“I knew it!” I shriek. “Wow. I thought there was something about the way he stares at her, but I thought I was being imaginative or something.” I roll my eyes as he pinches the bridge of his nose.

  “Don’t say shit about it. Just keep it to yourself. People here have fucked up pasts and try to keep shit buried. Apologize to our old man when you see him. Just tell him you’re sorry for upsetting him. Then drop it for good. Romeo is an okay dude but he’s not worth fucking up our family over. And think about our parents before you go dividing them because you have a curiosity about the family you don’t know. I know I sound like a hypocrite, but this world isn’t for you. You have no place in this life, Sara.”

  His words cut just like a knife. I don’t need my brother of all people telling me I don’t belong here.

  “Yeah, I get it, Outlaw.” I sneer, using the name on his cut. “I know I don’t fit in here. You think I enjoy sitting in the corner while no one talks to me. You think I like going to a funeral for a woman I didn’t know and listening how great she was to her other grandkids. You can just fuck right off.” Jumping out, I slam the truck door and take off running.

  “Sara!” Cole shouts after me but doesn’t move to follow me.

  “Just go, Cole. Go back to your new family. I can take care of myself. I have my own back.”

  I don’t turn back to look at him. Being alone is what I need at the moment.

  When I get inside the house I go to Harley’s room. With nothing to do, I pull out Gypsy Red’s Diary. She only had herself as well. She knows exactly how I feel. No one had her back either. She was thrown to the wolves as a child.

  Chapter 8

  DEAR DIARY,

  I give these thoughts and memories to you. I give them to you to take my nightmares away. These are my secrets. My demons. My words I need to bleed out of me, before I go to my grave. I keep dreaming of dying. Death has stalked me since I was just a girl. Let’s start at the beginning. Well, as far back as I can recollect.

  “Daddy, do all little girls have a daddy as good as you?” I looked up into the eyes that matched my own in color. Smooth as whiskey, I had heard my momma call them once. They looked so tired. No longer holding the vibrancy of his youth. My daddy had always been a looker. Women always eyed him and bit their lip when he’d glance their way. Momma was always jealous of daddy. She didn’t want him to look at anyone but her. Not even me. She despised the sight of me. Hated taking care of me. So, I always clung to his side and followed him everywhere. Going places little girls ought not to. Pool halls, bars, strip clubs. Wherever my daddy went I was sure to accompany him as though I were his righthand man. My baby eyes witnessed the dark cruel side of men at an early age. Sometimes I was left sitting at the bar alone, watching people. I saw the way the men in the bar groped women and heard the ugly names they called them, particularly a dirty cunt. I didn’t know what it meant but I knew I never wanted to be a dirty cunt, whatever that was.

  My father touched my cheek. His palms were soft, but his fingers were rough. “Sweet pea. In a perfect world, all girls would have a dad like me, but we live in an imperfect world. We live around chaos, darkness, and despair.” He kisses my cheek and pries my fingers from his large blood-stained hand.

  “I don’t want you to go, daddy. You are the bestest daddy in the whole wide world, and if you go...who will chase the bad guys away?”

  He swept his thumbs over my cheeks, wiping away my tears replacing them with streaks of blood. The blood of my mother. Or was it mine or his. I can’t remember why there was so much blood.

  Where am I?

  Where was he going?

  Why was he leaving me there?

  “Go to sleep, Kara. When you awake, none of this will no longer matter. Daddy loves you, sweet pea...”

  Beep.

  Beep.

  Beep.

  The sound of the beating of my heart on the monitor was the only sound. A single tear slipped down my cheek. A nurse came in and injected something to my IV. Once the medicine hit my veins, a slow burn crept up my arm.

  “This will help with the pain. You need rest.” She came closer to my bed and tucking me in tight as a mother would do.

  Shame I never have known what that is like. To have a good mother.

  My own mother hated me. She tried to kill me when I was five. She said I was bad luck and that the only way to save me from myself was through death. My daddy—he disagreed, and she paid the price. The night my mother tried to kill me my father murdered her before my five-year-old eyes. My daddy was my hero. He was my blood-stained knight.

