Chapter 6: The Winter Jubilee
The next month was like that. A deep, warm current pulling them all under. The cottage in the bayou became a world entire, sealed off from everything but the rhythm of their bodies and the sounds of the boys. Kordell’s possession of her was absolute, a fact he reinforced with his hands, his mouth, his cock, multiple times a day, as casually as breathing.
He took her in the shower before work, her hands splayed against the wet tile, his teeth sinking into the muscle of her shoulder as he drove into her from behind, the water sluicing over their joined bodies. He took her on the kitchen counter while the boys napped, her legs hooked over his arms, a dish towel stuffed in her mouth to silence her cries. He took her slow and deep in the middle of the night, waking her with his lips between her thighs, licking her until she was sobbing, then rolling her over and entering her with a single, relentless thrust that filled her completely, his big hand covering her mouth to keep the sounds in.
It was always raw. There was never a thought of anything else. He came inside her every single time, a hot, claiming pulse, and would hold her there, locked together, until he softened, murmuring “mine” into her damp skin.
And she learned him. She learned to take him in her mouth, her initial hesitation replaced by a hungry confidence he cultivated. He’d guide her, a hand fisted gently in her curls, his thighs trembling as she learned to relax her throat, to use her tongue in the way that made his head fall back with a ragged groan. “Just like that, Mama. Fuck. Just like that.” She learned to swallow him down, no gag, no hesitation, taking everything he gave until he’d pull her up, his kiss tasting of herself and his own salt, his eyes black with a feral pride.
The family saw it. How could they not? At Sunday dinners, Kordell’s hand was a permanent weight on the back of her neck, his thumb stroking her pulse point. He fed her bites off his fork, his gaze holding hers. He’d pull her onto his lap in the middle of a conversation, nuzzling her hair, indifferent to the raised eyebrows and knowing smirks. Granny would just smile, stirring her pot. Big Papa would watch Kordell with a satisfied, quiet intensity.
The boys felt it most of all. Their world had a new, solid center. Sire stopped asking when she was leaving. He’d climb into her lap and lay his head on her chest, his small body going slack with a trust that made her throat tight. “You my mama,” he’d state, not a question, and she’d kiss his forehead. “Always, baby.” Saint, whose first clear word had been ‘Dada’, now called her ‘Mama’ with a gummy, pacifier-clutching grin, his arms always lifting for her. They were clingy, attached to her hip, and Kordell allowed it, even encouraged it. He’d come home and find them all three asleep on the couch, a picture of such profound peace it would stop him in the doorway, something raw and vulnerable flashing across his face before he shut it down.
It was blissful. A perfect, fragile snow globe of a life.
The Winter Jubilee in late January was Mireaux Parish’s way of shaking off the frost. The town square glowed under strings of lanterns and fairy lights woven through the ancient oaks. The air was crisp, smelling of woodsmoke, powdered sugar, and the rich, dark water of the bayou. A fiddle band played a reel, feet stomped on wooden planks, and children wove through the crowds with sparklers.
Soleil felt beautiful. She wore a cream-colored ribbed knit dress that clung to every curve, stopping mid-thigh, paired with tall, suede boots. Her curls were loose, a dark cascade over her shoulders, and the gold sun pendant Kordell had given her lay gleaming against her skin. She’d gotten approving nods from the aunts and a long, heated stare from Kordell that promised later.
She’d been helping Granny at the Baptreaux family’s praline booth, carrying Saint on her hip while Sire helped his father with something by the main stage. Now, with Saint getting heavy, she was making her way back to them, walking beside Granny through the merry crowd.
“You’re glowing, Sunshine,” Granny said, linking her arm through Soleil’s free one.
Soleil just smiled, ducking her head. She was about to reply when she turned to avoid a group of teenagers and bumped solidly into a man’s chest.
“Oh! I’m so sorr—” The apology died, withered in the winter air.
