Chapter 1: The Silence After My Name
Victoria’s voice was still hanging in the air when I said her name.
“Victoria.”
The belt slipped from her fingers.
It hit the marble floor with a soft sound — too soft for what it had just done.
For a second, nobody moved.
Lily was still on her knees, shaking. Blood on her arms. Tears falling too fast for her to wipe away. Her breathing came in broken, uneven gasps.
And my wife… my six-month wife… stood frozen like she had just been caught doing something she believed she would never be punished for.
“Darling…” she forced a smile, too quick, too sharp. “You’re home early.”
My eyes didn’t leave her.
They dropped to my daughter.
The durian shells under her knees. The torn uniform. The marks on her skin.
Something inside me didn’t rise.
It snapped.
“Don’t call me that,” I said quietly.
Victoria blinked. “It’s not what it looks like—”
I took one step forward.
That was enough for her voice to change.
“Please,” she softened instantly, turning slightly toward Lily like she was adjusting a scene, not a crime. “She fell. I was just disciplining her—”
Lily flinched at the word disciplining.
That small movement destroyed whatever control I had left.
I knelt beside my daughter.
She tried to speak.
“Dad… I didn’t—”
Her voice broke completely.
I removed my suit jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. Her body collapsed into it like she had been holding herself together only out of fear.
Behind me, Victoria exhaled.
Relief.
May you like
She thought she had survived it.
She didn’t understand what had just begun.