  And now my daddy is gone, my hero, the only one who I could count on to save me, to protect me. He died a few years later in a car wreck. I should have died, but somehow, I made it with only a broken arm, a concussion, and some bruising to my face and chest from the impact of the air bag.

  I drifted back into a torturous sleep where my memories haunted me...where they have always tormented me.

  “It’s sick, the way you fuss over her. It isn’t normal. You’re her father. I’m your wife. I should be number one in your eyes.” I heard my mother’s shrill voice as I tossed and turned...

  I woke to see my neighbor; she seemed like such a nice person. Her husband was an associate of my father. However, my eyes quickly fluttered shut once more.

  The memories come in pieces. Sometimes, I wonder if they really happened or of I dreamt them.

  “Kara, meet Winston, his family just moved in next door.” I looked up from where I was coloring in my Scooby Doo coloring book on the front porch. There was a young boy standing at the edge of the porch grinning at me. He had brown hair and when he opened his mouth there was a huge gap between his teeth; it made me laugh.

  “Do you wanna color with me?” I offered. I didn’t have many friends, kids in the neighborhood all thought I was weird and we moved a lot, so I didn’t try too hard to make friends. My daddy called us gypsies—he said I was his Gypsy Red ‘cause of my red hair and all.

  “Sure.” He climbed up on the porch, sitting cross-legged across from me. My dad patted my head telling me to be nice, before going inside with our new neighbors.

  I held out my box of crayons. He took the black and the red drawing blood coming out of the kitten’s mouth in my other book. Blood freaked me out. Ever since my mom... I tensed up and a single tear trickled down my face.

  The boy took his thumb and brushed my tear away. “Don’t cry, Kara, you and I are going to be best friends,” Winston had said like I was special.

  My daddy always said I was special.

  Winston Rush became my best friend, my only friend...he wouldn’t have it any other way and I was too scared of him not to be his. He was always doing stuff that he dared me to tell anyone about.

  The memories are still fresh...the wounds still bleed. All of these thoughts, they swirl inside my head, making me beg to be dead.

  Chapter 9

  DEAR DIARY,

  I had to leave my home. Winston and his family took me in; he said he wanted to take care of me. I was, after all, his only and best friend. He told me how special I was and that he wanted to show me how much I meant to him. He crawled into bed with me at night and hugged me when the night terrors would come. They always came...most nights they still do.

  The screeching of tires and the buckling of metal pierced my ears. Smoke clouded my vision and filled my lungs. “Daddy!” I screamed for him. Why wasn’t he answering me? I couldn’t see him. “Daddy, please, I’m scared.” Tears flooded the brims of my eyes.

  I could feel hands tugging on me and I could hear a voice I didn’t recognize asking if I’m okay. All I could do was call out his name, “Daddy, please, don’t leave me! Don’t let them take me!”

  My arms were pinned down as I screamed into the night. “It’s okay, Kara, no one is taking you away from me.” Winston had his body pressed down on mine, holding me down as I thrashed and cried.

  I just wanted to go home to my house, be in my room with my things. I wanted to go home with my daddy where I felt loved and safe. I couldn’t go home though. Someone else was living in my house. Winston’s parents were my guardians and they had sold everything. I wasn’t sad to see my mother’s things sold off in the estate sale, but when my dad’s suits were hanging on a rack in the front lawn, another piece of my heart chipped away. Through the years of my life I would learn that Winston would chip the rest of it away bit by bit.

  He became possessive of me. At first, I liked his attention. I had always wanted a brother or sister, but Winston didn’t hug me like a brother should and as I grew older, his real feelings became clear. When I was twelve years old, he showed me how deep those feelings ran.

  I’ll never forget the first time he took me. He ripped away my childhood and nothing was left of me but a vessel to be used by him whenever he saw fit.

