“Baby girl,” he whispered.

Chloe’s eyes opened. “Dad.”

When Robert saw the bruises on his daughter’s body, I understood one thing at once. The real storm had only begun. Victoria Dudley thought she had frightened a young bride into silence.

She had no idea she’d just woken the one man with the power to dismantle her family before the honeymoon was over.

Part 2 — The Storm Awakens

Robert didn’t shout. That was the first thing that frightened me. In all the years I’d known him, anger had lived loudly in him — slammed doors, raised voices, a glass shattering against a wall, not because he wanted to hurt anyone but because he wanted the room to feel his power.

That night, kneeling beside our daughter, he was silent. His hand hovered over Chloe’s swollen cheek as if touching her might break whatever strength she had left.