Contents
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other books by Victoria Johns
Foreword
“Life can knock you down, but what matters is that you get back up.”
Victoria Johns
Copyright © 2019 Victoria Johns
All rights reserved.
The rights of Victoria Johns as the author of the work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000. All rights reserved.
This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the author or publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review, by an approved book reviewer. No circulation in any form or binding or cover that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchase.
This book may not be resold or given away to other people for resale. Please purchase this book from a recognized retailer. Thank you for supporting the hard work of this author
This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places or events are entirely coincidental. Many are products of the author’s imagination.
Cover design and formatting - The graphics shed – [email protected]
Editing Services – Heather Ross – The Red Pen Editing Services
Proof Reading – Nikki Groom – Indie Hub
Gigi
I sat down at the dinner table for our evening meal. Momma had prepared a simple one-pot dish of chicken with potatoes. One-pot meals were all she seemed capable of these days. The chicken had been slaughtered and plucked by my older brother last night while I pulled up a few potatoes. I smelled lemons, too, which meant lemon cake using fruit from our orchard, and if I was lucky, homemade lemonade. It was odd, but now I was at school I had no idea what Momma did to keep herself occupied for a whole day. She kept a clean house, which was never unclean to start with because that would be bad for her. The yard work was always done, so I suspected she did most of that while Edward was out at work, even though she was old and bone tired.
Edward was my brother, her first born and a mean son of a bitch.
The difference between him and me was astounding, as if we were different species.
He was like a coiled snake waiting for the opportunity to strike, and I was just easy prey.
I asked myself on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis if there was a wiring problem in his brain because he could be so cruel, and then I worried that we shared the same blood. Did that mean I’d turn out like him? Even my momma was afraid of him. The only one who attempted to show him any love was our father. I still couldn’t understand why he did. He was just as nasty to Daddy. I’d often heard my parents arguing about him in the night. Momma was terrified of Edward, but Daddy always said that love and kindness would bring out the good in him.
Some of us were still waiting for that to happen.
I missed Daddy.
He died when I was ten, leaving Momma and I at the mercy of Edward—a fully-grown sadistic guy, ten years my senior, who drank too much, and hated the world and everything in it.
What was worse was that Momma had been ill for a while, so I was the butt of all his frustrations. I was his pseudo battered housewife by night, and a girl struggling to survive enough to finish high school by day. The only break I got from him was when I went to school and he was at work, or when Momma and I went to church on Sundays. Edward didn’t attend church. He’d probably have burst into flames the minute he stepped foot through the door.
I lived the oddest life, like a split personality.
I had the scars to prove it. Some I carried on my soul and others I physically hid every day.
I studied so hard it was a wonder my brain didn’t explode because I knew it was my key to getting out of this nightmare. It was a means to an end, yet it was so much more than that. It was an escape from hell, a few hours of peace and quiet, and more importantly, I was safe there. Although my nightmare would never end while Momma was still here and putting up with him. I couldn’t leave her; she relied on me. In truth, I’d become a frightened girl who was never sure when her next beating would come. The only similarity between my nights and days was that I constantly tried to avoid people and kept myself to myself. Most of the other kids knew I was an oddity. It was as if their senses picked up on my differences from the off. The kids who lived near us had nothing to do with me. Being my friend meant getting near Edward, and I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. They were happy in their own little worlds, avoiding everything they knew about me, and I was happy keeping them out of it.
My brother hated the fact that I went to school. He flunked out early and got a job at the factory—a job he only got because he had some dirt on the foreman and threatened to tell the bosses. When he flew into a rage—which felt like most of the time these days—he would blame my behavior on what I was taught at school. It didn’t matter that I had no friends, never had a boyfriend for fear of him ending up beaten to death, and was the most studious kid there—he said he’d known too many sluts in high school and that I was on the same path. School was a blessing and a curse. It got me out of the house, but it also contributed to my attitude, the feistiness that riled my brother’s temper so much. I developed a personality, some individuality and spirit, and that was when things started to go from bad to whatever came beyond worse.
Next level worse.
In truth, Edward despised what school had turned me into, and my poor momma hated that me being at school was partly responsible for turning her flesh and blood into a monster.
I say partly because I had no idea what his real reasons were. He must have had them; no one could be that cruel for no reason at all.
Everything I did seemed to set him off. It wasn’t always like this. When she was well enough, she got the full force of it, too, but now she spent most of her time sleeping and he seemed content with that, happy that he didn’t have to see her. That meant I took her punishment as well as my own. Edward had been a mean bastard for as long as I could remember. The problem was, I could never grasp what we were being punished for and it didn’t take me long to learn not to ask.
