Robert's POV...
"I made you soup." I set the bowl on the glossy mahogany table, the porcelain clinking softly. "For the baby."
She didn't look at the soup. She stared through it. At me. At the wispy steam rising in the silent space between us, a ghost of care in a room gone cold.
"For the baby," she repeated.
I nodded, a tight jerk of my chin. My fingers, still warm from the bowl, felt clumsy and too large.
Her hand moved so fast I didn't see it coming. There was no wind-up, no dramatic flourish. Just a blur of manicured nails and sudden, violent purpose.
The heat exploded across my face. Not a splash—a deluge. Liquid fire searing into my eyes, my nostrils, my open mouth where a gasp had begun. I tasted garlic and ginger and pure, scalding agony. I stumbled back, blind, the world dissolving into a white-orange pain. My hands slapped against the damask wallpaper, scrambled for the door frame, found the cool tile of the bathroom.
