THE HEELS OF CHLOE Lynn’s high-heeled boots clicked on the tile floor where she paced in annoyance, arms crossed over her chest, dressed in designer skinny jeans and a flowy blouse. Her mother looked poised and ready to conquer the world, while Shea knew she looked absolutely horrible, her eyes stained red and cheeks chapped from crying.
“Please, Momma, I need your help.”
She’d hidden it for as long as she could.
Four months, and there was no longer any hidin’.
Shea met the force of her mother’s disgusted glare. Cold. Cold. Cold.
Beneath it Shea wanted to cower and shrink, but she refused to be that girl for one day longer. No longer would she bow and submit.
But that didn’t mean fear wasn’t trembling through her bones.
“What is it exactly you want me to do, Delaney?”
Shea cringed, voice ragged. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why? It’s about time you accepted who you are.”
“What if that’s not who I want to be?”
Shea cringed again when her mother laughed, bitter, low, and sarcastic. “It’s a little late now, don’t you think? You have contracts. Albums to record and tours to fulfill. You have obligations. I’m not going to tell you anything different than what Martin told you. You’re going to suck it up and act like a woman. Wipe those ugly tears off your face and take care of what needs to be taken care of, and that’s gonna be the end of it.”
Pain sliced through Shea’s chest, something physical amassed from many years.
“I did everything for you. All my life spent in lessons and chasing down auditions. Me running faster and faster because you were right behind me pushing and pushing and pushing.”
“And you think now that we finally got what we’ve worked so hard for, I’m going to stand by and let you throw it all away? You go and get yourself knocked up and you think it changes anything? I’m not going to let you ruin my life. Not again.”
Shea’s face crumpled with the blow. “Is that what I was? A mistake?”
Finally, all her mother’s pushin’ had driven her right into the ground.
Laughing as if Shea were completely ignorant, her mother shook her head as she lifted the half-spent bottle of wine, red liquid billowing into the well of her emptied glass.
“Time to grow up, Delaney. Wipe the stars out of your eyes. All those dreams about falling in love and happy families you’ve always been so fond of? The nonsense your grandma filled your head with? It doesn’t exist. Go back to Martin. He’s waitin’ on you.”
Then she turned her back and walked through the arch.
Shea stood in the middle of her mother’s Nashville kitchen, the fear for her child and the loss of her grandma nearly dropping her to the floor in a broken pile. The opulence surrounding her rode on every song Shea had ever sang, the cost of a life she didn’t want to live.
In that moment, she felt the last thread of commitment she had for her mother snap.
Frantically, Shea ripped shirts from their hangers and shoved them into a suitcase sitting on the floor in the middle of the walk-in closet. Adrenaline and terror and the overwhelming urge to run coursed through her veins.
He would try to stop her. She knew he would. But she wouldn’t let him.
It was time and this time there was no turning back.
She’d overheard what she shouldn’t. Martin in a business deal with Lester Ford, the middle-aged man just as disgusting as Martin. Just as pretentious. Just as fake. Crooked. One of Nashville’s wealthiest, revered in their circles.
Now Shea knew better.
She’d been sure their business dealings slanted on the seedy side, but she’d had no idea how sordid they went.
Martin was funding Lester’s campaign with drug money.
All of this—it was a front. Martin was nothing more than a lowlife drug trafficker, sending money out west while wearing a five-thousand-dollar suit.
He’d caught her lurking in the shadows. Listening. He had pushed her against the wall and pressed his hand to her throat and a gun to her side.
“You think you know what’s going on?” he’d spat. “What you heard, you will tell no one. Do you understand? I made you. You owe me, and I will collect my debt. You’ll never be without me, Delaney Rhoads. I. Own. You. Open your mouth and all you know and love will vanish. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
Petrified, I could only nod.
“I will guarantee your silence,” he’d whispered with all the menace in his black, black soul.
That’s what he’d said and that’s when Shea had decided no more.
He’d wanted the money—the money from the record deal she’d signed. The millions that should have gone to her, but instead in all her naivety, she’d signed contracts that awarded virtually all of it to her mother and Martin. He owed that money to Lester…needed it to fulfill a debt.
Her threat to leave had been returned with a threat to kill her.
She didn’t really think he would.
He wanted her scared.
Maybe she should have been more fearful.
Or maybe she was.
But she refused to live this life.
Martin thought she’d had an abortion. That she’d surrendered the way she always had.
But no.
No longer would Shea allow herself to be a prisoner to this nightmare. She was escaping before it ruined more of who she was and stole from her the one thing worth living for.
Shea filled the suitcase to bursting, dropped to her knees, and grunted as she forced the zipper closed, another wave of terror pounding adrenaline through her blood.
Desperately, she whispered to the baby growing in her belly, “I’m going to take care of you. I promise, I’m going to be the best momma you could ever have. Just you and me.”
Just you and me.
Shea climbed back to her feet and drew her phone from her back pocket. She just needed to hear a sane voice. Someone there to remind her she wasn’t completely alone in this world that threatened to rip her apart. A reassurance that what she was doing was right.
Quickly she dialed her uncle Charlie.
He answered on the first ring. “Shea Bear.” Relief was evident in his heavy exhale. “You on your way, sweetheart?”
“Almost…”
Shea looked around the closet, gauging what she could grab in the short window she had. “I have to pack a couple more things and then I’ll be. I should be there by daylight.”
The trip from Nashville to Savannah was just shy of an eight-hour drive.
