‘There was a reason he left.’ A good reason. Good enough that she’d chosen to part with her child. Her only son. Leaving him here, hoping that someone would find him. Help him.
‘I know. He didn’t want to be apprenticed. He didn’t want to work. He was lazy and selfish.’ Mercy spat the words she’d been fed by the community. By Mercy’s own ‘husband’.
Words that Rhoda had been too terrified to call what they were: evil lies. Now she was going to lose both of her children, because she was never going to be allowed to live after this latest show of defiance.
How had she let this happen? How had it come to this?
‘No, Mercy.’ Rhoda shook her head. ‘He wasn’t lazy. He wasn’t selfish.’ He was attacked. He was beaten. He was all but dead. ‘He was—’
The truck abruptly stopped, and Rhoda cursed herself for putting the truth off too long. It was too late. She had so much to tell her daughter and only seconds to do so.
‘Mercedes,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘You are Mercedes Reynolds.’
Mercy’s eyes widened in confusion. ‘What?’
The driver’s door opened. DJ was coming. Seconds. You have only seconds. Choose your words wisely.
‘You are Mercedes Reynolds. Not Terrill.’
Mercy’s brow furrowed. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘My parents are Derrick and Ronnie Reynolds in Houston. Find them. They’ll take care of you.’
‘Mama?’ Mercy’s fingers clenched Rhoda’s handmade coat. ‘You’re not making sense.’
But she was making sense. For the first time since believing a stranger’s lies about paradise, she was making sense. She was making it right. No, she could never make it right. She could only tell the truth.
‘Your brother is Gideon Reynolds. You need to find him. Tell him I’m sorry. Tell him that I love him.’ Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked them away, not caring where they fell. ‘I love you. Always and forever.’
Mercy’s lips trembled. ‘Mama?’
‘Selena. My name is Selena Reynolds.’ Then she hissed when the back of Brother DJ’s hand connected with her jaw.
‘Silence!’ DJ thundered.
Mercy recoiled, clenching her eyes closed as she stiffened, waiting for the next blow, but DJ didn’t have a problem with Mercy so the blow never came.
Touching the tip of her tongue to her bleeding lip, Rhoda met DJ’s dark eyes and said nothing. As she’d been taught.
DJ shot her a warning glare. ‘No more of your lies, Rhoda. You’ve caused enough trouble for one day.’
Rhoda dropped her eyes to the terrified child in her arms. She’s a child. The community held that Mercy was a woman grown, but she was not. Rhoda’s daughter was an almost-thirteen-year-old girl, scared out of her mind, but too beaten down to fight back. Emotionally and physically. Mercy’s husband had beaten her, had taken her so roughly that she’d bled. Again and again.
My fault. All my fault. I should have stopped him.
But that was an impossibility. Rhoda had been unable to stop the man’s harsh treatment of her own body, much less Mercy’s.
They’d been possessions. Nothing more.
‘You’ll keep your end of the bargain?’ she asked.
DJ nodded once, his expression grim as he held out his arms.
Rhoda tightened her hold on Mercy. ‘I’ll carry her,’ she insisted, then swallowed a yelp when DJ hit her again.
‘Stop making trouble, Rhoda,’ he growled, then grabbed Mercy from her arms.
Rhoda scrambled to the edge of the truck bed, managing to get one foot on the ground before DJ returned to shove her backward.
‘Stay here,’ he barked.
She crawled to one side of the truck so that she could look over the side. Mercy lay on the asphalt parking lot, curled into the fetal position, her body visibly trembling. What had he done to her?
‘Mercy?’ she called, hearing the fear in her own voice. ‘Mercy—’
But Rhoda’s cry was abruptly muted when DJ grabbed the chain around her neck and yanked it, cutting off her air supply. On reflex, she grabbed the locket at the base of the chain and pulled it away from her throat, trying to give herself room to breathe. But DJ yanked harder and she opened her mouth, gasping for breath.
She hated the chain. Hated the locket it held. Hated how the man who’d owned her had used it just as DJ did now. To control her. To show her who owned the very breaths she took. Not me. She hadn’t owned the breaths she took for twelve long years.
The chain wasn’t jewelry. It was a slave’s collar and she’d borne it for far too long.
Something sharp punctured her skin before sliding up the back of her neck, beneath the dreaded chain that dug deeper into her throat as black circles began to dance in front of her eyes.
She wondered if this was it. Is this how he’ll kill me?
But then a loud crunch filled her ears, and the chain went slack around her neck. She gasped in air that burned, one hand circling her throat protectively. The other still clutched the hated locket.
Until it was snatched from her hand.
‘Stay here,’ DJ growled. ‘I mean it, Rhoda.’
But Rhoda wasn’t listening anymore. She crawled to the truck’s open tailgate and slid to the ground. Grabbing the edge of the truck’s bed, she made her way to her daughter on unsteady legs.
DJ was crouched beside Mercy, one of his big hands yanking at her chain. In his other hand he held a pair of bolt cutters, and he proceeded to cut the chain from Mercy’s neck. But Mercy wasn’t fighting to breathe. She was as limp as a rag doll, pliant in DJ’s harsh grip.
DJ rose, holding both chains now. Rhoda thought he’d put them in the truck, but he strode toward a grassy area and used the bolt cutters to dig a shallow hole into which he threw the lockets. He covered them up, patting at the grass he’d cut away until the area looked undisturbed.
Rhoda stumbled to Mercy’s side, dropping to her knees beside her daughter. ‘Mercy? Say something. Please.’
But Mercy remained frozen where she lay, still in the fetal position. Wildly Rhoda searched the area, but the parking lot was deserted. There was no one to hear her. No one to help.
DJ was returning, his face dark and furious.
‘What did you do to her?’ Rhoda demanded, beyond caring what he’d do to silence her. All thoughts were for the daughter she’d failed in every possible way.
DJ smiled and the sight sent a cold shiver across her skin. ‘I told her that Brother Ephraim was on his way.’