I stopped breathing. The air in the car felt gone.

I was watching a hostage situation in my own home — my mother using my newborn son as leverage to torture my wife.

Chapter 4 — The Extraction

Rage, pure and blinding, went off behind my eyes.

My first instinct was to throw the car into drive, tear back home, kick the door off its hinges, and drag that monster into the street. My hand actually reached for the gearshift.

But the logistics director in me — the part trained to run a crisis without emotion — hit the brakes.

Think. If I burst in screaming, Lorraine would spin it. She’d say Brooke broke the glass, that Brooke was hysterical, that she was only protecting the baby.