“Be careful, sweet girl. I’ll be right here waitin’.”
“Thank you,” she whispered, that simple statement filled with so much, so much gratitude to the man who she knew was saving her from this life.
She ended the call, hauling the overstuffed suitcase behind her out into the bedroom.
Moonlight filtered in through the transparent drapes, the darkened room cast in shadows and memories and regrets.
Shea’s gaze slid unwelcomed to the plush bed made up of satiny linens. Her stomach turned with nausea at the thought of ever having shared it with Martin Jennings.
But she’d be taking one good thing from this awful mess.
In the end, this baby was the only thing that mattered.
She grabbed the large duffle bag she’d already packed and slung it over her shoulder, maneuvered the suitcase over the thick carpet to the dresser against the far wall.
Her jewelry box rested on top of it.
It was chock-full of diamonds, gold, and gems—all tokens of this flashy, false life. But the only things she was after were the heirlooms her grandmother had left her when she’d passed—her ring and the matching necklace her grandfather had given her on their wedding day.
She opened the special bottom drawer where she stored them.
A noise clattered from the other side of the house. At the sound, her head jerked up. Freezing cold slid down her spine.
Then that noise was eclipsed by pure foreboding silence.
No.
Shea swallowed and slowly turned as the hairs at the back of her neck lifted. Craning her ear, she trained her attention out beyond the bedroom.
Listening.
Fear tingled as a flash of goosebumps swelled across her skin.
She could sense it.
Smell it in the air.
The stench of evil.
Something wicked coming her way.
Just outside the door, the wooden floorboards creaked. Shivers vibrated uncontrollably through her limbs, and she fumbled backward and bumped into the dresser.
The jewelry box rattled.
It was as if the sound was the strike to a match.
The bedroom door burst open, and her heart took off in a wild, thundering sprint.
There were three of them, all dressed in black, masks over their faces, wild eyes staring at her through the dingy duskiness of the room. Slowly, they encroached.
A tiny whimper trembled from her tongue, eyes darting between the three of them. One stood out from the others, taking a step in front, and a shocked cry jutted from her mouth when the malicious blue eyes stared her down.
The fierce need to protect her baby shot through her in a panic of survival.
She spun and raced for the bathroom door.
All she had to do was get to that door and lock it behind her.
There was a window—a window to her escape.
Shea pushed herself as hard as she could go.
But the man in front was faster.
He grabbed her by the hair, taking a handful and jerking her around. In the same motion, his opposite fist struck her at the temple.
Pain splintered through her head and blackness closed in at the edges of her sight.
She fought for consciousness, barely aware he was throwing her to the ground.
Yet somehow her wide, unblinking eyes took it all in on a shocked reel that recorded in slow motion.
“Do it.” The man in charge shouted his command at the other two who stood gaping at her where she had crumpled in a ball.
A voice so familiar.
“Do it!” he shouted again.
The two moved into action, tearing the covers from the bed she hated and ripping the drapes from the windows, yanking open dresser drawers and strewing clothes across the floor.
The ringleader landed another punch to her eye, and she gasped out at the agony of it.
But it was the kick to her stomach that nearly killed her.
Physically.
Emotionally.
She was sure the pain went deep enough to touch her soul.
Shea wailed.
Darkness tried to suck her under, and she wanted to succumb, to give up, but she knew she couldn’t give in.
Fight.
And she did.
She struggled to bring up her knees, to guard herself with her arms and hands, all the while praying harder than she had in all her life.
“No,” she whimpered. “Please.”
She dug deep to find the strength to curl herself into a tight ball.
And the man…he kicked and kicked and kicked.
Battering until she could feel the cuts and wounds he inflicted on her arms and legs weeping blood, trails streaking to the floor and flooding from her mouth and nose.
And still she fought until she’d gone numb.
Senses dulled by the unbearable pain.
Weak.
Because she was losing this fight.
Her arms slipped and her stomach lurched when it was struck with another direct blow.
“No,” she cried. Her body recoiled with the force, and she heaved, rolling onto her side in a silent wail, cheek pressed into the carpet, her insides curled, and she vomited on the floor.
“That’s enough,” he said, as if maybe he needed to convince himself.
The room continued to spin with her fear, with her hatred—with the glaring shock that seemed to have taken her whole.
She watched with the same unblinking eyes as the man who’d beaten her stepped over her as if she were a piece of trash discarded in the middle of the floor. Leaning down in front of the dresser, he took a few pieces of jewelry that had been littered across the floor, then he snagged her grandmother’s ring and necklace and stuffed them into his pocket.
She wanted to cry out, to beg him not to take something else so precious to her, but her tongue was swollen and thick, the words stuck on a muted cry bottled in her throat.
The three of them hustled out, and the back door slammed.
An eerie silence stole over the house.
It echoed back her surrender. Drowsiness pulled at her consciousness, the pain too great. She had the greatest urge to close her eyes and never wake.
No.
Somehow she found the strength to roll to her stomach. An agonizing pain tore through every inch of her body as she fought to climb onto her feet, but they wouldn’t hold, and she fell back to the ground.
Whimpered cries wept from her as she dragged herself on her elbows across the room, the flashing light of her cell phone like a beacon where it had been knocked from her hold and skidded across the floor.
Her bloodied fingers stretched toward it, inches away. They were shaking…shaking. Eyesight blurred. Yet somehow she managed to place the call.
“911…what’s your emergency?”
She could do nothing more than weep.