Chapter 1 - The Sound From Upstairs
Ryan Mercer heard his daughter scream before he reached the bedroom door.
Not a hungry cry. Not the irritated wail Emma made when someone pulled a shirt over her head.
This was sharp and panicked.
He had come home to Franklin, Tennessee, nearly four hours earlier than Vanessa expected. A client meeting in Nashville had been canceled, and for once Ryan had ignored the temptation to answer emails from the driveway.
He wanted to surprise them.
Instead, he reached the upstairs hallway and heard Vanessa laughing.
Ryan pushed open the master-bedroom door.
Vanessa stood beside their king-size bed with eight-month-old Emma in both hands. Emma wore the pale pink onesie Ryan had dressed her in that morning. Her face was wet with tears.
Vanessa lifted her over the mattress, then drove her down hard enough to make the comforter bounce, never fully releasing her.
Emma screamed.
Vanessa lifted her again.
“Still crying?” she said with an almost playful irritation. “Want me to do it again?”
Ryan stopped in the doorway.
For one second, Vanessa didn't see him.
That second stayed with him afterward.
Because there was no frustration on her face.
No exhaustion.
She was smiling.
“Vanessa.”
She spun around.
Ryan crossed the room, took Emma from her, and pressed the baby against his chest.
“What the hell are you doing to my baby?”
“We were playing.”
Emma buried her wet face against his shirt.
Ryan carried her to the crib, secured her inside, then turned back.
“Playing?”
Vanessa rolled her eyes.
“She cries over everything now. I'm trying to get her out of that.”
Something in Ryan snapped.
He shoved Vanessa away from the crib.
When she stepped toward him again, telling him not to be ridiculous, he slapped her once across the face.
The sound startled even him.
Vanessa stared at him.
Ryan immediately regretted hitting her.
He did not regret stopping her.
“You make an eight-month-old scream for fun?”
“I said we were playing.”
Then Ryan noticed the phone.
It was propped horizontally against a jewelry box on the dresser.
Camera facing the bed.
Recording.
He picked it up.
Vanessa moved toward him.
“Give me that.”
Ryan stepped away.
The current clip was seventeen minutes long.
Below it were others.
Emma in the bedroom.
Emma in the nursery.
Emma crying in her high chair.
Emma screaming while Vanessa's voice came from somewhere outside the frame.
Different shirts.
Different days.
Ryan looked up slowly.
Vanessa's face had changed.
Not guilt.
Fear.
“How many times have you done this when I wasn't home?”
She said nothing.
Ryan returned to the crib and lifted Emma.
As he carried his daughter out of the bedroom, Vanessa called after him.
“Ryan, you don't understand what those videos are.”
May you like
He stopped in the hallway.
That was the first moment he realized there might be an answer worse than cruelty.
