“Your father’s place is just sitting there, doing nothing.”

“I’m not signing,” I said, and I kept my voice perfectly flat, drained of everything, the voice of a beaten woman.

His eyes hardened.

But this time, he did not touch me.

He thought the fear had done its work — thought he had trained me, that a burned wife was an obedient wife, and that he could simply wait me out now and manipulate the signature out of me in time.

He had no idea that with every day he let pass, believing he was winning, he was giving me exactly what my father’s system needed: time, and rope, and a thief who thought all the locks were broken.