Prologue #2
“Oh, Cece.” Her arms wrap around me again. “I’m so sorry they married you off to that man. I’m so sorry I left and couldn’t protect you.”
“Shh, now, sister. It wasn’t your fault.
You know as well as I do there was nothing you would have been able to do to stop it.
” I lean out of her embrace and take a step back, holding her arms and pleading with my gaze for her to understand I would never—could never—hold it against her.
“I’m glad you got out. Don’t take this the wrong way, but I never wanted to see you here again.
It would have meant you’d been captured and brought back.
Imagining you in the world, living a life of your choosing, brought me peace.
” Looking at the bag and clothes on the floor, I bend over and pick up the food before handing it to my sister.
“Here, I brought you some food and water.”
She opens the bag, and we sit in the pew as she unwraps the sandwich, smiling around her bite of the bread I busied myself with making this morning.
“You always had a talent for baking, Cece. It’s just as delicious as I remember,” Lu compliments.
“The elders thought seeing a familiar face would temper your resistance to being here.” I shoot her a wry smile.
“Of course, I had to act like I wasn’t chomping at the bit to come here.
I told Father I’d help you see the error of your ways, and you would be more open to hearing it from me than them. ”
“I’m shocked they agreed with your plan.”
A sad smile crosses my face. “I’ve played the obedient elder’s wife for a few years now. I’ve earned their trust.”
Lu’s bright eyes become clouded as she swallows the mouthful hard before speaking again. “How did you end up becoming his wife?”
I take a steadying breath, hating that she was given that information by someone other than me.
Not that it would have made it any easier for her to hear.
“When his first wife died unexpectedly, he began coming for dinner more often and sending little gifts to me. At first, I thought it was on Jasper’s behalf, but then Jasper’s marriage was announced to one of the other girls, so I was a little confused.
About a month after their wedding, Otto came to the house and had a meeting with Father.
I was called in and told I was to marry Otto, and Father was going to be elevated to an elder. ”
Lu shakes her head. “What did Mama say?”
My eyes widen. “They didn’t tell you?”
She gives me a confused look. “Tell me what?”
“Oh, Lu…Mama passed not long after you left. She fell ill, and her fever raged out of control. There was nothing anyone could do, and Father refused to let her go to a hospital.”
Her head falls forward as more tears stream down her face. “Do you know…are you certain it was natural causes?”
“It was.” I reach out my hand and rest it on hers.
“I would have been suspicious if Father had remarried right after, but several members of the church fell ill around the same time. Even the men. Father never remarried. Even after I was married off and he didn’t have anyone to cook or clean for him.
” I roll my eyes. “Of course, it still falls on me to help take care of him, his house, and my own house.”
“Has it been terrible for you?” she asks.
“You know, at first, I tried. I tried to be a good member of the church and tried to be who they always expect us to be, truly believing I was doing right by God, but I don’t know, something changed.
I thought about all the ways I was made to feel inferior—the way they preached one thing from the pulpit while we were making drugs that killed people, then traded those drugs to gangs and anyone else who would supply the elders with weapons.
The more I thought about it, the more I started seeing the cracks. Does that make sense?”
Lu nods with a knowing look in her eyes. “Perfect sense, Cece.”
“I wish I would have come to the realization so much sooner, Lu. I shouldn’t have let you leave on your own.”
“You know I have to try to get out of here, right? There’s no way I’m staying and putting up with any of this,” she says in a low voice, determination wrapped around every word. It’s the exact thing I was praying to anyone who may be listening that she would say.
“I know, Lu. And I’m going with you this time.
I can’t live like this anymore. Otto has been relentlessly badgering me about having a child.
I’m just thankful it hasn’t happened yet.
No child should be raised in a place like this.
” Tears spring to my eyes when I think about bringing a child into this world.
I can’t help but think about the way my daughter would be treated, and it sends a violent chill down my spine.
I don’t think I would be able to stomach watching a boy be raised to believe that women are inferior, including his own mother.
“If anyone sees you or asks you about seeing me, you need to play the part of the disappointed sister. And you have to be convincing, Cece,” she emphasizes.
“The less suspicion anyone has about your motives for visiting me, the better the chance we’ll have of getting out of here.
They won’t suspect you of being a traitor. ”
“You can’t betray a cause that’s done nothing but betray you since birth,” I tell her. I simply can’t believe this is how people are meant to live—what people are meant to believe. “Where will we go?”
A small hint of a smile tips the corner of Lu’s mouth.
“There’s a little town in Massachusetts called Shine.
I’ve been living there with my best friend, who I met while living in New Orleans.
There’re men there who treat women with kindness and respect.
” She clears her throat before continuing.
“They would lay down their lives to protect their family.”
“You love them,” I state with a small smile of my own. Hearing that she found exactly what I’d hoped all these years brings me a small amount of happiness that I was right. I just wish, with everything in me, that she was still there instead of back in this situation.
She nods. “They’re my family, and they’ll be yours, too.”
“They must be so worried.”
“If I know anything about them, they’re looking for me as we speak,” she says with confidence.
We don’t get a chance to say much more before Otto and my father walk into the church.
I immediately stand and give my sister a reproachful look.
“She ate her food. I’ve been reciting scripture to her to show her the error of her worldly ways,” I say in a haughty tone befitting an elder’s wife—one who is convinced she is better than the sinful woman they’ve brought back to our community.
“I know you’ve done everything you could for her, wife. We’ll take it from here,” Otto says, and I turn to leave, knowing I’ve done all I can for now.
“No, Cecilia. You need to stay and witness this,” Otto commands.
I silently take a seat in the pew while my father grabs my sister’s arm roughly and hauls her to the altar.
“Time for your punishment, daughter.”
“Father, put the gun down,” Lucy says, turning to face the man who has the barrel of his gun pressed firmly to the back of my head.
