The gates of my mother's mansion slid open with the false cheer of a guillotine dropping.
Tonight's mission: survive Tommy's nouveau-riche flexing without unleashing chaos on a certain someone. But the chaos inside wasn't the champagne babble I'd banked on. It was a bomb mid-detonation.
Silence. Thick, suffocating, the kind that presses on your eardrums. Then, EMMA'S VOICE, raw, shredded: "YOU DON'T OWN ME! I'M NOT YOUR GODDAMN REHAB PROJECT, LINDA!"
We froze like ice statues. Mom stood rigid in the vast foyer, face drained to chalk-white, arms clamped around herself like she was hugging a live grenade. Tommy backed away, hands raised palms-out, approaching a snarling, wounded animal. Sarah clutched at Charlotte in the archway, eyes blown wide, a terrified spectator at a train wreck.
