Storm’s
Spirited Harmony
By Stacy Barnett
Text copyrighted ©2016 S. E Barnett
All rights reserved
Dedicated to my love Jason and all his
Belief in me.
1.2.3…...
Table of contents
Chapter one
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four
Chapter five
Chapter six
Chapter seven
Chapter eight
Chapter nine
Chapter ten
Epilogue
Harmony lived for the day she would avenge her mother, for all the hurt and heart break her father dished out to her. She swore she would stop at nothing, to make that dream a reality. That is until she meets her knight in shining armour again, in Storm. He looks at her as if she is the single most important person in his world and she can see there is more to this world then vengeance.
Storm finally found his one saving grace in his little Harmony, only she was not the little girl he remembers, but a power onto herself and woman worth fighting for. He struck out on his own and instead of going it alone, he found his other half of his heart. Will he be able to help her with her vengeance or will he heal her heart?
Chapter one
Harmony
Question of the year, why do daddies think it is okay to hit mommies? This was my most asked question on my mind these days and I just wish someone would give me a reasonable answer.
I started asking this question, just after I turned ten years old. Today is my tenth birthday and the day my momma told me, I was grown up enough to do as she asked of me. She sat me down in my room and looked at me sadly, “baby, you need to do something for me sweetheart and that is if you hear strange sounds or shouting in this house, you are to hide and not come out until I tell you. Can you do that for me, my sweet Harmony?”.
When I nodded unsurely, she simply smiled and kisses me on the top of my head, before going out into the living room with my daddy. Sitting on my bed quietly, I didn’t really understand what she wanted but I knew what she meant about the strange noises. As I hear a lot of bad words coming through the paper-thin walls of my bedroom. As my room is right next to my parents and they can be really, loud. I only get upset when it goes suddenly quiet and I can hear my beautiful momma crying by herself.
So, for a while I did as she asked until that fateful day, a week after my birthday, when I saw my father for who he truly was. I had snuck out when they went out of their bedroom and I watched, as he hit my mother and how he kept on hitting her, and hitting her, until she would finally stop moving. He wouldn’t stop using his fists on her, until he was sure, she wasn’t going to be moving anytime soon. Then other times he would hit her until she was barely breathing and bleeding profusely. He would then sit back on that ratty old couch in our small living room and light up a smoke, and watch her almost sluggishly, to see if my mother would move, then berate her when she dared to.
As I watched quietly from my small corner of the room, I helplessly cried for the beautiful woman who raised me, as she tried to lay so still in her own fear of getting hit again. When I looked at her I wondered if daddy would hit me too, as I looked just like my mother in everything but my nose. We had the same long black hair and blue eyes. Her eyes were a light crystal blue, were as mine were the darkest of blues to the point of almost being black. My friend Tony at school once said, that when I got mad, my eyes would look evil because that would black like the devils. I would just laugh at him and then I would punch him for good measure for saying such mean things.
Sniffling in to my hand, to stay as quiet as a mouse would, I had to keep wiping my eyes from the steady flow of tears coming from my sad eye’s, one after another. As I kept watching silently from the shadows, I would worry if I was ever going to see my sweet momma okay again. When daddy had finally had enough of watching her, he would put his cigarette out on her quivering shoulder, letting it make a sizzling burning sound that blistered her skin. Then he would get up slowly to go and get drunk in the kitchen by himself.
I am sad to say, she must have seen me out of the corner of her eye and slowly waved me back into my room, while I cried. I hated to do as she asked but I did and I hid, because if daddy found me out of my room, it could have been worse for her.
Every time after that terrifying night, I had decided that I would use my friend Tony’s iPhone and record everything he would do to her, that I couldn’t stop. I figured that when I was older and stronger, I could use it against him somehow. You must remember, I was still young at ten years old and didn’t know what I could possible do, but having said that, I also knew that if I got visual evidence, like my phone recordings. Like the television shows I watched would say, it might help in some way and I might be able to put him away in prison.
Some of the times when he would hurt her, he would often use his studded leather belt or he would kick her with his steel capped boots when she was down, but the one thing, I hated was when he would burn her beautiful skin with his lit cigarette. I would silently cry each time he would do that to her, hoping she would fight back, but she never did. Every night after I would go to bed, I would dream of how I was going to stop him before it was too late for my momma and he killed her, finally taking her away from me forever.
After two months of watching the beast that was my father hurting my mother, we had some strange men come into our house with pretty pictures on the backs of their coats, in the middle of the night. When they had all finished walking into our small living room, right passed my hiding place in the corner, I snuck down the short hallway to look around the hidden corner of the room, to see what was happening. When one of them stood with his back to me, I took a quick picture of one of him, before he would turn around to go back outside. Looking down to the picture that I captured, I was an ugly as it was that of a skull with horns and a scythe wrapped around it, also with the simply words Death Dealers across the bottom of the picture.
