Chapter 5
1851 Words
✨The Weight of His Anger.✨
Flora Pov
The moment he slid into the driver’s seat and brought the truck to life, his fury broke loose. His hand struck without mercy—hard across her mouth. She had known it was coming, feared it, waited for it—yet when it landed, a raw scream burst from her lips as pain exploded through her, her mouth tearing open beneath the blow.
Flora jerked back from the blow, slamming against the seat, breath knocked from her lungs as her hands flew up in blind defense, terror shaking every part of her.
She recoiled as though the pain had burned her, folding into herself, trembling, her breath breaking as she cradled her wounded mouth and tried not to sob.
Tears traced quiet paths down her cheeks, shining in the dim light as she fought to breathe.
Flora sobs break against the pain she could no longer hold inside. Her cheek throbbing with a dull, persistent ache. The impact of the blow lingered, a sharp reminder of the cost of her attempt. She touched her face gently, wincing at the tenderness beneath her skin.
Finally broke through her control.
The road blurred past the window. Trees. Fences. The edge of town felt farther away than it ever had before. Flora pressed her forehead to the glass, letting the cold ground her, counting her breaths so she wouldn’t break apart entirely.
Margery was waiting on the porch when they returned.
She saw Flora first.
Then the bag.
Something inside her broke.
"What did you do?" Margery demanded.
Her voice cut through the morning, sharp and wild, nothing like the careful tone she usually wore around Trump.
Trump stepped out of the truck slowly. “Handled a problem.” He said.
Margery moved without thinking.
Trump raised a hand to stop her then turned his gaze to Flora.
Margery went still.
Something changed he noticed.
Not silent obedience.
But calculation.
He stepped closer, eyes raking over Flora’s disheveled hair, her split lip, the way she shook but didn’t look away.
“I see,” he said. “You’ve been planning.”
Flora said nothing.
Trump nodded slowly. “That explains it.”
He turned back to Margery. “You just made things very difficult for yourself.”
Margery’s voice broke. “She’s your daughter.”
Trump’s smile vanished.
“She’s my asset,” he said flatly.
The word settled into Flora’s chest like a stone. Heavy. Final.
Trump took her by the elbow and guided her toward the house—not roughly, almost gently, as though demonstrating control rather than force.
“That man,” he continued, conversational, “he wasn’t here for business the way you think.”
Margery’s breath caught. Pretending she didn't know.
“He was here because he’s looking for a wife.”
Flora stopped walking.
Trump tightened his grip. "One- one-" Flora tried.
“You don’t get to stop now,” he murmured.
Margery stepped forward. “No.”
Trump raised a hand.
Margery flinched—retreat.
He looked at Flora again.
She didn't know whether to scream, cry, laugh, counted she tried.
she stayed silent.
This time, there was no mistaking it.
He was seeing her.
Really seeing her.
Her quiet. Her compliance. Her fear.
Her value.
“You’re going to meet him ,” Trump said. “Sooner than planned.”
Flora shook her head. “No.”
Trump smiled. “Clean her up Margery!"
He released her and turned toward the house. “Lock the doors. She’s not to leave her room.”
" I will deal with all of you later I have to speed up plans." He said.
Margery went still.
He turned back to Flora. “You tried to run. That means you’re ready.”
Her stomach dropped entirely.
Trump’s smile was thin and satisfied.
That morning Flora sat on her bed, knees pulled to her chest. The bag was gone. The window had been nailed shut while she watched, each hammer strike a punctuation mark she couldn’t argue with.
Margery didn’t come.
Trump had taken her keys.
Downstairs, the phone rang.
Flora's heart hammered with every ring.
__
It came to him not in a rush of anger but in the quiet inventory he kept of every morning, every deviation. The open cupboard. The misplaced glass. The way Cambilly’s voice had carried up the stairs too easily, too early. A child awake at that hour was never an accident in this house.
He stood at the foot of the stairs and looked up.
Cambilly was halfway down, frozen, her hands clenched at her sides. Margery stood behind her, one step higher, as if her body alone could block what was coming.
“You thought you were clever,” Trump said mildly.
No one answered.
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t have to. “You bought her time.”
Cambilly lifted her chin. The motion was small, defiant.
Trump nodded once, as if confirming a theory. “That’s loyalty,” he said. “Misplaced. But impressive.”
He turned his gaze to Margery. “And you let it happen.”
Margery stepped forward. “I—”
"Don't you dare!" Trump cut her off, anger tight in his voice, leaving her words unfinished and trembling.
It was quick. Controlled. The kind of violence that left no spectacle, only consequence.
Trump didn’t linger. He never did when there was nothing left to prove.
