Chapter 10 - The Geometry of Violence
His feet hit the hardwood floor.
The pain was ten times worse than it had been on the teak dance floor. The antidote was burning through his nerves like battery acid, firing dormant pain receptors that hadn't sent a signal to his brain since he was five years old.
He didn't stand. He fell.
He hit the floor on his hands and knees, hard glass shards from the broken window biting into his palms and knees. Blood pooled instantly around his fingers.
He didn't care.
He crawled.
Using his arms, pulling his dead-weight legs behind him like a broken soldier dragging his lower half through a muddy trench, Julian dragged himself across the hardwood floor toward the doorway.
Miller had reached Victoria. He had her pinned against the doorframe, his left hand choked around her throat, forcing her head back against the wood. The bone saw was hovering inches from her eye, its motor whining in a low, terrifying pitch.
"You destroyed my career!" Miller roared, his face contorted in madness. "You used my daughter to cover up your child abuse! You made me an accomplice!"
"Do it..." Victoria gasped, her eyes bulging, her hands clawing futilely at his grip on her throat. "Kill me... and my lawyers... will hunt your daughter... to the ends... of the earth..."
Even facing death, her voice carried that icy, invincible arrogance.
Julian reached them.
He didn't grab Miller’s leg. He reached past Miller’s ankle and grabbed the heavy, cast-iron doorstop—a three-pound antique sculpture of a sleeping hound—that held the mahogany door open.
Julian lifted the iron doorstop with both hands.
His arms shook. The pain in his spine felt like a red-hot poker being driven into his lower vertebrae.
He swung the iron hound with everything he had left in his small, broken body.
CRACK.
The heavy iron hit Miller’s kneecap from behind.
Miller screamed, his leg snapping sideways with a brutal, sickening crunch. His grip on Victoria’s throat loosened instantly, and he collapsed sideways, crashing shoulder-first into the doorframe before dropping to the floor, clutching his ruined knee and weeping in agony.
The bone saw fell from his fingers, skittering across the floor and coming to a stop against Julian’s bleeding knees.
Victoria slid down the doorframe, gasping for air, her silver silk robe torn at the neck, her chest heaving as she held her bruised throat.
She looked down.
Julian was sitting on the floor two inches from her feet. His hands were covered in blood and glass; his white pajama trousers were stained red at the knees; his eyes were fierce, dark, and utterly clear.
He picked up the bone saw. He didn't raise it like a weapon. He held it by the rubberized grip, resting the flat side of the heavy steel blade against Victoria’s bare, silver-painted toes.
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"Don't move, Mom," Julian said.
His voice didn't shake. It was cold, flat, and absolute.