Derrick Thorpe looked down at her, his handsome, polished features arranging themselves into a smile of pure, triumphant delight. He looked rich. A cashmere coat, crisp jeans, boots that probably cost more than her whole wardrobe. He smelled of expensive cologne and ambition.
“Well, well, well,” he said, his voice a smooth baritone that once sounded like love and now sounded like a tomb. “There you are, baby. I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”
The world did not so much tilt as shatter. The music, the laughter, the smells—all of it receded into a high-pitched whine. Her blood turned to ice water. Her arms locked around Saint, who squirmed at the sudden, vice-like pressure.
Derrick’s eyes, cold and assessing behind the smile, flicked to the child in her arms, then back to her face. “Who’s this? You babysitting now?” His tone was slick, warm for the audience they didn’t know they had.
Granny’s hand, papery and strong, landed on Soleil’s shoulder. “Sunshine,” she said, her voice calm but with a blade’s edge underneath. “You know this man?”
Soleil tried to speak. Her tongue was a dry, heavy thing stuck to the roof of her mouth. She managed a faint, strangled sound.
Derrick extended a hand to Granny, the picture of charming concern. “Derrick Thorpe. Soleil’s fiancé. She ran off on me a few months back—left without a word. Got me worried sick.” He shook his head with a theatrical, loving despair.
Granny did not take his hand. Her gaze was a laser. “She didn’t mention a fiancé.”
“She’s shy,” Derrick chuckled, as if sharing an inside joke. He slid his arm around Soleil’s waist, pulling her stiff body against his side. It was a gesture that looked protective but felt like a cage. Saint, sensing the terror vibrating through her, began to fuss. “And a little flighty when she gets scared. But it’s okay, baby. I found you. Time to go home.”
His fingers dug into the soft flesh of her hip, a hidden, punishing promise.
A shadow fell over them. Kordell was just there. He hadn’t made a sound. Sire was peering from behind his leg, confused. Kordell’s face was a calm mask, but the muscle in his jaw jumped rhythmically. His dark eyes took in the scene: Derrick’s arm around Soleil, the pallor of her skin, the way she trembled like a leaf in a storm.
“Something wrong?” Kordell’s voice was flat, disinterested almost.
Derrick released Soleil’s waist, but only to extend his hand again, his other hand remaining firmly on her arm. “You must be the boss. Kordell, right? Thanks for looking out for my girl here, giving her a job and all. But the vacation’s over. I’m here to take her home.”
Kordell ignored the outstretched hand. He looked directly at Soleil. “That true?”
Her eyes snapped to his. They were wide, desperate pools of panic and a silent, screaming plea. Please. See me. See what this is. Don’t let him. Tell him I’m yours. She opened her mouth, a small gasp of air escaping, but no words followed.
Derrick laughed, a rich, easy sound that made her skin crawl. He gave her shoulder a squeeze that was just shy of painful. “See? She’s just overwhelmed with joy. Always gets emotional.” He tilted her chin up with his fingers, his grip firm. “Come on, baby. Kiss me. Show them how much you missed me.”
He brought his mouth down on hers. It was a hard, possessive press, a performance of ownership. His lips were cold. She stood frozen, her own lips unresponsive, her hands gripping Saint so tightly the boy let out a full wail. She was aware of Granny’s tense stillness, of the fact that a few people nearby had stopped to watch, of Sire’s small voice saying, “Mama?”
When Derrick pulled back, his smile was tight. His fingers bit into the soft flesh of her upper arm, a warning grip hidden from view. He looked at Granny, then at Kordell. “Tell them, Soleil,” he said, his voice dropping, losing its friendly sheen for a fraction of a second. “Tell them you’re coming with me.”
Granny stepped forward, her posture rigid. “Her work here ain’t done. She’s got responsibilities.”
Derrick’s gaze didn’t leave Soleil’s terrified face. “I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am, truly. But I need my baby back home with me.” He gave her arm a sharp, hidden jerk. “Tell. Them.”
