Chapter 1 - The Raised Hand
The front door of the modern estate swung open with a sharp click.
Julián stood on the white tile floor of the foyer, his dark suit wrinkled and his rolling suitcase dropping from his numb grip. Exhaustion from his five-day business trip vanished in a single fraction of a second.
In the brightly lit entryway, his thirty-two-year-old wife Rebeca stood wearing a long sleeveless red dress with a high slit. Her face was twisted with grotesque fury, her arms holding a heavy wooden mop stick high above her head, ready to strike downward.
On the cold floor beneath her, seventy-eight-year-old Doña Estela curled into a ball, weeping frantically in sheer panic.
Covering the frail woman with her own body was Marisol, their twenty-six-year-old maid. Clad in her black uniform and white apron, Marisol looked up at Rebeca in absolute terror, squeezing her eyes shut as she prepared to take the blow intended for the old woman.
"Drop that stick, Rebeca!" Julián’s voice roared through the pristine hallway, echoing off the grand arches and floating up the winding staircase.
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Rebeca froze mid-air, her chest heaving as she slowly turned her head toward the front door.
👉 What made Rebeca turn on her elderly mother-in-law the exact moment her husband returned?