“Remember this,” he said, already turning away. “This is what happens when you interfere.”
He paused, then added, almost thoughtfully, “Flora was spared because she’s spoken for.”
The words hung there, ugly and final.
Margery sank to the step when he was gone. Cambilly slid down beside her, shaking, pressing her face into Margery’s shoulder. Neither of them followed when Trump walked back toward Flora’s door.
Now, the phone rang again and he quickly moved.
Trump answered it.
“Yes,” he said. “She’s perfect.”
Flora closed her eyes.
The house had changed again.
And this time, it was no longer waiting.
Trump walked away.
Trump did not call them together until evening.
That, too, was deliberate.
They stood in the living room where nothing ever felt lived in. Margery by the window, hands folded too tightly. Cambilly rigid near the wall, jaw clenched. Finn slouched at first, then straightened when Trump’s gaze slid to him. Flora stood where she was told—near the armchair, close enough to be corrected.
Trump remained seated.
“I won’t repeat myself,” he said calmly. “So listen.”
No one spoke.
Flora’s eyes stayed on the floor.
“Someone,” Trump continued, lifting his glass, “forgot her place.”
Cambilly inhaled sharply. Margery’s fingers twitched.
Trump’s eyes went to Flora.
“Look at me.”
She did.
Her face was pale, obedient, carefully empty.
“You ran,” he said. Not loud. Not angry. “You humiliated me.”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Flora whispered.
He smiled then. Thin. Cold.
“You will not apologize unless I tell you to.”
“Yes, sir.”
He set his glass down. “From now on, you do not leave a room unless I know where you’re going. You do not read unless I give permission. You do not sleep with your door closed.”
Flora nodded. Once.
“And if I find you standing idle,” he added, “I will give you something useful to do.”
Cambilly stepped forward. “You don’t get to—”
Trump stood.
The room tightened.
“Enough,” he said, his voice sharp now.
“You’ve had far too much influence.”
He turned to her fully. “You speak when spoken to. You look at your sister again like that”—his eyes flicked to the way Cambilly leaned subtly toward Flora—“and you’ll spend a week remembering why silence is preferable.”
Cambilly swallowed. Her hands curled into fists at her sides.
“Margery,” Trump said, without looking at her.
“Yes?” she answered quickly.
“You will stop hovering.”
Margery stiffened. “I’m her mother.”
“And you’re careless,” he snapped. “You let
her think she could leave. That is on you.”
“I never—”
He cut her off with a raised hand. “You will stay out of her head. Out of her room. Out of her plans. You will do as you are told, or I will remind you what happens when you don’t.”
Margery’s mouth opened.
Closed.
She nodded.
Trump exhaled, satisfied.
“Finn.”
Finn flinched. “Yeah?”
“You’ll walk your sister to meals. You’ll sit where I can see you. And you’ll report anything unusual.”
Finn’s eyes flicked to Flora. “Dad, I don’t—”
Trump stepped closer. “You do what I say, or you’ll join her restrictions.”
Finn straightened. “Yes, sir.”
Trump turned back to Flora.
“You thought running would make you free,” he said softly. “Instead, it made you visible.”
He reached out and adjusted the strap of her sweater where it slipped from her shoulder.
The touch was possessive, not gentle.
“You will stay where I can see you,” he continued. “Always.”
Flora’s throat tightened. “Yes, sir.”
“Good.”
He stepped back and surveyed them all.
“This family functions because I allow it,” he said. “And I will not be embarrassed again.”
He waved a hand toward the hallway. “Dinner. Flora, you’ll serve.”
She moved instantly.
Later, when the house settled into uneasy quiet, the rules began to show their teeth.
Flora’s door was taken off its hinges.
Her books were removed from her room and stacked in Trump’s study, out of reach. The window was nailed shut. Finn was stationed in the hall under the excuse of “keeping the house secure.”
Cambilly tried once—only once—to sneak into Flora’s room after midnight.
Trump was already awake.
The sound of his footsteps carried.
Cambilly paid for it in silence the next day, her cheek bruised, her movements watched more closely than before.
Margery stopped humming.
She cooked, cleaned, and avoided Flora’s eyes. When she passed her in the hall, her hand hovered and dropped, again and again, like a reflex she could not unlearn.
Trump noticed everything now.
If Flora paused too long at the sink, he asked why.
If she breathed too deeply, he told her to steady herself.
If she looked out the window, he closed the curtain himself.
“You don’t need distractions,” he said.
That night, Flora lay awake, staring at the open doorway, listening to footsteps that stopped just long enough to remind her she was not alone.
Her failed escape had not earned her mercy.
It had earned her attention.
And Trump Spencer was never kinder than when he was certain of his control.
- Writer