Soleil’s eyes, glassy with unshed tears, found Kordell’s again. This was it. The line. He would step over it now. He would show this stranger, this ghost from her nightmare, exactly who she belonged to. He would say the words. She’s mine. She stays. He had to. After everything. After the way he took her, after the gold sun on her throat, after the way the boys called her Mama. He had to.
Kordell looked from her pleading face to Derrick’s smug one. He saw the man’ expensive clothes, his polished threat, his claim. He saw Soleil’s fear, and in his mind, it twisted—not as terror of Derrick, but as her desire to go. To return to a man who looked like this, who could give her a life he couldn’t. A nanny. She was just the nanny. He’d never promised her anything else. The cottage on stilts, his wild sons, his rough hands… how could that compete?
He shoved his own trembling hands deep into his pockets, hardening his heart until it was a stone in his chest. He looked at Granny, his voice a hollowed-out thing.
“That’s alright, Granny.” He gave a slight, careless shrug, his eyes avoiding Soleil’s completely. “If she needs to leave, then she needs to.” He finally looked at Derrick, a cold, dismissing nod. “Ain’t nothing to find another nanny.”
Kordell’s words landed like a physical blow to her solar plexus, stealing the air from her lungs. The fragile world of the last few months—the gold sun at her throat, his weight on her in the dark, the boys’ sleepy breaths—splintered into silent, invisible shards inside her chest. She couldn’t let a single one show. Derrick would see. He’d know. He’d know she’d given herself to another man, and the punishment for that would be unimaginable.
So she let her face go blank, a practiced mask of numb submission she hadn’t worn in eight months.
“See?” Derrick said, his smile widening into something genuinely pleased. He patted her arm, the gesture dripping with condescending ownership. “Sensible man. No hard feelings.” He turned his full attention to her, his voice dropping to a familiar, controlling register. “Alright, baby. Time to go. Car’s just over there.”
“My things,” she whispered, the words barely audible. She was staring at Kordell’s chest, at the familiar tattoos peeking from his collar, unable to meet his eyes. “At the cottage. My clothes…”
Derrick waved a dismissive hand, his signet ring glinting under the fairy lights. “I’ll buy you new things. Better things. You can leave that… stuff.” He said the word like it was contaminated. He began to steer her away, his grip firm on her elbow.
She turned, almost mechanically, toward Granny. The older woman’s face was a thundercloud of fury and grief, her white locs seeming to crackle with static energy. She grabbed Kordell’s arm, yanking him down so she could hiss in his ear, her voice a low, urgent rasp.
“Boy, have you lost your entire mind? You look in her eyes! That ain’t no woman wanting to leave. That’s a rabbit in a snare. You let her walk away with that snake, I will never forgive you. Never. You hear me?”
Kordell didn’t respond. His expression remained carved from stone. He just leaned forward, his movements stiff, and pried a crying Saint from Soleil’s trembling arms. The toddler wailed, reaching back for her, tiny fingers clutching at the empty air where her body had been.
“Mama! No!” Sire’s scream was raw and immediate. He barreled into her legs, wrapping his arms around her knees, his small body shaking. “Don’t go! Don’t go, Mama, please!”
The sound broke her. She bent, the cream-colored dress tightening across her back, and hugged him fiercely, burying her face in his hair. He smelled of popcorn and little boy sweat, a smell that was now home. “I’ll come back,” she choked out, the lie ash in her mouth. “I’ll visit. I’ll write letters. I’ll call.”
“Stay now,” he sobbed, his tears hot against her neck. “Please stay.”
“I know, baby,” she whispered, her voice cracking under the weight of a sob she swallowed whole. “I know.”
She kissed his wet cheek, a hard, desperate press of her lips. Then she stood, her legs unsteady, and turned to Saint, still wailing in his father’s arms. She cupped the little boy’s face, her thumbs wiping at his tears. She kissed his forehead, his chubby cheeks, the top of his curly head, memorizing the softness of his skin, the way his cries hitched. “My sweet boy,” she breathed against his hair.
