“Let’s see if Wyatt still loves you with that face,” my mother said, and she laughed a cruel laugh that I will never forget. The heavy brick hit me before I could even see my dad’s arm move.
One second earlier I was standing on the cracked sidewalk in front of my parents’ house in Columbus. I was wearing the light blue dress I bought just to announce my wedding date at the family dinner. The next second, everything went totally white.
It was not a loud sound, but it was worse. It was a dry, wet crunch, like something breaking inside my head. I felt sudden heat running down my left eyebrow, over my cheek, and onto my lips as my legs gave out.
Wyatt Campbell, my fiancé, caught me before my face could hit the concrete steps of the porch. “Sadie, look at me, please don’t leave me, Sadie!” he yelled with terror in his voice.
I tried to open my left eye, but I saw absolutely nothing except deep darkness. With my right eye, I saw my mother, Brenda, standing by the old swing set in the yard.
She was not scared, she was not running to help me, and she was not calling for an ambulance. She just stood there and laughed at me.
My dad, Gregory Davis, dropped the broken half of the brick onto the grass. “I warned you,” he said calmly, acting as if he had just closed a door instead of smashing his daughter’s face.
Wyatt looked up at him with complete disbelief and horror. “What did you just do?” Wyatt asked, his voice shaking with anger.
Nobody answered him, but then my younger sister, Melanie, came out of the front door. She was wearing an expensive dress, had freshly done nails, and looked annoyed as if my blood had ruined her dinner plans.
“I told you he wasn’t going to change his mind,” Melanie said, crossing her arms tightly. My mom sighed and adjusted her clothes.
“We tried to talk to him nicely,” Brenda said. Wyatt carefully leaned my body against a column and stood up to face them.
“You people are sick,” Wyatt said with pure disgust. My dad smiled and pointed his finger at Melanie.
“No, you are just engaged to the wrong daughter,” Gregory said. The buzzing inside my head was terrible, but those words hurt me much more than the brick.
“What?” Wyatt asked. “Melanie should have always been in your place because Sadie is selfish and always has been,” my mother said coldly.
Melanie looked at me lying on the floor with a mean look. “And yet you still chose her,” Melanie told Wyatt.
Wyatt pulled out his cell phone to call 911, but my dad kicked it right out of his hand. The phone screen smashed into pieces against the doorway.
“Nobody here is going to call anybody,” Gregory growled. Wyatt pushed him hard, and my dad pounced on him like a crazy animal.
They fell into the rose bushes together. My mother and Melanie did not scream, they just watched as if it had all been planned.
In that moment, I understood something that chilled me to the bone. This was not a sudden impulse or a quick moment of madness.
Ever since Wyatt sold his construction company and became a millionaire, my family had started to hunt him. First with dinners, then with fake flattery, and later Melanie started showing up by chance at his gym, his office, his coffee shop, and outside our apartment.
Wyatt always rejected her and blocked her everywhere. Melanie told my parents that I was manipulating him to stay away from them.
“You either marry Melanie,” Gregory growled as he fought with Wyatt, “or you get out of this family.” “I love Sadie!” Wyatt yelled back.
“It will pass,” Melanie said casually. Suddenly, an electrician’s truck pulled up in front of the house, and the worker got out.
The man saw my bloody face and immediately took out his cell phone. “I am going to call an ambulance right now!” the man shouted.
My dad walked toward him aggressively, but the man pointed a finger at him. “Take another step and I will tell the police operator that you are attacking me too,” the worker said.
My dad stopped moving. The sirens arrived minutes later, and the paramedics helped me into the ambulance.
I took one last look at the living room window of the house. Behind the curtain stood an old man I had never seen before in my life.
His shaking hand was pressed against the glass, as if he wanted to warn me about something. Then the curtain closed, and nobody could guess what was about to happen next.
PART 2
I woke up to the smell of a hospital, full of disinfectant, clean sheets, and the metallic smell of my own blood. I opened my right eye, but my left eye was covered in thick medical bandages.
A doctor in a white coat leaned over me. “I am Dr. Alison Curtis, you are safe now, Sadie,” she said gently.
Safe was a word that felt completely strange to me. “Wyatt…” I whispered.
“He hasn’t left the hospital since you arrived,” Dr. Curtis said. He appeared beside the bed right away, his shirt still stained with blood, his knuckles scraped, and his eyes red.
When he took my hand, he started to cry. “I promised you I wouldn’t leave you,” he whispered.
I had never seen him cry before, not even when he lost his grandfather or when his first business failed. Seeing me like this completely broke him.
The doctor explained that the bone around my left eye was fractured, so they had to reconstruct the area and stitch a deep wound. Then she said something that scared me.
“We believe you will get your vision back, but there is still too much swelling,” Dr. Curtis said. We believe meant they did not know for sure.
An hour later, a police investigator named Chief Donald Briggs came in. He did not raise his voice, he just asked a direct question.
“Did your father intentionally hit you with the brick?” Chief Briggs asked. “Yes,” I replied.
“Were there any threats before this?” the chief asked. I closed my good eye and remembered years of unfair treatment.
If Melanie wanted my things, they became hers. If she failed, I had to fix it.
When I won a scholarship, my dad said I was conceited. When Melanie dropped out of college, my mom said she was just finding herself.
When I bought my first car, they wanted me to give it to Melanie because she needed confidence. “Yes, many threats,” I said.
I told him about Wyatt, the sale of his company, the fake dinners, Melanie’s messages, the gifts Wyatt returned, the letters he burned, and the times my parents demanded I step aside. The chief closed his notebook.
“So the attack was meant to pressure him into leaving you for your sister,” Chief Briggs said. Wyatt clenched his jaw tightly.
“They thought that if they destroyed her face, I would stop loving her,” Wyatt said with rage. The investigator did not answer right away because he seemed completely furious.
Then a nurse poked her head in. “There are three people asking to see her: Gregory Davis, Brenda Davis, and Melanie Davis,” she said.
Wyatt stood up fast. “They don’t get in,” he said.
Before the nurse could leave, my father’s voice exploded in the hallway. “Sadie! You have embarrassed us enough already!” Gregory shouted.
My mother yelled next. “We came here to forgive you!” Brenda said.
Melanie added her voice too. “You owe us an apology for provoking Dad!” she screamed.
The chief left the room, leaving the door open a little bit. I heard his firm voice outside.