Moments ago, the Black Roses—who are apparently the bikers that Lu told me she’s come to know and love—rushed into the old church after my father and husband were told that the Great War was upon us and ran out of the building.
A biker—who Lu called Jude—slit the throat of the elder who was guarding the front entrance.
Gunshots rang out all around me as I ducked behind the altar at the front of the church.
My father must have snuck in through the back when he saw my husband and Jasper being dragged into the church.
Now it seems he’s intent on seeing me die rather than losing the two men who are kneeling at the same altar where Lu was receiving her punishment. The same two men who have brought so much pain and suffering to the lives of me and the rest of the women on this compound.
“You think you can tell me what to do?” my father spits angrily. “A whore has no right to speak to a man of God.”
Silent tears run down my face as the barrel of his gun presses into my skull. All I can think is I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I just got my sister back. I just got the chance to live a free life away from here.
“You aren’t going to get away with this,” Lucy tells our father.
“Maybe I die today, but I’ll be welcomed into the kingdom of heaven, whereas you, daughter, you’ll be going straight to—”
A shot rings out, and our father crumples to the floor while my eyes squeeze shut—waiting for the pain that never comes.
“If I had to hear one more word from that man’s mouth, I was liable to turn the gun on myself,” a man says with an accent I’ve never heard before.
I turn and watch him walk over to me. I’m unsteady as fear and adrenaline swirl through my system, but he grabs me around the waist before I fall next to my father.
“Shh, now. I’ve got you.” He leads me to a pew and helps me sit. His voice is so gentle, so soothing, and yet I just watched him kill a man without blinking an eye.
“Who do we have here?” he asks, walking over and standing next to Jude and Lu.
Two other men hold Jasper and Otto in a tight grip as the monsters kneel at the altar.
This time, it’s their turn for punishment.
The man who shot my father speaks in the same way that Jude does, and now that I see them next to each other, they look as though they could be brothers.
“Elder Otto and his son, Jasper. The ones responsible for Cooper,” Jude answers.
The man nods and takes a step back with two other men toward the back. “Alright then, brother. I’ll let you and yours handle this.”
Jude walks over to a kneeling Jasper with hate burning in his gaze. “Look at my woman over there, Jas. She’s beautiful, yeah?” The gun he’s holding waves in Lu’s direction.
Jasper nods stiffly but doesn’t speak.
“You tried to take what was mine to love and protect. And for what? To turn her into a mindless shell of a woman who was only good for breeding and cleaning.” He looks at my sister then back to Jasper.
“Nah, mate. A woman like this was never going to bend to a boy like you. She needs a man who can handle her fire. And you?” Jude points the gun at his head. “You need to die.”
When Jude pulls the trigger, the man holding Jasper lets him go, and he falls to the floor with a bullet between his eyes. I should be absolutely terrified, but with each body that crumples before the feet of these men, the only thing I feel is relief.
“And then there was one,” Jude says, turning toward Otto, who is staring blankly at his son’s lifeless body.
Lucy walks up behind Jude. Her hatred for the man on his knees in front of her is a violent thing, and she’s so consumed by it that I can practically see it vibrating through her.
“How many times?” she asks my husband.
“What are you talking about?” Otto sneers.
“How many times did you rape my sister as she cried out silently, praying to your god to make it stop? How many girls did you give away to disgusting men like yourself to be used and thrown away?”
When she asks that, I want to scream. I want to cry.
I want to vomit in this pew. God, if only she knew the truth about what he did to me—what he allowed other men to do to me.
I don’t do any of that, though. Instead, I sit silently and watch Jude slide the knife that my sister asked for into her hand.
“It was God’s will. You have no right to interfere with that,” Otto says, staring my sister in the eyes.
“You had no right to bring me here against my will or commit any number of horrific crimes you did in the name of God, yet here we are,” Lu says, taking a few steps and planting her feet in front of my husband’s trembling body.
“You’ll burn in the pits of hell for this, Lucinda. Mark my words,” Otto grits out.
She pretends to ponder his statement, tilting her head back and forth and looking toward the ceiling. When her eyes meet his once again, they’re hard as steel and just as unforgiving. “I suppose I’ll see you there, then.”
Lu slashes the knife across his throat. She watches as the blood pours from his wound—a look of shock on his rapidly paling face.
My sister is covered in blood, some of it hers and some of it Otto’s.
But all I see is a glorious avenging angel standing in front of me.
When the men spoke of such beings, I highly doubt this is what they had in mind.
A small smile plays on my lips as I watch Otto’s life force drain away, his eyes fixed blankly on the altar of his church.
After walking out of the church, Lu and I gathered all of the scared women and the children on the compound.
I knew there was no way we could simply leave them here.
The man with the strange accent—who was introduced to me as Liam, Jude’s older brother—made some phone calls so they could transport them all back to the small town my sister calls home.
With everyone now in the town square, Lu and I walk to one of the barns and collect every gas can we can find.
We make several trips back and forth from the barn to the church, Lu quiet the entire time.
Both of us seem to be lost in our own thoughts as we prepare to destroy the place that nearly destroyed both of us and everyone else living here.
“Ready?” she asks as we stand together, holding hands in the dead of night, with the smell of gasoline stinging my nose.
I nod and Jude hands my sister a book of matches. She releases my hand and lights a match before setting the entire book ablaze, then she grabs my hand again. Lu throws the burning matches onto the trail of gas that leads to the church, where we had poured gallons and gallons around the perimeter.
The church goes up in flames, the old dried-out wood taking hardly any time to erupt into an inferno. Lu and I stand hand in hand, transfixed as the fire dances against the backdrop of the barren desert I pray I never step foot in again.
Tears of relief fill my eyes.
I’m finally free.