Then she leaned back and looked at Kordell.
Her eyes held everything. Every night he’d come to her, every promise his body had made, every silent “mine” growled into her skin. She poured every shattered hope into that look, a final, silent prayer.
His jaw was a knot of strained muscle, a vein pulsing at his temple. He held Saint close, absorbing the child’s cries. He simply gave a single, stiff nod, his dark eyes blank. “Thanks for all the hard work you done,” he said, his voice devoid of everything.
The formal dismissal was the final knife. She nodded back, a small, broken dip of her chin.
She turned to Granny, who opened her arms. Soleil fell into them, the older woman’s embrace as solid as an oak. Granny hugged her so tightly it hurt, whispering fiercely into her ear. “You remember who you are, Sunshine. You remember this family. You stay alive, you hear me? We see you. I see you. This ain’t over.”
“Come on, baby, enough of the drama,” Derrick called, his voice laced with impatience. He snapped his fingers once. “Now.”
Soleil pulled back from Granny. She didn’t look at the boys again. She couldn’t. She walked to Derrick, her boots crunching on the gravel. He immediately took her arm, his fingers digging in above her elbow with possessive force, and began leading her toward a sleek, black sedan parked arrogantly on the edge of the square.
As they walked, he leaned his head down, his lips nearly brushing her ear, his cheerful facade gone. “Eight months,” he whispered, the words sweet with venom. “Living in some nigga’s shack. Playing mommy. Wearing another man’s trash around your neck.” His grip tightened, making her wince. “I’m gonna make you regret every second you ran from me. We’re going to reacquaint ourselves, real proper.”
He opened the passenger door, pushed her inside, and slammed it shut. The interior smelled of new leather and his cologne, a suffocating capsule. Through the window, as the car pulled away, she saw the last snapshot of her life: Kordell, statue-still, holding a weeping Saint, with Sire clinging to his leg, both boys’ faces crumpled. Granny stood beside them, one hand over her heart, glaring at the retreating car with unmasked hatred. Other Baptreaux cousins had gathered, their festive expressions gone, replaced by confusion and a growing, dark anger directed at Kordell’s rigid back.
He stood there until the car’s taillights disappeared into the cypress gloom. Then, without a word to anyone, he bent and scooped up a hysterical Sire, tucking the boy under one arm, adjusting Saint on his other hip. He turned and walked straight through the murmuring crowd, ignoring his name called by an aunt, ignoring Big Papa’s low, commanding “Kordell!”, and headed for his truck.
Hours later, in the sterile, cold expanse of Derrick’s downtown penthouse, the reacquaintance began.
It was not a beating born of hot rage, but of cold, calculated correction. He backhanded her first, a sharp crack that snapped her head to the side and filled her mouth with the coppery tang of blood. “For running.” He punctuated each crime with his fists, his open hands, the hard toe of his shoe. A blow to her ribs for “living in that filth.” A vicious kick to her thigh for “touching those bastard children.” He grabbed the gold sun pendant, yanking it so hard the chain bit into the nape of her neck before snapping. He tossed it onto the marble floor.
“For letting another man put his mark on you,” he hissed, watching her crumple.
She didn’t scream. She took it in gasping silence, curling around the agony in her belly, her mind fleeing to a moss-draped cottage, to the sound of laughter in a steamy kitchen, to the feel of small, trusting arms around her neck. The physical pain was a distant echo compared to the gaping void where her heart had been.
When he was done, breathing lightly as if he’d completed a satisfying workout, he looked down at her huddled form on the floor. “Clean this up. Yourself. And me. I expect my food on the table when I get back.” He straightened his cufflinks, grabbed his keys from the console table, and left. The heavy door clicked shut with a sound of absolute finality.
Silence.
