A symbol of innocence.A lure.
Or a warning.
“You think the Reverend’s involved?”Oaks asks.
Silence.
Royal’s silence is never empty.It’s a sentence.A truth he ain’t ready to say aloud.
The moment I hear the quiet grit of his teeth, something breaks in me.I step back from the door, letting the chain drag against metal.Loud enough for them to know I hear everything.
The lock turns.
I’m already pacing when he enters.
Royal fills the doorway like a shadow carved into a man.Hoodie low.Hands in pockets.Eyes unreadable and yet burning.
“Back to interrogate the prisoner?”I snap.
He shuts the door behind him.Slowly.Purposefully.His silence wraps around me like fog.
“You think I’m the problem,” I say, tugging the chain taut.“But I’m the only one asking real questions.”
His jaw ticks, the smallest tell he has.
“You want answers?”I step closer.“Start asking the right questions.”
“What do you know, Becki?”he asks, voice deep, low, almost tender but not in a safe way.
Tender like the moment before the knife slides in.
Sitting on the bed, I let my voice soften.“I knew those girls.Josie.Marlena.Cammy.I sang with them.Laughed with them.Snuck wine from the Reverend’s cabinet with them.”
He stays still.
“Some of them came to club parties,” I whisper.“Y’all don’t card.They liked the noise.The dirt.The danger.Derby used to sneak them barbecue from the pit and tell them stories about the races.Whiskey taught them how to play liar’s dice.They weren’t bad girls.Just… curious.”
His eyes flicker at the mention of his brothers.Connections forming.Or breaking.
“Then they disappeared,” I say.The word fractures in my throat.
Royal steps forward, slow and heavy, like the earth itself is shifting with him.He stops inches away, his heat rolling over me.
“I ain’t the Reverend,” he says.
“No,” I bite out.“You’re worse.He at least pretends to love the people he hurts.You just watch.”
Something in him snaps.Quietly.Like a thread pulled too tight.
“You want me to stop you, Becki?”he murmurs, voice curling around me like smoke.“Because I’ve been doing everything, I can not to touch you.”
My pulse stutters.
“Why not?”I whisper.
His eyes are drawn to the chain around my wrist.
To my bare thighs.
