. "If I had argued with them, it would have turned into a giant fight!"
"It turned into a giant fight anyway," I said coldly, reaching forward to hit the engine start button. The V6 engine roared to life. "And now you're going to see what happens when you marry a woman who doesn't play the victim."
I shifted the car into reverse and backed out of the driveway, the gravel crunching violently beneath the tires. Vance sat in silence as we sped down the tree-lined suburban street, heading toward the highway back to the city.
Neither of us spoke for the first twenty minutes of the drive. The tension inside the car was thick enough to choke on.
Vance kept staring out the window, his phone buzzing constantly in his lap. I could see the screen lighting up with notifications from the family group chat—no doubt filled with messages from Loretta demanding my head on a spike and Tatum playing the tragic victim.
Finally, as we approached the downtown skyline, Vance spoke up, his voice tight.
"You need to apologize to my mother, Sloan," he said quietly. "If you don't, this will ruin our marriage before it even starts. My family won't accept you."
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I kept my eyes fixed on the road ahead, a cold, sharp realization settling into my chest.
"Vance," I said softly, "if your family's acceptance requires me to be humiliated, beaten, and controlled, then I don't give a damn about their acceptance. And as for our marriage... you better decide very quickly whose side you're on, because if you think I'm going to spend the rest of my life bowing to your mother and sister, you married the wrong woman."
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