She lay there for a long time, listening to the hum of the refrigerator, the distant whine of a elevator in the building’s core. Every breath sent a sharp fire through her ribs. Her face felt swollen and foreign. The taste of blood was a constant reminder.
Slowly, agonizingly, she pushed herself up. The world swayed. She caught sight of herself in the dark, floor-to-ceiling window—a fragmented reflection of a woman in a torn cream dress, her beautiful curls matted, her posture broken. Outside, the city lights glittered, indifferent and cold.
Her hand went to her throat, finding only raw skin where the warm weight of the sun had rested. A dry, soundless sob wracked her broken body. She had gone from a home to a house, from a family to a prison, from being someone’s “Mama” to being nobody at all again. The heartbreak was a physical weight, heavier than any blow Derrick had landed, threatening to press her straight through the cold marble floor and into oblivion.
The heartbreak was a physical weight, heavier than any blow Derrick had landed, threatening to press her straight through the cold marble floor and into oblivion.
She pushed up onto her hands and knees, her vision swimming. A glint of gold caught her eye near the leg of a console table. The sun pendant. The chain was broken, but the charm itself, that ancient, warm gold, was unharmed. It winked at her from the shadow.
Her body screamed in protest as she crawled to it. Her fingers closed around the metal. It was still warm from her skin. This was proof. Proof she hadn’t imagined it all. She clutched it in her palm, the points of the sun rays digging into her flesh. She couldn’t let him find it. He’d destroy it.
Groaning, she hauled herself upright using the table. She limped to the hall closet, found an old winter coat of hers from a lifetime ago. With fumbling, swollen fingers, she ripped open a tiny seam in the lining and shoved the pendant deep inside. She smoothed the fabric, hiding the evidence. Then she went to the kitchen.
She cooked. Through the throbbing in her face, the stabbing in her ribs, she made seared scallops and asparagus, his favorite. She set the table with precise, mechanical movements. She showered, the hot water stinging her fresh bruises, and changed into the silk pajamas he liked. She was waiting on the couch, posture straight, when his key turned in the lock two hours later.
He walked in, glanced at the set table, at her waiting form. He sniffed the air. “Smells alright.” He ate in silence, then pointed his fork at her plate. “You not eating?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Eat.” It wasn’t a request.
She forced the food down, each swallow a rebellion her body resisted.
This was her normal life again. A pristine, cold cage. Derrick’s control was absolute, now reinforced with digital chains. He installed an app on her phone that shared her location, every minute of every day. He took her old, battered device, the one with pictures of Sire and Saint making silly faces, and dropped it into a glass of water on the counter, watching it die with a smile.
“You won’t be needing memories,” he said. He gave her a new one, clean and empty, with only his number and those of his associates programmed in.
He kept her credit cards. He gave her a strict, humiliating cash allowance for groceries, which he required receipts for, line items scrutinized. He had cameras installed in the main living areas, the feed accessible on his phone. “For your safety, baby. In case you get another flighty idea.”
The cheating continued, blatant and unconcealed. Her nose would wrinkle at a unfamiliar, floral perfume on his collar over breakfast. He’d take calls in the other room, his laughter low and intimate. Sometimes he didn’t come home at all. The silence of the penthouse those nights was a different kind of violence.
The physical corrections came weekly, sometimes more. A backhand for a lukewarm cup of coffee. A sharp grip on her upper arm, leaving fingerprint bruises, for looking out the window too long. He never hit her in places visible in the summer dress he’d demand she wear to his business dinners. The pain was a private, constant companion, blooming in the secret geography of her body.
Weeks bled into a month. A strange, persistent fatigue clung to her. Then the nausea came, rolling in waves each morning. She knew, with a terrifying, luminous certainty, even before she stole the test from a pharmacy during her surveilled grocery trip.
