Chapter 15

Fear, cold and sharp, gripped Elara. Survival was one thing; escaping Vivienne’s wrath was another. Her legs felt like jelly, her back a fiery inferno. She limped towards the front door, her heart hammering against her ribs, echoing the frantic beat of the brutal slaps she had received earlier. With a trembling hand, she reached for the doorbell and pressed it.

The door swung open almost immediately, revealing Vivienne. Her mother’s face was a mask of incandescent rage, her eyes blazing with a cold, analytical fury, her lips thin and pressed into a furious line. “Elara! Where have you been?!” she shrieked, her voice a piercing, high-pitched accusation that made Elara flinch. “You are half an hour late! You ungrateful girl! You are always late, always disappointing me!” Vivienne’s words were a precise, calculated strike, designed to inflict maximum emotional damage, a prelude to the physical. “And look at you, a disheveled wreck! Is this how you represent yourself after all my efforts?”

Elara recoiled, tears springing to her eyes immediately. “M-Mom, I ... I can explain! It was ... it was Justin and the boys, they...”

“Do not Mom me,” she screamed, “it’s ‘Ma’am’ from now on!”

Before she could utter another word, Vivienne’s hand shot out, not in a comforting gesture, but in a brutal, open-handed slap across Elara’s face. The force sent Elara stumbling backward, her head snapping to the side, a fresh wave of blinding pain blooming on her already tender cheek. CRACK! The sound was sickeningly loud in the quiet evening air. Elara’s makeup, already a mess, smeared further with the fresh onslaught of tears.

“Don’t you dare lie to me!” Vivienne snarled, her face contorted with fury. Her eyes, filled with a hateful disgust, raked over Elara’s torn clothes, her smudged makeup, her disheveled hair, as if she could see every humiliation etched onto her skin. “I knew it! I knew you’d find a way to disgrace me!”