-Prologue-

"Open the damn door, Joyce!"

"Go to hell, Harold!"

"I said open the damn door!"

She backed away from the front door quickly, her steps staggered and uneven. Behind her she could hear the soft cries of her children as they watched; she couldn’t let them see her face, see the large bruise that disfigured her, marked her as a beaten women. Katie, in the kitchen, was too young, she knew, too malleable at twelve; it would scar her. Benjamin, at sixteen, was too old and violent. His anger heated the cold room like a furnace. If Harold managed to break down the door to the apartment, she knew that Benjamin would either kill him, or be killed trying. His shouts of protest were indistinguishable from Harold’s threats. One after another after another, vicious and vengeful, and trapped in the middle was Julian, curled in a little ball in the corner of the kitchen, sobbing, screaming for it all to stop.

"Go home, Harold!" she shouted, but the sound was feeble, drowned out by Benjamin’s threats.

He picked up his baseball bat from where it lay beside the coat rack and started over to the door. "I’ll break your fucking skull!" he shouted through the door and reached for the handle.

"No!" Joyce shrieked in terror and grabbed his arm, "Ben, don’t!"

"Get off!" he shouted and pushed her back; she tripped over a shoe haphazardly thrown across the floor and went crashing down. She struck her head against the coffee table and was unconscious. A thin rivulet of blood coursed down her pale, lined brow, starkly contrasting against it.

In his anger, Ben didn’t notice, and reached for the doorknob again—

Three shots rang out—

Katie screamed and clung tightly to Julian’s prone body, shrieking, "Oh my God, Julian, he’s coming, he’s coming—"

Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop, make it stop…