When I thought back to my younger days it had taken me a while to understand that he had a short temper. I’d never really seen someone fly off the handle with rage before. Daddy wasn’t like that. He was kind and loving and had so much patience. Even when Edward had got physical with him, Daddy had never hit him back. It was like there was a switch inside him that flipped from reasonable to cruel and vile overnight.
Whatever change happened with Edward happened for my mother, too, and then not long after, my dad had a heart atta
ck chopping wood in the field. When he died, her spirit and reason for living disappeared, too. Now she was ill, the fight was almost non-existent. I tried to rally her, because she had no desire to pick herself up. I tried to keep her going, selfishly, I knew I wouldn’t survive this on my own and more often than not momma was my buffer.
Edward had triggers.
Women and whisky.
When he mentioned a new girl or came home smelling of liquor, my knees started to quake. After Daddy died, we didn’t mourn as a family. We didn’t dare. Everything with Edward just escalated and when his frustrated slaps became violent, vicious ones, I changed a lot, too. The first time I looked at Momma and screamed for help was the first time a little bit of me died. That was when I realized she couldn’t help me. Usually, I was just the starter. He’d kick off at home, kick me about and go out and meet some woman. These women who put up with him had to be insane. Unless they got a different version of Edward, and I wasn’t sure one even existed. They say that all this stuff is learned behavior, but I didn’t believe that. Daddy never treated us that way. The thing that worried me more, though, was what I was learning: to just suck it up and take the beatings. After every time he slapped me, punched me, or took his belt to me, I worried that it would turn me into a carbon copy of Momma.
Broken.
Dead inside.
Just waiting to die so I could finally have some peace, because I was convinced that was what she was doing.
My body had hidden scars, but my brain was riddled with mental ones. I couldn’t forget what my eyes saw when he came towards me. It was like watching a horror film where I couldn’t shake the terror as he transported himself to a distant place where he believed he was justified in how he treated us.
I fretted every minute of every day that I was going to turn out like one of them—a woman who accepted and tolerated unspeakable abuse, or even worse, that I had the same darkness within me, and one day I would be capable of inflicting sadistic pain on someone else.
I wished I could say I’d never thought about ending it all, that I was strong and fought back.
But I didn’t. I was too scared, too weak.
There was something keeping me alive and breathing on this earth, and until I figured out what that was, I couldn’t find the will to take my own life. That was kind of scary, too. What if I died searching?
The worst it had ever been was when he heard me telling momma I wanted to go to homecoming.
A teacher had suggested it to me, like I might be missing out on something, and the more she talked about it, the more I believed I was indeed missing out. Looking back, I wondered if the teacher suspected I needed to see more of the outside world, or maybe it was a way to get me to trust her so I’d confide in her about why I was so shy. Most local people knew I didn’t have a daddy. I really missed him but hearing snide comments from the other kids at school made me miss him more. I tried as much as humanly possible to block out all thoughts of him while I was at school, but it just distracted me and made me sad.
Edward argued that homecoming only meant one thing: me spreading my legs for the boys at school. When I vehemently disagreed, I realized my mistake. He thought I was arguing with him. I wasn’t. I saw it as two people having a discussion—that back and forth known as conversation. Unfortunately, there was no discussing anything normal with my brother, ever, and unlike discussions at school, this debate ended on a much more violent note.
“So, the slut wants to go and hand it out. Sluts and whores go to homecoming, don’t they?” He glared at my mother and I knew for sure one of us would be feeling the brunt of this later. I should have been concentrating. I was trying to decipher what he meant and didn’t see the slap to the side of my head coming.
Later that night, I heard them arguing. Momma was pleading with him to see reason and allow me to go to the dance, but it made no difference. Then I heard her pleas turn to whimpers. I sat for a while and tried to ignore it, but when I could still hear her whimpering over my own humming with my hands over my ears, my body took over. When I stormed into the room, Edward had his hands around her throat and she was gagging for air. Picking up an ornament—the first thing I could put my hands on—I threw it at his back and breathed in relief when he released her.
The look on his face when he turned to me was ugly—scary ugly—and I knew I was in serious trouble. He caught up with me before I made it back to my room, and holding me down with one hand, he pulled off his belt and lashed me with the buckle across my exposed thighs.
I tried to rub my leg and that was a big mistake. He was on top of me before I’d realized I needed to retreat. “You little fucking slut. Wanna know what happens to girls who go to homecoming? I’ll tell you, give you an insight so you’re ready.”
