Past

Blood streaked my mother’s face and dripped down the front of her yellow sun dress. Screams ricocheted through the night, and flames leapt into the sky from the neighboring property.

The house was eerily quiet. Mom and I were the only ones inside. I blinked hard, trying to erase the horrors I’d seen from my vision. But when I opened my eyes, Mom was still there, still staring down at me.

“Why are you crying?” She grabbed my wrist and yanked me toward the wide front doors.

I wiped my tears with my free hand as she lifted the bar from the doors and tossed it onto the floor, marring the wooden planks. She wrenched the door inward. The screams were no longer muffled. Agonized cries rose from the fields of sugar cane that stretched as far as I could see in the pale moonlight. The neighboring fields were on fire, the acrid smoke making my eyes water even more.

She ripped me down the front steps. I yelled as my ankle turned on the last stair, but she only pulled me harder toward the fields.

“Mom, please!” I tried to dig my heels into the hardened dirt.

She whirled and stabbed her index finger into my chest. “Don’t you ever beg anyone! You hear me? You’re a Vinemont. You don’t cry. You don’t beg. You do what you have to do to keep this family on top. Do you understand me?”

My chest ached where she’d poked me, and her harsh words only made me cry harder. “I-I’m sorry, Mom. Let’s go back.”

The blood around her mouth had crusted a deep brown, but the streaks along her cheeks glimmered like fresh paint. She bent down and wiped a tear from my face with her thumb.

“There is no going back.” She stared into my eyes, a cruel smirk on her face. My mother, but I didn’t recognize her. Something had happened to her during the last year. Something bad. “No going back. Never. Never again.”

“Mom.” I took her hand. “Let’s just go. Let’s go. Please!”

Her stinging slap rocked me back on my heels. “Not yet.”

I clutched my cheek. She’d never hit me before. I couldn’t hold back the sob that shot from my lungs. I wanted to wake up. It had to be a nightmare.

She dashed to the edge of the sugar cane field and yanked down a stalk. She pulled off a set of green leaves and turned back to me as her foreman sauntered around the side of the house. Two men behind him dragged a third.

“Señora Vinemont!”

She grinned and took my hand, pulling me back toward the house. The man lifted his head, a bloody gash running along his bald pate.

“Rebecca?” He blinked, his eyes teary from the heavy smoke, or perhaps from something else.

“That’s Sovereign, to you.” Her voice was hard, like stone grinding against stone, but she curtsied like a little girl. “Edward Rose. So nice to see you again.” To the foreman, she said, “Take him inside.”

The men dragged Mr. Rose up the front steps as we followed behind, my hand clamped firmly in my mother’s strong grip. A cold tingle ran down my spine. Instead of going inside, I wanted to escape. But the screams in the fields at my back kept me hemmed in. There was nowhere to run. And my mother was gone, though she looked the same, had the same voice.

Once we were all inside, the foreman barred the heavy front doors again. The men set Mr. Rose on his feet. Mother circled around him, her skirt swaying as she perused him with eyes that were foreign to me. Gone was the mother who used to read to me, hold me in her lap, and chase me around the house when I rode my bike indoors. This woman—the one with the cold blue eyes and the blood-streaked face—was a stranger.

She circled Mr. Rose one more time as he finally stood on his own. His eyes remained downcast.

“Sovereign, I-I—”

“Shh.” She stood in front of him as the other men smirked and backed away. Mr. Rose swayed, but stayed on his feet. Then she held out her right hand, her fair skin still delicate even though it was tinged with crimson.

The foreman put a pistol in her hand, and she handed the sugar cane leaves to me.

Mr. Rose began to quake and shake his head, the gash oozing blood down to his ear. “I-I’m sorry about the supply issues. I promise, it won’t happen again. Now that you’re Sovereign, I w-won’t … please”—his voice broke—“please, Sovereign, I beg you, please.”

Mother pulled me forward so I stood next to her. She handled the gun with delicate, deadly fingers.

“I think you know it’s too late for that.” She pulled the hammer back, the click somehow loud even with the noise outside.

“It doesn’t have to be.” Mr. Rose finally looked up, his mouth turned down at the corners, his chin quivering. “I’ll give you whatever you want.”

“I’m already taking what I want.” She pressed the gun against his forehead.

He pulled away, but the two men were on him, holding him in place by his elbows.

I grabbed her hand. “Mom?”

“This is what you need to learn, Sinclair. This is what you have to be.” She never took her eyes from Mr. Rose.

“No.” Mr. Rose cried and sniffed, a line of snot rolling to his lips. “Please. My family.”

Mother laughed. “Dead. All dead. All gone. Did you have fun at the Christmas trial?”

He shook his head. “Wh-what?”

“Answer my question. Did you have fun at the Christmas trial?”

“I only did what everyone else—”

She cracked the butt of the gun along his cheek. “I asked you if you had fun. Not everyone else.”

“I-I- don’t remember… Please, Rebecca.”

She cracked him again in the same spot and he screamed, but the men held him steady as more blood mixed with his tears.

“Yes, Sovereign. I did. Yes.”

“Remember my Acquisition? Remember what you did to her? I can still hear her screams as you violated her, hurt her. I know every word you said, every time you told her to take it and called her a slut, every time you said she was a cunt who loved getting fucked in her ass. Do you remember all that?”

My stomach lurched, and I turned to the side. What little contents I had in my stomach emptied onto the floor in one powerful heave. The foreman laughed and stepped back.

“Sinclair!” Mom grabbed my chin and wrenched my face around to hers. “Watch every moment of this. Don’t turn away. You have to learn.”

I shuddered at her touch, her nails digging into my face. “Okay.”

“Better. Now, where was I?” She tapped the gun barrel on her cheek. “Oh, right. You raping my Acquisition over, and over, and over again.”

Mr. Rose didn’t respond, but his eyes pleaded with Mom. I clutched the sugar cane leaves until my fingers broke through them.

Mom backed up a few feet and pulled me with her. “Don’t look away, Sinclair,” she said as she raised the gun. “Never look away.”

“Please—” Mr. Rose’s plea was cut off by the deafening roar of the pistol. His right cheek exploded, the white of his teeth showing through, and he slumped to the ground. The men who’d been holding him backed away and wiped his blood from their faces.

I screamed. The sound ripped from me as Mom gave the gun back to the foreman with a steady hand.

The foreman nodded and smiled. “Muy bien, Señora Vinemont.”

The cry died in my throat as my lungs burned for want of air. I gasped and stared at Mr. Rose, unmoving on the floor. One of the men kicked him over onto his back. Only one eye remained intact, and it stared at me. If his mouth could move, it would tell me this was all my fault somehow.

“Get him out of here and clean this up.” She waved a dismissive hand at the men and grabbed my upper arm.

“Mom?” I let her pull me to the dining room. She shoved me into a chair, took the one across from me, then snatched the sugar cane leaves from my numb fingers. My ears rang in a high note, nothing like the deep sound of the gun. And I couldn’t stop the tears.

“Mommy?” I needed her more than I’d ever needed anything. Where was she?

The woman across from me smiled. “Hold your hand out.”

I shook so hard my teeth chattered. “N-no.”

“Sinclair, put your hand on the table.” Her voice darkened. “Now.”

I swallowed hard and placed my hand on the edge of the table. She reached across and yanked it so I was leaning over, my arm outstretched. My tears plopped onto the dark wood beneath me.

She plucked a sugar cane leaf and felt along the stiff side. As she slid her finger down the sharp edge, red welled up from a smooth cut on her fingertip.

She smiled and placed her other hand, palm down, next to mine. “Now, let’s begin.”