I did not.
There were reasons.
My mother was behind him.
Tyler was recording.
The line was live.
And Michael was armed.
Discipline is not the absence of anger.
It is what keeps anger from choosing your next move.
I breathed in through my nose and looked straight at him.
“Let go of me.”
Michael smiled.
It was the first real smile he had given me all day.
“Now you’re going to learn respect.”
He slammed my hand onto the table and snapped one cuff around my wrist.
The metal bit cold into my skin.
My mother cried out.
“Michael, no!”
“Stay out of it, Emma.”
He yanked my other arm back and cuffed me to the chair.
Tyler kept recording.
“This is getting good,” he muttered.
That was when I saw the objects on the table in a clean line, the way my mind always arranged rooms under stress.