“Edward, no!” Momma’s voice rasped, clearly struggling around the choking she’d just received. She was in pain and once again, I had no hope of her being able to help me.
“They take advantage of girls like you. They put their dicks inside whores.” He kicked my legs apart, swatting my protesting hands away like I was a late summer bug, and stepped in between them. Feeling an intense panic, I started to hyperventilate. Edward was in a rage like I’d never seen before. I always knew something evil had possessed him, but this was the first time I had seen the enjoyment he got from it. As I verged on passing out, I felt him roughly tug my panties down my legs and a single, thick finger run up my thigh towards a place I’d never been touched before.
“Edward, stop. She’s your sister. Gigi, fight!” Momma begged. I could hear the watery tears suffocating her words.
Hearing the name my daddy had called me when I was a little girl kicked me into action. I screamed and clawed at his arms, and watched as he grit his teeth in frustration.
“Fuck!” he yelled before removing his hand, balling it up into a fist and striking me in the stomach. “It’s coming to you, Ginny. You’ll see.” Of all the mental torture and painful beatings I’d ever had, this frenzied attack was on a level I couldn’t cope with for long. Just as the world began to haze over, I felt him release me from his hold and storm off.
Momma crawled over to me and held me as I tried to get enough air into my lungs to calm down. “Ssh, you’re okay now, Gigi,” she soothed, and put her frail bony arms around me as my depleted oxygen levels began to return to normal. As soon as I returned to a semi-normal state, Momma’s fear took a hold of her. Her body was quaking and she began to mumble stuff under her breath that I didn’t understand or care to hear. I was hurt and frightened. The only thing I was listening out for were the sounds of Edward in the house so I could figure out where he was and stay far away. I prayed he was going to leave. If he left, he’d head to a bar and with a bit of luck, pick up a woman and go home with her. If he stayed, I’d need to barricade my door and hope for the best.
I helped Momma into bed, all the while on alert, before heading to the bathroom. When I raised my dress to sit on the toilet, I saw where the skin was cut from the buckle of his belt and my stomach felt tender from his fist. What I wasn’t expecting to see was the elastic on my panties all stretched from his forceful attention. I knew I could block out the physical marks, but the ghostlike eyes staring back at me in the mirror were the most haunting. Things were getting out of control and Edward had come dangerously close to stepping over a line.
A line I wasn’t sure I’d survive if he tried again.
It was never spoken about again, but the change in Momma from that night on could not be ignored. Whatever they were arguing about, whatever he said to her was apparently nothing compared to having to watch your child go through it. The one thing that changed was that whenever she was strong enough, Momma would put herself in his path and volunteer to become his punch bag so I wouldn’t have to be.
So, I was looking forward to my chicken and potatoes, and hopefully, lemon cake, but circumstances beyond my control caused Edward to unleash a whole new monster. I didn’t even have myself to blame, just some f
riends from school who I rarely talked to. It was like he’d found a new level of hell to unleash, and because I was still weak, even that didn’t give me the strength and impetus to end it all.
Dinner smelled delicious sat in the center pot on our simple table as Momma made a quick and hushed blessing. The church was part of who she was. It was also part of who she’d been when my father had been alive, but as soon as she finished the blessing, Edward started to rant and rage about how bad things were at the factory. Momma listened and agreed when expected, and I remained silent. I knew when it wasn’t safe to enter a conversation, but I was hungry and fidgeting.
I’d forgotten my lunch for school that day and had to do without. I’d seen some of the other kids share their lunches before, but I was too nervous to ask. Asking for help of any kind wasn’t good. It drew attention. Usually my lunch was simple, a quick affair of grabbing what I could without hanging around in the kitchen too long if he was about. It wasn’t just about being in his company; it was about being made to feel guilty about eating the food that his wages had paid for. Momma didn’t work, so we relied on the pittance he saw fit to give us from his factory pay check. Having whiskey in the cupboard and money to spend on women in bars was more important to him than groceries in the pantry. My own packed lunch only ever consisted of bread rolls, smeared with jelly if I had time, an apple and orange from the orchard and a refillable bottle that I kept in my backpack and filled with water at school. Fortunately, Edward demanded a hearty breakfast before he went to work, and Momma had more energy in the mornings and made him one before he left. If I had time after he’d left before the school bus was due, I got the chance to fill up at breakfast, too, so eating a small lunch never bothered me.
Gigi: A Black Sentinels MC Novel Page 1
