Then he turned his monitor toward her.
High-resolution images filled the screen. Not of her unborn child’s tiny fingers or beating heart—but of Ellie’s back.
Parallel welts. Fresh, angry red lines layered over older, silvery scars. Some raised, some scabbed. Arranged with chilling precision, like someone had taken a ruler and a switch and decided exactly how much pain a six-year-old could endure before she learned to stay quiet.
“She told me,” Dr. Chen said, voice low but steady, “‘Daddy hits me when Mom is away.’”
The words didn’t register at first. They bounced off Lena’s skull like pebbles against glass. Then they sank in—deep, jagged, tearing through every assumption she’d ever made about her life.
Mark hadn’t been working late. He hadn’t been at the gym. He’d been here. In this house. While she napped, trusting him with the two people she loved most in the world.
And it wasn’t just him.
That night, after tucking Ellie into bed—after smoothing her hair and whispering, “You’re so brave, my love”—Lena walked into the study. Mark’s laptop sat open on the desk, screen glowing softly. He must have forgotten to log out before rushing off to his “night shift” at the hospital.
Her fingers hovered over the trackpad. Guilt pricked at her—this was his private space. But then she remembered Ellie’s flinch. The way she’d stopped singing in the shower. The stuffed rabbit, Mr. Nibbles, always missing from her bed on days Mark claimed “she needed extra discipline.”
She clicked.
