My husband shoved me, shattering the bathroom mirror. His mother sneered, “Clean up this disgusting mess.” But as I fell, my husband roared, “What’s in your pocket?!” The red LED of my federal distress fob pulsed. Denied the third click, I threw myself onto the broken glass, and…

grew ragged. In a desperate, cornered-animal reflex, he didn’t run for the window or the closet. He lunged at me.

Before I could scramble off the bed, his heavy arm wrapped like a steel vice around my neck. He hauled me off the mattress, dragging me backward toward the en-suite bathroom door, using my body as a human shield. The metal handle of his continue reading …