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.