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Not right.
Not right.
“Take me to Divinity,” she demands, her voice just as solid as before.
Fear settles in my soul at the thought of her anywhere near him. I can barely breathe as I shake my head again, my hair swaying with the movement.
A breath chokes out of me as I slide my gaze to her. “No.”
No.
What does he mean, no?
My jaw drops, my mouth dry even as bile continues to pool in my throat.
All I hear is the sound of my mother’s head hitting the same floors I walked on for years. The reverberation of her skull colliding with the harsh surface I’ve danced over. The way she begged on the same stairs where he, where I…
Crack.
I slap a hand to my mouth and breathe through the need to vomit again. Tears are streaming down my face and I think my head is shaking. I might be speaking, might be begging, just like Mama, but I can’t think past the sound.
No.
No.
No.
I don’t understand. We have to go back. We have to confront him. He can’t get away with this. He can’t. He can’t. He—
Crack.
“Why?” I rasp, my hand falling limply onto my lap as I turn to him. His hands are flexing around the steering wheel, the leather creaking under his palms, but he doesn’t look at me, doesn’t answer me. He just keeps shaking his head. “Why won’t you take me, Roman? He killed my mother.”
My mother.
He killed my mother.
Crack.
“Mine too,” he whispers, the words so low I barely hear them over the sound of my heart pounding in my ears and the echo of my mom’s death. “He killed my mom.”
Crack.
I choke on my next breath as reality slowly starts to sink in around me. He killed our mothers. Both of them. Cami, then my mom. He abused her, raped her, kept her in Divinity when she wanted to leave.
And then…
And then…
And then he did the same thing to me.
I try to process through all the information Mama kept, but it’s so hard. The letters to Daddy, the bus tickets, Aunty Charlie, the articles. There’s so much, too much.
Crack.
Visions of Isaac’s smiling face as he talks himself out of this entire fucked up situation fill me until it’s all I can think about. He’ll do it, I know he will. He already got away with killing two women, with abusing them, with rape.
What else has he done? What else has he thrown his charming smile at and gotten away with? His money, his clout, his reputation—it’s all a mask and as the pieces click into place, it starts to crumble.
