“I’m good.”
“Aight. I’m heading downstairs. Call me if you need me,” he said before walking away.
I closed the bedroom door behind me before pulling my phone from my pocket.
Fear flashed across the woman’s face instantly.
“Don’t be scared. I just need to rough you up a little for these pictures,” I said while sliding Karma from my waistband.
The woman flinched the second I moved toward them, pulling the little girl closer. That was when I noticed the bruises scattered across her arms and the dark fingerprints wrapped around her wrist. My eyes traveled higher and landed on a long scratch running down the side of her neck beneath her shirt collar, and none of the injuries looked old.
My eyes dropped toward the little girl and found bruises on her too. Smaller ones. Some fading, some fresher, but it was enough to make my stomach turn anyway.
“Rich do that?” I asked.
The woman looked away, and when she finally spoke, her voice sounded hollow.
“Yes. He beat us almost every day,” she admitted. “Me especially. If she cries too much or makes him mad, he beats her too.”
She took a deep breath as if needing a moment to continue.
“All I am to him is an incubator. If this baby ain’t a boy…”
She gently moved her daughter aside so I could get a better look at her little round belly.
“He wants me to keep having babies until I give him a son. The cycle of abuse will continue for all my daughters and me.”
That pissed me off. Seeing them like that took me back to when I was six, and my momma’s boyfriend used to fight her. Inever saw him in action, but the bruises stayed with my mother even after they healed, and me too.
I looked away from the woman and tightened my grip around Karma. The room went quiet except for the little girl’s uneven breathing and the distant sound of my soldiers moving around downstairs.
Then my phone buzzed against my pocket. I pulled it out and looked at the screen.
It was Rich.
A slow smile spread across my face the second his name flashed across the screen. The woman noticed it and started panicking again.
Rolling my eyes, I sighed. “When I pick this phone up, you and that little girl better scream, cry, beg, all that shit. If you don’t, I’m gonna do you way worse than Rich has ever done you. You understand me?” I glared at the woman, and she nodded.
By the time I answered the phone, tears were sliding down her cheeks again while the little girl cried loud enough for Rich to hear every second of it.
“Where the fuck my family?” Rich roared.
“Please!” the woman screamed. “Please don’t let her hurt my baby!”
The little girl started crying louder right after that, and Rich went quiet on the other end for a second. I smiled as I leaned against the window.
“You hear them?”
“What the fuck you want?”
My smile widened.
“You finally ready to talk now?”
“You hit my house, stole my money, kidnapped my family, and you think this shit funny?”
“I think you thought I was weak because I lost my memory. Then you started slipping because you thought you had the upper hand, but hey, what do I know?”
