Chapter 3 - Camryn’s Voice in the Room
Camryn was not physically inside the dining room.
That made her presence worse.
Her champagne satin bow-neck blouse, pearl earrings, styled blonde hair, and polished smile appeared only in the small incoming video-call portrait on Marvin’s screen.
But her voice had already entered the room.
Cold.
Commanding.
Familiar enough to freeze Marvin’s blood.
“If she resists, hit her until she learns her place.”
Sophia replayed the words once in her mind.
Not on the phone.
Once was enough.
The message explained too much.
The way Camryn watched Sophia at the wedding reception, smiling while telling her, “Marvin needs a firm household.”
The way she praised obedience as elegance.
The way she joked that modern women ruined marriages by having “too many bank accounts and too many opinions.”
Sophia had mistaken it for old-fashioned bitterness.
It was not old-fashioned.
It was instruction.
Marvin’s breath came fast.
“Don’t answer.”
Sophia looked down at him.
His face was slick with sweat.
A shard of ceramic lay inches from his shoulder, but her hold kept him safely away from it.
She did not want him injured.
She wanted him seen.
“Why not?”
He shook his head violently.
“Sophia, don’t.”
The way he said her name was different now.
Not commanding.
Begging.
She almost laughed.
The sound caught in her throat and became something colder.
“You were very brave before your mother called.”
His eyes flashed with humiliation.
Then the phone vibrated again.
Camryn’s smiling portrait stayed bright against the dark dining room wreckage.
No readable text.
Only her face.
Only the incoming call.
Sophia lifted Marvin’s phone beside her own, both screens visible to her recording.
“Look at it,” she said.
He squeezed his eyes shut.
She angled the camera closer.
“Open your eyes.”
He did.
Not because she forced him physically.
Because panic obeyed truth faster than pride did.
His gaze locked onto his mother’s portrait.
The man who had overturned a table, threatened his wife, and lunged with both hands now lay pinned in spilled food, silently begging her not to press one button.
May you like
Sophia’s thumb hovered.
Read Chapter 4 👉 Because Marvin feared the call more than the recording, and Sophia realized Camryn controlled him through the same fear she taught him to use.
