Drowning to Breathe (38 page)

Divide and conquer.

Isolate and sabotage.

His whole intent was to take Sebastian from me. To leave me the most vulnerable I could be.

Little did he know I would fight him to the death.

Shivers shook through my entire body, and I tried to swallow around the rock in my throat as I reached down and picked up one of the pictures that lay face down on the floor.

My hand shot to my mouth to cover a cry.

Oh my God.

Oh my God.

Mark, Austin, Donny, and
my mother
.

A deep, guttural cry suddenly ricocheted off the walls in the small closet, one that meshed with the devastated sadness of mine.

I jerked to look over my shoulder.

Austin.

He clutched both sides of the doorframe, holding himself up, spirit and body crumpled and broken. Confession barely decipherable, he looked at me as if he were begging me to see him. “It’s my fault. It was always my fault.”

I scrambled to face him, pushing all the way up onto my knees, my words jumbled as they poured from my mouth. I held out the journal. “Austin…what is this? Tell me what you know.”

He winced as if the sight of it caused him physical pain. “We knew, Shea. Mark and I…we knew. Donny told us what Martin had them do to you.”

They knew.

Austin shook his head and laughed a spiteful sound. “There’s never any fucking proof, right, Shea? Assholes can just keep hurting and hurting and hurting and there’s never any proof. But Mark didn’t care. He said he was going to the cops anyway. And then Mark was gone… He was gone, Shea,” he said with all the implication he could summon.

Oh my God. Martin. He did this to Mark.

Everything spun and dizziness swelled.

Austin kept crying, words tumbling from him like a confession that had been held in for far too long. “Baz found all this shit Mark had kept…demanded to know what the hell I knew. I couldn’t keep it from him any longer, Shea. I couldn’t. I’m so fucking sorry. So sorry.”

I gulped over the reality of what Sebastian had found. Of what he had learned. My last secret. The one I’d kept to protect him.

I staggered onto unsteady feet, unable to process everything he was trying to tell me. My focus would only latch onto one thing. I shoved one of the pictures at him. “When…when was this picture taken?”

“I don’t know…maybe a year and a half ago. Not long before Mark died.”

Between the heavy, stale air, the disorganized chaos of the room, and the catastrophic discovery, I felt bile rise in my throat. My skin cold and clammy.

I took a desperate step forward.

“Where is she?”

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.