“Give them to him right now or get out of this house.” The scalding coffee hit my skin before I even realized that my quiet morning had turned into a total war zone.
One second I was in the kitchen of our home in Lincoln, serving breakfast while the radio played softly on an ordinary Tuesday morning. The next moment, I felt the burning liquid splatter across my cheek and neck, causing me to drop the spatula with a loud scream.
The mug shattered against the counter and dark liquid dripped down the cabinets as if someone had thrown a bucket of it in a fit of pure rage. I turned around while trembling and saw Garrett standing on the other side of the kitchen island with his arm still outstretched.
He did not look frightened by what he had done, but instead he seemed annoyed that I had not yet understood his demands. “All of this trouble is for something so simple,” he said while looking at me with a cold and steady gaze.
His sister, Tiffany, was sitting at the dining table with her expensive leather bag on her lap and a look of restless expectation on her face. She had arrived early without any notice because she had already decided she was going to get exactly what she wanted from me.
Ten minutes earlier, I had realized she wanted my jewelry and my personal accounts, and ten minutes later, I had firmly said no. Now, my face was burning while Tiffany looked at the broken pieces of the cup without saying a single word of comfort.
She did not ask if I was okay or tell her brother that he had gone too far, but instead she just sat there in a silence that felt completely inhuman. I pressed a damp kitchen towel against my cheek and asked if he was truly demanding my credit cards, my laptop, and the watch my mother had left me.
