"Go ahead and kill her. I'm not spending a single cent on some worthless hag."
He hung up.
I lay on the floor, staring at him, at that coldness carved so deep it reached the bone.
Three years of swallowing my pride. Three years of lying to myself. Three years of clinging to some pitiful, laughable hope.
In that moment, every last shred of it shattered.
I wrenched free of the bodyguards' grip and screamed with everything I had, my voice raw and breaking.
"Chester Henson! Open your eyes!"
"The woman they kidnapped isn't my mother! It's yours! Your own mother!"
Chester froze, as if the words hadn't registered.
A split second later, the shock on his face was swallowed whole by blinding fury.
He lunged forward, grabbed a fistful of my hair, and slammed my head against the floor.
"You've lost your mind! You're absolutely vicious!"
"My mother called me from Switzerland this afternoon! She's on vacation!"
"And you have the audacity to curse her with a kidnapping? Ella Swanson, how rotten is your heart?"
The slap cracked across my face.
White-hot pain exploded through my cheek, my ears ringing, the taste of copper blooming at the corner of my mouth.
Florence stood off to the side, fanning the flames, her eyes glistening with a perfectly rehearsed look of hurt innocence.
"Chester, don't be angry. Ella's probably just lost her mind from panic."
She paused, letting the words land before twisting the knife.
"It's just... your mother is such an elegant woman. How could anyone compare her to Ella's gambling addict of a mother? Ella isn't even worthy of carrying your mother's shoes."
Chester wiped his hand on my clothes with a look of open disgust, as if he'd touched something filthy.
"Hold her down," he ordered the guards. "Since she loves putting on a show so much, let her watch the kidnapper kill her mother in real time."
That was when his executive assistant, Bradley Simms, called in on the emergency line.
"Mr. Henson, the chairwoman's personal phone has been unreachable. We have a serious situation at the office."
"Several cross-border contracts are waiting for her signature. The board is in complete disarray."
"Ever heard of time zones?" Chester cut him off, irritation dripping from every syllable. "My mother's in Switzerland. It's the middle of the night there. Her phone being off is perfectly normal."
The assistant tried to continue.