  I awoke from one of my many nightmares as I often did. Winston had heard me screaming in my sleep or maybe he was already in my room. I couldn’t be sure, but there he was, lying next to me. At first, he was stroking my hair being real sweet and gentle. He whispered in my ear, “Shh, my sweet Kara. You’re gonna be okay. I’ll take care of you. I always will. You belong to me now. I’ll have every part of you.” Then he ran his fingers down my arm and his touch became much rougher. His fingers touched and pinched places he shouldn’t and when I cried out he covered my mouth with his hand and told me, “Shut up or I’ll kill you dead.”

  I believed him. I once had a kitten, named sweet pea, just as my father had called me. Winston squeezed its neck until it died. He had said I paid more attention to my cat than him. He told his mom that I did it on accident. I hated Winston for that. I had loved that cat. But it didn’t matter how I truly felt about Winston, he was determined to have me, and I was too weak to say no. I was too afraid of him. Always have been and still am.

  I like to rub my hand over my stomach, so I can remember my first child. My son. He was born when I was fourteen in the basement. Winston’s parents were too ashamed to tell anyone what their son had been doing to me. I named him Mark. I got to hold him for five minutes before Winston was taking him from my arms.

  I can still remember his red cheeks and the sound of his cry. It’s something a mother never forgets.

  Winston leaned down and kissed my forehead. He looked at me for a moment as I screamed and begged. I tried to reach for my baby, but I was too weak. I had lost a great deal of blood. I thought I was going to die but I didn’t. Death wasn’t going to claim me just yet.

  Mrs. Rush had a friend of hers who was a seamstress sew me up after Winston took our baby away. I remember lying there and praying for death. It never came. But Winston did. He scooped me up in his arms and carried me to a truck. I was dumped in the back onto a blanket and pillow. I faintly recall him hitting the window and my body bouncing all over the place as the truck sped off in the cloak of the late night. I awoke hours or days later with old blood crusted on my thighs, I couldn’t be sure. All I knew was there was this emptiness inside me. I didn’t care if I lived or if I died. My baby had been ripped away from me.

  I didn’t understand. I did what was asked of me. I hid my pregnancy at school by wearing oversized t-shirts. I didn’t tell anyone. I didn’t dare for fear of what the Rush family would do to me in return. I had witnessed firsthand what they were capable of. They are responsible for my father dying in that accident. I knew, but I couldn’t prove it. Winston promised me that he would take me away—our baby boy too, but he lied. He lied often, and I learned to never question his word for if I did he would remind me that I belonged to him and him alone. I was his to do with as he pleased. If he wanted me to pleasure him I did.

  If he wanted to humiliate me he gave me to his friends no matter their age. I was merely a mouth to suck him when he wanted, a body to use and abuse whenever or wherever it pleased him to do so. However, there were times when I thought he truly loved me and didn’t just own me. There were times he could be sweet. Like when I had awoken with that dried blood nearly leaving blisters on my skin it had been there so long.

  Winston carried me from a dirty mattress on the floor of some apartment over one of the strip clubs I used to come to as a child with my dad to a mildewed shower. He washed me with such care, holding me upright under the spray of the water for I was too weak to stand on my own legs. He stroked my cheek and kissed my temple, telling me I would see my baby, my precious Mark soon. I wanted so badly to believe him. I only nodded not daring to ask the questions that were burning the tip of my tongue.

  Where was my boy? Our baby. What had he done with him? Was he being cared for? Was he healthy? Did he know I loved him? Was he crying for me because there was a gaping hole in my womb crying for him. Aching to hold him and put him to my breasts and feed him. He was the only thing in the world that belonged to me and he would never know me. Winston had seen to that.

  Chapter 10

  DEAR DIARY,

  For two weeks Winston showered me with good food and small gifts. He nursed me back to health. He brought me back from the brink of death. I had nearly bled to death in the back of that truck and on that filthy mattress. My fifteenth birthday came and went with not even a card to celebrate the day.

