My husband tied my hair to a wall hook and forced me to stand on tiptoe while my mother-in-law slapped me every time my heels touched the floor. I was nine months pregnant; I cramped, then my water broke. They still wouldn't untie me. A neighbor broke down the door. Emergency surgery. The recording of the wall hook clanking and their laughter was on the phone that had fallen under the bed.

Three days later, I was discharged. I refused the wheelchair once we reached the hospital lobby, forcing my legs to carry my own weight, ignoring the fire burning through my abdominal incision. Marcus drove his old, impeccably maintained pickup truck. Lily was secured in a rear-facing infant seat behind me, swaddled in blankets the hospital social worker had provided.

We didn't go to an apartment; we went back to the house on Elmwood Terrace under police escort.

"You don't have to do this today," Marcus said, keeping his eyes on the rearview mirror. "I can go inside with the officers. We can pack your clothes and the nursery supplies."

"No," I replied, staring out at the manicured lawns of the neighborhood that had ignored my muffled screams for half a year. "If I don't walk through that door under my own power today, that house will own my mind for the rest of my life."

The front lawn was still cordoned off with yellow crime-scene tape fluttering in the brisk autumn breeze. The heavy oak front door hung crooked on its hinges, splintered where Marcus’s crowbar had pulverized the deadbolt. Two uniform officers were waiting on the porch.

I carried Lily in her car-seat carrier, stepping across the threshold.

The house smelled of ozone, fingerprint dust, and sour, stagnant milk. In the foyer, the large framed portrait of Julian and me on our wedding day hung crooked on the wall. Julian looked immaculate in his custom tuxedo, his hand wrapped firmly around my bare shoulder—a grip I had once interpreted as protective, but which I now recognized as the brand of an owner.

I walked past it, into the wide hallway leading to the master bedroom.

The wall was bare now. The police had literally cut a three-foot section of the drywall and the framing stud out of the house, tagging the iron hook and the surrounding plaster as Exhibit A. On the hardwood floor below the gaping hole, a dark, rusted stain marred the polyurethane finish—the dried mixture of my blood, sweat, and amniotic fluid where I had stood on the tips of my toes for nearly four hours.

Beside the stain lay a single broken white comb and several strands of my matted hair that the crime scene techs had missed.

I set the carrier down on the hallway runner. My hands were shaking, not with terror, but with a strange, icy detachment.

"Nora?" Marcus was standing in the doorway, watchful, giving me room.

"Get the garbage bags from under the sink," I said.

For the next two hours, we stripped the house. I did not take anything Julian had purchased. I took my drafting portfolios, my college diplomas, my grandmother’s silver tea set that Beatrice had hidden in the attic, and every article of clothing I had owned prior to my marriage.

When we reached Julian’s study, I walked over to his massive mahogany desk. Sitting on the leather blotter was an unopened letter addressed to Julian from his mother’s estate attorney. I tore it open.

It was an amendment to Beatrice’s will, dated two weeks prior. In exchange for Julian "resolving the domestic impediments to the family line," Beatrice had transferred full ownership of three commercial properties in the downtown core to Julian’s private holding company.

They had drawn up a contract on my life and my daughter’s future, calculating my worth down to square footage and rental yields.

I folded the letter, slipped it into my pocket for Detective Miller, and picked up Lily’s carrier.