I looked closely at the screen of my borrowed phone, to make sure I got a reasonably good photo but found it was a bit blurry. Sighing to myself, I knew I would have to get another one, so I could look up the picture on the internet at school tomorrow and see if they could help my momma and me. Raising the phone slightly at one of them again, I held my breath hoping I wasn’t going to get caught, when the one I photographed heard the click of my phone he tensed up like he was ready to fight and was about to turn around, but stopped when my father yelled out, “let’s go brothers, I have an itch that needs scratching”.
Shrinking into the corner again, behind one of momma’s potted plants, my father struts out of my parent’s room looking much like the ones in the living room, only he had the word treasurer across the back of his black vest and a smug smile on his lips. He always looks like that, after he has done something terrible to my mother and when he hasn’t got a care in the world. Why does so many grownups believe it is good to hurt the ones they are supposed to care about. God, I wish he would just die and leave us alone.
I watch as he joins the small group, as they all walked to the front door in a pack. Creeping to the opposite side of my hiding spot, I peeked my head around the corner again to watch and came face to face with a man, that looked about twenty-one years old, with unusual, grey eyes. He was as tall as my Friend Tony’s brother but he had a scruffy beard and shaggy black hair, instead of clean shaven and brushed hair.
I went to shrink back instinctively, as getting found where you shouldn’t be, was a bad, bad thing in this house of horrors. He g
oes to grab my wrist to stop my retreat but misses and as his eye’s sparkly down at me, he looks at me as if he has a secret and he just found a new treasure to covet.
Pulling in a deep breath, I try to move back quicker from the smiling man and hoped he wouldn’t get me into any trouble from my father, because I didn’t want to get any more of those funny looks from my daddy.
Those looks were really starting to creep me out and I felt something bad was going to happen. Just like when he looked at me this morning, as I was coming out of the bathroom in my pj’s, after using the facilities. He had this weird look on his face, that I could tell instantly was not very good for me and not momma. My friends at school, always said I had great intuition with the weird stuff in this world and this morning, I simply knew I was going to be going somewhere I didn’t want to go and it will be all my father’s fault.
As I day dreamed a little, I felt my small back hitting the corner of the hallway wall and as I squeak out, “ouch….”, the pretty man grabs one of my arms gently and shushes my tiny whimpers with one of his large calloused fingers pressing up against my soft lips.
The handsome man then leans down to my height and rumbles softly “Don’t say anything sweetheart, or you will just get hurt by my brothers outside, alright?”. I nod quickly and stay silent, as he carries on talking, “Now you better go back to your room, until we leave or your dad will get pissed off, with the both of us”. Shocked that he must have read my mind somehow, I quickly nodded my head which has my long black curly hair flying everywhere. I smile sweetly up to him, “thankyou….”. I asked waiting for his name.
“Storm little one, or you can call me Charlie, if that is easier to remember, alright…”.
My eyes go big at his genuinely beautiful smile, as I answered him back gratefully, “Thank you, ah…Storm…”.
I turned as if to go but stopped and turned back a little to hug him tightly around his narrow waist and whispered up to him, “oh…. I’m Harmony Elizabeth, just so you know and you are now my knight in shining armor”.
I thought he should know who he rescued, before turning again to sneak back into my room with the secret iPhone secured in one of my dressing gown pockets. I didn’t get to see the small grin on his handsome face, before I close my door softly with a resounding click. As soon as it was shut, I quickly put my ear to my bedroom door and hold my breath, listening for any small noises coming from the hallway outside. When I don’t hear anything for a full minute, I move to opening it again thinking everyone had left, when I suddenly hear Storm’s deep husky voice, quietly saying before he walks away from my door, “be safe babygirl”.
Taking a happy breath, that someone as nice as him was looking out for me. I listened quietly, as he then walked away and out the front door, with the rest of his friends and my deadbeat father. Letting out a loud held in breath, that I didn’t even realise I was holding on to, before I raced across my small uncluttered bedroom, to look out my front bedroom window. Just in time to watch all the strange men and the handsome Storm, get on their huge colourful bikes. It didn’t take long before they all started them up and began to ride away and as the loud sounds of their mufflers become a distant memory, I giggle at getting a smile from such a handsome guy.
I stayed in the shadows of my thread bare curtains that hung from the only window in my room, until I couldn’t hear or see them anymore, before I sighed and ran quickly to check on my momma. The first thing to meet my eyes was a semi-conscious and barely breathing mother on the bathroom floor once again.
Crying out mournfully like a wounded animal, I took note of all her life-giving blood on the dirty white tiles of the bathroom floor. Bunching up my small fists angrily, I let the hate I feel my father feistier in my heart, until I was positively shaking with unrelenting rage. The bad feelings I felt for my father were getting stronger and stronger, every day, until all I could think about was how we could get away from him and survive. That man has taken so much from my mother, she is like a shell of her former self, like she would play with me just for the fun of it, or when she would let me bake a cake, so we could share it.
Why is it, I can’t be normal like the other kids in school and just be loved by both my parents, in a safe and loving environment. Is that too much to ask. I also keep feeling so frustrated and helpless with how he likes to hurt her so much and how he believes he will always get away with it, because in all honesty he will, until I am grown up enough to deal with it.