She locked the bathroom door, her heart hammering against her bruised ribs. The little digital screen flashed its verdict: PREGNANT. A soft, broken sound escaped her. She slid down the wall, the cold tile against her back, and cried. Hard, silent, heaving sobs that shook her entire frame. This was Kordell’s. It could only be Kordell’s. Derrick had never touched her like that, had never been allowed that final claim.
A wild, protective ferocity ignited in her chest, bright and sharp against the constant dread. She wrapped her arms around her still-flat stomach. My baby. Ours.
She carefully placed the used test in an empty tampon box, buried it under other trash, and later, when taking the garbage to the chute, she slipped it directly into the building’s main dumpster in the garage. She watched it fall into the darkness. Proof gone.
That night, lying stiffly beside his sleeping form, she began to plan. It was a fragile, secret architecture built in her mind. She needed cash. She started skimming bills from the grocery allowance, hoarding singles and fives, hiding them in the coat lining with the pendant. She researched bus routes on the library computer during her “approved solo walks.” She mapped a path back to Louisiana, back to the parish, back to… him. If he would even look at her. She thought of Granny’s fierce hug. We see you.
Another month passed. The nausea was relentless. She developed a subtle, hard swell low in her belly. She took to wearing loose, flowing tops Derrick disliked. “You dressing frumpy now? Trying to hide your body because it’s not what I want anymore?” he’d sneer.
The blows kept coming. Now, instinct took over. When his hand flew, her own hands, or a cushion, or her arms, would flash to cover her stomach. She’d turn her back, taking the hits on her shoulders, her ribs, curling around the secret life within her. The need to protect was a steel cord in her spine, straightening her resolve even as her body bent under his anger.
Meanwhile, in Mireaux Parish, the world was coming apart.
The silence in the cottage was a living thing, hungry and wrong. Sire’s cries for Mama were a nightly shriek that cut through the walls. He’d wake from nightmares, sobbing, and punch his little fists against Kordell’s chest. “You let her go! You stupid! I hate you!” Saint regressed, refusing to speak, clutching his pacifier with a desperate, blank-eyed intensity. He’d wander the rooms, lifting couch cushions as if she might be hiding underneath.
Granny hadn’t spoken a direct word to Kordell in eight weeks. She’d take the boys, feed them, hold them, but her eyes would slide over him as if he were vapor. At family gatherings, a chill settled in his wake. Conversations died. His cousins, men who’d followed him without question, looked at him with a confused disappointment.
“She was just the nanny,” he’d mutter to himself, standing on the sagging porch, gripping a whiskey bottle. “An outsider. I never should’ve…” But the memories were ghosts that choked him. The feel of her coming apart underneath him. The sound of her singing to Saint. The weight of her sleeping head on his chest.
He couldn’t function. Sleep was a fractured landscape of horrible dreams. Vivid, sickening flashes of Soleil in that cream dress, but it was torn, and she was crying, and Derrick was pulling her into a dark car that smelled of antiseptic and fear. He’d wake with a gasp, his heart pounding as if he’d been running, the sheets soaked with sweat.
He was snappish, dangerous. He fired two men at the lumber yard for minor mistakes. He got into a fight at a bar over a misplaced glance, his fists connecting with a brutality that shocked even him. The land itself seemed to revolt. Equipment broke down with freakish regularity. A trusted foreman nearly drowned when a section of bank he’d walked a thousand times gave way into the bayou for no reason. The water in his well turned thick and brackish overnight.
The gifts that had always flowed through his bloodline—an intuitive knowing about the land, a quiet communion with the water—curdled into something jagged and painful. He’d get sharp, migraine-like pains behind his eyes, flashes of sensation that weren’t his: a cold marble floor, the smell of expensive cologne overlaid with fear, a deep, aching cramp low in a belly that wasn’t his.
The entire parish felt the discord. It was in the bad harvests on neighboring farms, in the unusual aggression of the gators, in a general sense of unease that settled over the swamp like a fever.