  “Things are going to be different, Kara. You’ll see. I have a job and I have something lined up for you too. You can’t go back to school and we need the money.” I later learned that his parents reported me as a runaway and that job he had lined up for me was to be the one things I never wanted to be, a dirty cunt dancing downstairs at the Magic strip club. We were now property of a motorcycle club. Winston had sealed our fate long before I had given birth to Mark. Winston had been doing work for the outlaw motorcycle club for years. Even as a child.

  I’ll never forget Winston taking me downstairs to meet Hook. The devil himself. At first glance, he was an attractive man. Strong features and his skin was weathered, holding the secrets of his travels...of his fights... The older man intrigued me. His eyes seemed to change color. Going from hues of blue and green to brown under the light. His eyes penetrated my very core seeing me for what I was and all I could ever amount to. Nothing. A dirty cunt to be used. A dirty cunt to breed new bastards to fall in line and ride or die.

  “Her tits are on the small side, but if she proves to be a money maker I’ll get them done.” He appraised me once more smiling at me deviously.

  “She has birthing hips. Could make more if we offer her up as a virgin. She have any stretch marks?”

  Winston pushed me forward and barked for me to show the man what he had bought and paid for. Inside I wanted to crumble into a million pieces but on the outside, I was cold as ice.

  I threw my shorts and shirt onto his desk standing in nothing but my panties and my long red hair to shield me.

  The man’s eyes shifted up and down my nervous body. “She’ll do but not until she turns eighteen. I’m a bastard but I’m no pedophile. She can help Pepper with the running of the blue house. Take her to there, get her settled, and then come back. I have a cleanup I need you to handle.” He dismissed us, and I was finally able to breathe again. I could work and hopefully by the time I was of age I would be long gone.

  One day I would get away from Winston. I would find my son and we would run to a far-off place. A place where no one knew us. This was a lie I told myself every morning and night. I told myself one day I would be free. I would live up to my name. I would travel. I would stick my toes in the sand. I would never belong to another man. Damn I was a stupid girl.

  Chapter 11

  DEAR DIARY,

  I’ve been thinking a lot about those days at the blue house. On the outside, it looked like a grand home. One full of love and cheer. Appearances are deceiving. Beyond that white picket fence, that blue siding, and that red door laid a world I would never escape. It was heaven and hell. It kept Winston away. I hated him and loved him. I needed the time away from him and, yet I missed him because he always took care of me. He was evil, but he was mine and I was his. He promised to protect me just as my father had. Some days he delivered but most days he failed, miserably.

  I’ve been trying to organize my thoughts but there are so many memories I keep tucked away in the compartments of my brain. Today though, I can’t stop thinking about Jazz. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Her skin was as white as her hair, almost translucent. Her eyes were so blue, bluer than any blue I had ever known. An hourglass figure is the only way to describe her curves.

  I wanted to be her. The other girls looked up to her and were just as enamored by her as the men she took her clothes off for. There were so many girls. So many men. There were sometimes men who looked like women and women who looked like men. It was all so new and fascinating. I was part of a secret world where money, sex, drugs, and violence ruled. It was seductive, but it was also scary as hell.

  I often stood in front of the floor length mirror in the closet and compared myself to Jazz. She was so beautiful, and I was redheaded, skinny, and freckled. The closet was really the size of a small bedroom. It was shared by everyone. No one had their own anything.

  Some of the girls worked at the strip club while others were glorified prostitutes. And I was there to clean, do their bidding, wash their clothes, feed them. I was younger than all of them but more of a mother than any of them had ever known while I was merely a baby in the grand scheme of life.

  One day, Jazz caught me looking at myself in the mirror wearing her favorite lingerie. “Kara, baby girl. I wanna tell you something. I want you to listen and listen good. The most important part of you is up here.” She touched her long red manicured nail to my temple. “Your brain and what’s inside you, that’s the best part of you. All this...” She ran her hand down my side. “It doesn’t matter. Men you see, they think our power is our pussy and yeah, we can control men with our pussy. But never let a man own it. You grab your pussy and you harness that power. You use it to get you where you’re headed in life but never forget the real power is in your head.”