The cold war had thawed into a fragile, toxic truce. Mina moved through the Dared mansion like an automaton, her emotions locked down, her interactions reduced to monosyllabic responses. She was a closed book, and the family, sensing her surrender, seemed to lose interest in their campaign. The victory was theirs, and a bored silence settled in its wake.
But a suppressed storm always finds a crack.
The trigger was trivial. A letter. It arrived for Adams, from his former company's HR department. The final severance paperwork, a neat, bureaucratic tombstone on his career.
Mina found him in the study, holding the thick envelope, his hands trembling. The sight of him—so broken by a piece of paper—pierced through her icy numbness. A flicker of the old partnership, of shared concern, made her speak.
"What is it?" she asked, her voice softer than it had been in weeks.
He didn't look up. "Nothing. It's nothing."
"It doesn't look like nothing, Adams." She took a step into the room. "Is it the final settlement? Maybe… maybe we should look it over together. Make sure everything is—"
"I said it's nothing!" he snapped, his head jerking up. His eyes were wild, cornered. "I don't need your help! I don't need you hovering, watching me fail!"
The unfairness of it, after all her silence, after all her endured pain, was the spark.
"Hovering?" The word came out as a disbelieving laugh. "I'm your wife! Or have you forgotten that along with everything else? Or am I just another one of your mother's staff you can dismiss?"
"Don't," he warned, his voice low and dangerous. "Don't start, Mina. Not today."
"Start what?" she pressed, the dam breaking. Weeks of humiliation, of isolation, of watching him capitulate, came flooding out. "What shouldn't I start? The truth? That you're hiding in here, feeling sorry for yourself while you let your family treat me like a stray dog you brought home? That you're so terrified of your mother you can't even sign your own severance papers without having a panic attack?"
He shot to his feet, the envelope crumpling in his fist. "You think I don't know that?" he roared, his face contorted with a pain so raw it was terrifying. "You think I need you to list my failures for me? I live them every second of every day!"
"Then do something about it!" she screamed back, tears of fury and frustration finally streaming down her face. "Get angry at them! Not at me! I'm the only one on your side! The only one! And you've shut me out! You've chosen them!"
"I HAVEN'T CHOSEN ANYONE!" he bellowed, the sound raw and guttural. He slammed his fist on the desk, making the wood shudder. "THERE IS NO CHOICE! DON'T YOU SEE THAT? THERE IS ONLY THIS… THIS PRISON!"
"There is always a choice!" she cried, stepping closer, her own pain making her reckless. "You chose to let her take our daughter! You chose to let your sister insult me! You chose to leave that damn piece of vase on the table to torture me! You choose your cowardice every single day, Adams! You are not a prisoner! You are a volunteer!"
The word "coward" hung in the air, vibrating with the truth she had finally spoken aloud.
His eyes widened, then narrowed into slits. All the color drained from his face, replaced by a terrifying, pale fury. She had stripped him bare, exposed the rotten core of his inaction, and he had nothing left to defend himself with but raw, unfiltered rage.
"Take it back," he whispered, the sound more threatening than any shout.
"No," she choked out, standing her ground, even as every instinct told her to run. "It's the truth. You're a coward."
It happened too fast to process.
A sound tore from his throat—a mix of agony and pure, unadulterated fury. His hand, the one that had held hers through childbirth, that had stroked her hair a lifetime ago, snapped through the air.
The crack was sickeningly loud in the study.
Mina's head snapped to the side. For a second, she felt nothing. Just a shocking impact. Then, a searing, white-hot pain bloomed across her cheek, spreading like fire. The taste of copper flooded her mouth.
She stumbled back, her hand flying to her face, her eyes wide with a shock so profound it felt like her soul had left her body.
Silence.
The only sound was Adams's ragged, horrified breathing.
He stared at his own hand as if it belonged to a monster. It was still suspended in the air, the shape of its violence etched into the space between them. His face crumpled, the fury evaporating, leaving behind a wasteland of utter horror.
"Mina…" he gasped, his voice a broken thing. "Oh God… Mina… I…"
He took a step toward her, his hand reaching out, now to comfort, to undo.
Mina flinched back so violently she hit the bookshelf behind her, sending a few volumes tumbling to the floor.
The sound broke the spell.
She didn't look at him. She couldn't. Her eyes were fixed on a point on the wall, seeing nothing. The physical pain was already fading, numbed by the cataclysmic emotional shock.
Without a word, without a sound, she turned and walked out of the study. Her steps were measured, eerily calm. She walked past a wide-eyed Aisha who had undoubtedly heard everything, past the frozen figure of Binta holding Trisha.
She walked into their bedroom, went into the ensuite bathroom, and locked the door.
She caught sight of herself in the mirror. A bright red, perfect handprint was already rising on her pale cheek. She stared at the reflection, at the woman with the dead eyes and the mark of her husband's shame on her face.
She didn't cry. She didn't scream.
She simply leaned over the sink and spat, the water running pink down the pristine white porcelain.
Outside the door, she could hear him. His fists pounding softly on the wood, his voice a desperate, broken mantra. "Mina… please… I'm sorry… I'm so sorry… Open the door… Please…"
But his words meant nothing. They were just more sound. The man who had spoken them was gone. The marriage she had fought for was gone. Everything had ended with the sound of a single, unforgivable slap.