Chapter 1 - The Broken Living Room
The heavy wooden baseball bat was raised high above Lena’s trembling head.
"You think you can just pack up and leave me?" Travis snarled, his handsome face twisted into an ugly, unrecognizable sneer. His knuckles turned bone-white around the taped grip of the bat. "You belong to this house, Lena. You belong to me!"
Lena cowered on the cold, polished marble floor of their luxury living room, her sage green spaghetti-strap dress torn at the shoulder. Shards of an expensive porcelain vase were scattered around her bare feet like jagged little teeth. Her left arm was throbbing violently, purple and bruised, pressed tightly against her ribs. She looked up at the man she had loved for three years, unable to breathe, her vision blurred by tears of pure terror.
"Travis, please..." Lena whispered, her voice shaking violently. "Just let me walk away. I won't say a word. I won't take anything."
"You won't take anything because you have nothing!" Travis bellowed, taking a menacing step closer. The unbuttoned collar of his light blue dress shirt was damp with sweat. "Your father’s company is going under, your family is broke, and you thought you could spy on my accounts? You thought I wouldn't notice five million dollars being flagged?"
Lena shrank against the base of the designer sofa. She hadn't been spying on him to steal; she had stumbled upon the gruesome truth of why her family's firm was collapsing. But Travis didn't care about the truth. He only cared about control.
He raised the bat an inch higher, his eyes wild with deadly intent. He was ready to swing.
Suddenly, the front door didn't just open—it shattered inward against the drywall with the force of a battering ram.
Before Travis could even turn his head, a massive figure clad in a black fitted hoodie surged into the living room, grabbing Travis’s raised wrists with an iron, lethal grip.
👉 What happened the second that shadowy rescuer grabbed the bat?
May you like
```
***