Laughing to myself, I think he honestly believes that because of those friends he hangs around with and that big mean looking man that was sitting in the front of their ridiculous pack of bikes. Momma whimpers on the floor again, and it was just what I needed, to give myself a mental shake and to get a move on.
Sighing sadly, I sit down next to my mother’s prone form after wetting and ringing out a small cloth in the ancient porcelain sink. I make sure to cry quietly, as to not upset her further and get to working on helping her. I gently begin to clean her up with the little blue wash cloth, by wiping as much blood off her still beautiful, if slightly swollen face. As I keep cleaning, I think to myself again and again this must stop. She won’t be able to take many more beatings before he takes it too far and finally kills her.
As I began wiping the blood away from her obviously broken nose, she begins to wake up painfully slow with a moan ripping from her deep in her chest. I quickly stand up at the sink and washed out the now bloody washer, before going back to her, only this time her right eye was open but her left was swollen shut from being punched repeatedly in the face. She looks at me with pain clearly visible in her cloudy blue eyes and a tear running down across her black and blue cheek.
She lifts her small shaking hand up to my wet cheek, wiping away my tears and whispers brokenly, “Oh baby, you shouldn’t be around this sort of hate and violence. You should be somewhere you know will be safe and warm. You need to be a little girl and not the someone who has to wipe up, after your mother’s beatings. I want so much more for you babygirl”.
Still wiping her face down, I looked at her with a hurt and confusion in my own dark blue eyes, “You shouldn’t be here either momma. Why do you make us stay here, if he is just going to keep on hurting you? daddy is going to take you away from me for good, if he keeps on hitting you and you deserve so much better too”.
I look down at my blood covered hands and say to her in a sad whisper, “My friends at school say that their mommas don’t get hit like you do and they said that my daddy was a bad man for doing it too”.
Momma sighs sadly and struggles to sit up but falls back down again holding her side and groans from the obvious stabbing pain shooting through her ribs. I quickly hop up, throwing the bloody washer in the dirty sink and go behind her back, to gently help her sit up, then to lean her up against the bathroom basin. When she was staying where I helped her, I moved back around to the front her and grabbed another washer from under the sink, to begin to dry her wet face. My mum tries to reassure me with small smile but it comes across as a lopsided grin instead and I smile back at her to show her, that I am doing okay and we will get through this together.
Sighing momma looks at me and grabs my wrist gently in hers, to stop me from continuing with helping her. Then she looks into my sad eyes and whispers urgently to me, “I need to get you out of here and somewhere safe Harmony. You father told me tonight, he is planning on selling you to one of his underground criminal friends, for when you get old enough to have sex. I can’t let that happen to you baby. You are my ray of sunshine little one and if he gets his hands on you, it will snuff out that bright light forever”.
I begin to cry once again, only this time louder, at the thought that my daddy was going to hurt me like that and for the fact that he mustn’t really love me at all.
My mother gives my wrist a little squeeze, to help me clear my dark thoughts out of my head and to look at her clearly, “Now I know you have been recording everything that has been going on here in this h
ouse honey and I know it was on your friend Tony’s cell phone”. I must have had a fearful expression on my wet face, as she tells me about the phone, as she tries to smile along with her news.
“I know what you are thinking honey and no I am not mad at you one bit. I knew it was your way of helping me, so I hope it will be alright with Tony, if I use it to call someone to help us. If I use the house phone, your father and his club of criminals can have the phone number traced and I just can’t let that happen to my friend. That club has a lot of people in the New South Wales police force, that they pay for that sort of underbelly thing and I know they wouldn’t hesitate to do it either, so they could hurt me. So, Harmony do you think it will be okay, to use it just this once?”
She looks at me with a broken and yet hopeful expression, that I would be okay in lending her my friends private phone and not make any kind of fuss about it. I run my hand over the phone in my pocket and come to a quick decision. I quickly pull the phone out of my dressing gown pocket and hand it over to her, after I unlocked it. Momma smiles happily, before she quickly types in a phone number and puts it to her ear, under her blood matted black hair.
Sitting back on my knees to wait and see what happens, I listen calmly as a strange man’s deep voice echoes out into the bathroom, as he answers the phone. When his voice booms out and into the room I look at momma scared but she simply grabs my hand firmly and offers me her comfort.
“Hello, who’s this and how did you get this fucking number?”.
When those words echoed off the tiles around us, I thought he sounded like one of those wrestlers you see on television, you know the ones that sound like a bass drum when they get angry. Even though he sounds angry, the deep timbre of his smooth voice, instantly puts my scared soul at ease and I knew right away he would be the one to help my mother and me.
Momma sighs wistfully and whispers into the phone, “Samuel it’s me Sarah…. you…you once said if I ever needed your help, I could call any day or night. I hope that invitation still stands?”.
Storm's Spirited Harmony: The Grim Reapers Mc book 1 Page 1