One morning, just after dawn, he bolted upright in bed. He’d heard it. Clear as a bell. Her crying. Not the boys. Her. A stifled, pain-ridden sob that echoed in the center of his skull and yanked at something deep behind his sternum, a physical, magical tug.
It was a connection, a thread he hadn’t known was there, thrumming with her terror.
The realization didn’t dawn. It exploded. It wasn’t that he wanted her. It wasn’t that he missed her. She wasn’t just the nanny.
She was his. His one. The land had known. His blood had known. The emptiness in his sons had known. He’d been an idiot, a proud, stupid fool who let the best thing that ever happened to him walk away into the arms of a monster because he was scared to admit what she meant.
“Fuck,” he breathed, the word a prayer and a curse.
He moved. He tore through the cottage, shaking the boys awake. “Get up. Get dressed. Now.” His voice was a hoarse command, but his hands were gentle, frantic. He threw clothes on them, not caring if socks matched. He bundled them into the truck, their small faces confused and hopeful at his sudden, fierce energy.
He sped to the big house, tires spitting gravel. Granny was on the porch, sipping her morning coffee, her expression still carved from stone. He didn’t even turn the engine off. He leapt out, pulling the boys from their car seats.
“What is wrong with you, boy?” she started, but he cut her off.
He thrust Sire’s hand into hers, then Saint’s. “Keep ’em.” His eyes were wild, clear for the first time in months. “I gotta go. Right now.”
“Go where?” she demanded, but a spark flickered in her own eyes, seeing the change in him.
He was already striding back to the truck. He threw open the door, looked back at her over his shoulder. “To get my woman.”
A slow, radiant smile broke across Granny’s face, the first in two months. It was all the blessing he needed. He slammed the door and peeled out, the truck eating up the road north, towards the city, towards her.
At that exact moment, in the penthouse high above the waking city, Soleil was bent over the toilet, vomiting silently. The morning sickness was vicious. She rinsed her mouth, splashed water on her face, and caught her reflection in the mirror.
Her eyes were shadowed, a fading yellow bruise on her jaw. But lower, beneath the loose fabric of her nightshirt, was a definite, smooth curve. A small, hard baby bump. Her hand spread over it. A tiny, secret hello.
The bathroom door flew open.
Derrick stood there, tie undone, ready to berate her for being late with his breakfast. His eyes tracked from her pale, sweaty face, down to where her hand rested protectively on her stomach, the fabric pulled taut enough to reveal the unmistakable swell.
Time suspended. His expression cycled through confusion, calculation, and then a dawning, volcanic rage. His eyes snapped back to hers, seeing the truth she couldn’t hide.
He took a step into the small room, his presence filling it, suffocating her. “You’re pregnant.” It wasn’t a question. His voice was dangerously quiet.
She shrank back against the sink, her arms crossing over her belly.
His face twisted. He pieced it together with brutal, rapid logic. Her untouched virginity with him. Her eight-month absence. That fucking shack. That fucking nigga with his locs and his tattoos and his bastard sons.
“You gave it to him,” he whispered, the words dripping with disbelief and revulsion. “You gave my pussy to that backwoods animal. You let him put a baby in you.” The quiet shattered. “YOU LET HIM BREED YOU LIKE A FUCKING BAYOU BITCH!”
The roar filled the tiled room. He grabbed her by the throat, slamming her back into the mirror. The glass cracked in a spiderweb behind her head. His other hand fisted in her nightshirt, ripping it down the front.
“This is mine!” he screamed, spittle hitting her face, his eyes completely unhinged. “You are MINE! Everything about you! And you gave it away! You ruined yourself!”
He threw her to the floor. The cold marble met her skin. Then his foot connected with her side, a brutal kick aimed at the swell she’d just been cherishing. She curled instantly, a scream tearing from her throat, her body becoming a shield around her child as his blows rained down, a torrent of fury and violation, each kick, each curse, a promise to destroy the last piece of Kordell Baptreaux she carried within her.